"I never read any of the comics, so I don't know what Silver Surfer's powers are, but isn't he supposed to be pretty strong? So why'd they make him into a wimp?! Why is he fucking up rubber ducks and weeping like a crybaby?"
So there is this character, strong, independent, intelligent and resourceful. They are a valued member of any team and more than contributes their fair share to the team. They might not have been a true bonafide badass, but at the very least they were capable of standing on their own. Then the work was remade by new writers and everything changed. The once awesome Action Girl is now a Damsel in Distress. The Badass Bookworm is now just a plain old nerd. The Action Survivor is now just The Drag-Along, or worse.
This character has been the victim of Adaptational Wimpification. The reasons behind this happening are varied, and not inherently a result of bad writing. A character may be reduced to a cameo and their most notable contribution passed on to a more prominent character. The character may have been The Ace as an Invincible Hero and this trope makes them a more compelling protagonist with real dramatic concern for their safety. Or perhaps their less active traits were eliminated to make them more specialized in a team of badasses. Or maybe the adaptation is Lighter and Softer than its source material, and the writers made those vile villains harmless to avoid scaring the kids.
As with the inverse trope Adaptational Badass, this is not about characters who suffered a minor power decrease or had their most badass moment cut from the adaptation. In some cases their powers or lack thereof may not even be a factor. This trope only applies when their usefulness, agency, and contribution to the plot is significantly reduced. It is not this trope when the character "only" easily defeated twenty Mooks instead of a hundred; it's when the character struggled to take down even one. Alternately, a character who radiated Incorruptible Pure Pureness or Heroic Willpower may become a sobbing angsty wimp when mildly inconvenienced. Realize too, that this may be intentional and in a long-running series may have the character take a level in badass to provide Character Development and align them better with the original version. Handled poorly, however, it can lead to backlash from fans of the original or confusion from newcomers who don't see what made the character famous at all.
Something similar often appears in parodies, either exaggerating a character's existing weaknesses or just as a cheap way of making them look ridiculous.
Contrast Adaptational Badass and Adaptational Skill. Compare Badass Decay, Chickification, and Took a Level in Dumbass, for when the character becomes a wimp within the original work. Often happens in the case of a character who isn't fully understood by the new writers. Not to be confused with Ukefication, which is a fanfiction specific variant of this often occurring in Hurt/Comfort Fic, most often in Slash Fics (and usually affecting more on an emotional level). Particularly awful cases of this have been known to cause an Audience-Coloring Adaptation. Unrelated to Pacified Adaptation.
As always, remember that Tropes Are Tools. This trope can be (and often is) invoked on purpose in order to tone down an Invincible Hero or Invincible Villain, thereby adding more suspense and drama to the work. Resist Complaining About Shows You Don't Like or screaming that something is Ruined FOREVER.
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- Jeff the Killer (Pastra): Unlike the original Jeff, who demonstrated superhuman levels of strength and skill in murder, Jeff here is portrayed as a more mundane Serial Killer who fails as often as he succeeds. He's notably much easier to fend off when victims put up a fight, which eventually leads to Jeff killing people when they're more vulnerable. Usually, he attacks them while they're asleep, but at least one victim, Jay Douglas, was killed while heavily under the influence of alcohol.
Comic Books
- Absolute Universe:
- Absolute Batman:
- The comic deconstructs this trope with regards to the titular character. Despite arguably being the physically strongest iteration of Batman to date, as well as a capable crimefighter even without his usual wealth, this version of Bruce is ultimately an underdog in this story, thanks in part to his previously mentioned lack of funds and him being outclassed significantly by the various villains he faces. The result is that he has a tendency to lose a lot before he finally wins.
- A very downplayed case occurs with Scarecrow. This universe's version of Crane's fear gas is significantly less potent than its mainline counterpart, causing people to simply experience a similar emotional state to fear, rather than causing them to outright hallucinate their worst fears. With that said, this version of Crane makes up for this by virtue of being significantly more skilled when it comes to strategy and planning compared to his usual depiction.
- The Court of Owls are traditionally an Ancient Conspiracy composed of Gotham's elite who have been secretly running Gotham for centuries, giving them near bottomless recourses and an abundance of political power and manpower. In this universe, the Court is a much smaller militia group that by the present events of the comic, have become a shadow of their former self.
- Absolute Wonder Woman:
- While mainline Queen Clea was an unambiguous Evil Overlord who had already managed to conquer most of Atlantis' nations by the time of her introduction, this version of Clea is merely the leader of a tribe of Fish-Men in a labyrinth, and her title of queen is likely just a self-aggrandazing title she gave to herself.
- The Priscilla Rich version of Cheetah gets a case of this. Even though mainline Priscilla didn't have any powers during her time as Cheetah, she was still portrayed as a dangerous villain capable of challenging Wonder Woman. This universe's Priscilla, despite having actual powers, ends up essentially as a Butt-Monkey who never even gets the chance to directly fight Diana, getting knocked out twice, first by Pegasus, then by Giganta, then killed one issue after her introduction by Zatara.
- Absolute Superman:
- While this universe's version of Steel has a magnetic hammer, rocket boots, and a Powered Armor that all makes him capable of keeping up with Superman and King Shazam, said technology are merely Homemade Inventions, and nowhere near the advanced, Iron Man-esque arsenal mainline Steel is equipped with.
- In the main universe, Brainiac is only second to Lex Luthor for the role of Superman's Arch-Enemy, and generally takes on the role of the Big Bad of whatever story he's involved in. On top of this, Brainiac, while preferring to have his probes and drones fight in his place, is still strong enough to take on Superman if he does need to fight himself. This version of Brainiac, meanwhile, is only The Dragon to Ra's al Ghul, and is all but stated to be fairly physically weak and wouldn't stand a chance against Superman in a physical confrontation.
- When he appears in this comic, it's made clear that this universe's Lex Luthor, on top of lacking his usual wealth, is not the highly ambitious man that his main universe self is. Brainiac lampshades this, considering this version of Lex to be a hollow shell of his usual self who needs "motivation" to become more like how he normally is.
- Absolute Flash:
- In the main universe, Gorilla Grodd manages to be a threat through not just his powerful Psychic Powers, but also through the incredible strength, stamina, and durability he has as an adult gorilla. As his counterpart in this universe, Grodd, is a monkey rather than a gorilla, he lacks the physical capabilities of his mainline self and is instead entirely reliant on his telepathic abilities. Also of note, due to the Speed Force not existing in this universe, Grodd lacks the connection to it that his mainline self has.
- In the main universe, Reverse-Flash manages to be a threat through not just for his Super-Speed abilities, but also is incredibly intelligence and cunning. This universe's Eobard, meanwhile, has undergone severe Sanity Slippage due to the decade he spent trapped in the Still Point, resulting in him devolving into a Dumb Muscle who's fully capable of being defeated by Rudy West and the Rogues.
- In the main universe, Ralph Dibny is the superhero Elongated Man, a metahuman with powerful elasticity abilities. In this universe, he's just a normal human.
- In his main incarnations, Jay Garrick is the original Flash, having the Super-Speed powers the character is famous for. In this universe, he's just a normal human.
- Absolute Green Lantern:
- After gaining powers, mainline Hector Hammond has become one of the most powerful psychics in the universe. This version of Hammond, meanwhile, is still just an ordinary human. While he does gain Psychic Powers in issue #11, said powers come through use of technology rather than being an inherent ability of his.
- In the main universe, Carol Ferris is the superhero Star Sapphire, having all the powers granted to her by an emotional spectrum Ring of Power. In this universe, she's just a normal human.
- Starting from Peter Milligan's run of the character, Shade, the Changing Man has been depicted as a Reality Warper through use of his M-Vest. This universe's version of the character, meanwhile, harkens back more to the capabilities of the original version of Shade from the Steve Ditko comics, where the M-Vest only changes the wearer's appearance based on what their opponent fears and has the Logical Weakness of being ineffective against someone who isn't afraid.
- Mainline Goldface uses a special serum to give himself Super-Strength and Nigh-Invulnerability. This universe's Goldface, thanks to being a Composite Character with the character Nemesis, is a Badass Normal Professional Killer and Master of Disguise.
- In the main universe, William Hand is the supervillain Black Hand, who, on top of having access to an energy absorbing and redirecting rod, is also a significant member of the Black Lantern Corps. In this universe, he's just a normal human, with the only power he has being the influential power of being the sheriff of Evergreen.
- In his main incarnations, Alan Scott is the original Green Lantern, having access to a magical power ring that grants him various abilities. In this universe, he's just a normal human.
- In the main universe, Steve Dayton is the superhero Mento, a metahuman with an extensive list of Psychic Powers. In this universe, he's just a normal human.
- Absolute Green Arrow:
- As shown in his appearance in Absolute Evil, Oliver Queen isn't as much of a Master Archer as he usually is, with a scene of him training showing him unable to consistently hit a perfect bullseye. And then Hawkman quickly and effortlessly kills him.
- Connor Hawke is traditionally one of the best martial artists in the DC Universe, while his depiction here doesn't appear to have any martial arts skill, relies on a gun, and ends up being effortlessly killed by Green Arrow.
- Absolute Batman:
- Catwoman: In his first appearance as an enemy of The New Guardians, fan-favorite cocaine-powered supervillain Snowflame was able to take on a whole team of superhumans with ease. For his return in this comic, he retains all of his scenery-chewing charisma, but in terms of power, he's... well, an enemy of Catwoman. He seems to be mildly superhuman, but nowhere near the level of power he displayed in his original appearance. He also seems to lose the "psychokinetic flames" that his earlier incarnation was capable of wielding, with his main power, aside from his enhanced physical characteristics, simply being an aura that induces a state similar to a drug overdose on anyone nearby.
- Convergence: Those unfamiliar with her stint as Batgirl would be forgiven for thinking Cassandra Cain was just a pretty standard Badass Normal instead of someone more skilled than Batman in physical combat. Steph describes her as such, but it's still a case of Show, Don't Tell.
- Fantastic Four: Life Story: Doctor Doom never displays any of his arcane abilities, relying on solely on his Powered Armor.
- The Golden Age: Most of the heroes seem far less powerful than they did in the main timeline comics (Johnny Quick is never showing flying or vibrating through solid matter, Captain Comet never uses telekinesis, clairvoyance, psionic energy blasts, or an energy shield, Miss America seems incapable of teleportation or the ability to alter or animate objects, Tex Thompson never uses a magic carpet, etc.). However, since this series was originally meant to be canon, whether they still have those abilities may fall under Schrödinger's Canon (and in the case of Captain Comet, not showing his full power set can be justified by the fact that the story takes place when he's a novice superhero and it's probable that he hasn't yet mastered his powers to their fullest extent).
- Green Lantern: Earth One: Subverted. It initially seems like the Green Lantern rings are much weaker in this continuity (one Lantern can barely take down a single Manhunter), until it’s discovered that the Manhunters have actually sealed off the main power battery on Oa, meaning the rings are only barely charged by ambient green energy traces. When Hal manages to pierce the shielding around it, the Green Lanterns are powered up again and wipe the floor with the Manhunters.
- Marvel Action Spider-Man: In Vol. 3, Cindy Moon is an Ordinary High-School Student and one of Peter Parker's classmates rather than the web-slinger superhero Silk, although she provides mild support for Spider-Man alongside Randy Robertson. With the cancellation of the entire Marvel Action imprint in 2021, we'll never know if Cindy would still remain without any powers.
- The Punisher Kills the Marvel Universe: In this Alternate Universe, many of The Punisher's victims are killed in ways that their mainstream canon versions should be able to survive.
- The Punisher's first victim, Spider-Man, is stunned with electricity, then shot dead, with his Spider-Sense only warning him when it's already too late. Granted, Peter was distracted since he was fighting Venom at the same time, but he's been shown to easily dodge bullets or even lightning bolts, so evading these tasers should have been no problem for him.
- The Punisher kills The Incredible Hulk by waiting for him to turn back into Bruce Banner and then shooting him. In canon, Bruce has been known to reflexively transform into the Hulk whenever his life is in danger... even from himself.
- Wolverine is killed by being reduced to a skeleton after getting electrocuted. In canon, his Healing Factor has restored his body after taking that much damage (and in some cases even almost to From a Single Cell levels).
- Among the X-Men characters the Punisher killed by luring them to the moon and nuking them are Apocalypse and Juggernaut, both of whom should be able to survive even a direct nuclear blast. The former is immortal, while the latter is incapable of being physically damaged (the shockwaves of a nuke might knock him out at most but his organs would still be intact)
- Sonic the Hedgehog:
- Tails in Sonic the Comic is portrayed more as a Kid Hero than in other contemporary adaptations, but he's still not as much of one as Game Tails.
- Metal Sonic experienced this in the Archie Comics. For a long time, Metal Sonic was just one of many Mook bots sent to annoy Sonic, with the longest-lasting version being Metal Sonic v3.3, who survived two dimensional jumps and battled Shadow, Blaze, and Marine to a standstill. However, in other appearances, he struggled to last an issue. This change occurred during the Soft Reboot, possibly due to SEGA directly instructing the writers to cut it out.
- Shadow when facing Starline in Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW). He pursued the villain while the doctor skulked around. In the games, Shadow is relatively matched with Sonic and has faced numerous enemies capable of annihilating the planet. Here, the platypus easily tosses him off a cliff.
- Sonic fighting Surge after she is empowered by the Wisps. The Blue Blur is always portrayed as The Ace and capable of surviving falls through the atmosphere, but apparently, a little bit of electricity can hurt him pretty badly.
- In the Edge of Spider-Verse (2023) story "Curse of the Spider-Killer", set in a noiry horror universe, Chameleon, Scorpion and Lizard just appear to be regular criminals; Chameleon is quite good at disguising himself, Conners's experiments have given him a skin condition but not even regrown his arm, and Gargan has a shotgun. Strangely, even more of a wimp is the eponymous Spider-Killer, who might be an arachnid monstrosity who can invade these villains' dreams, but who they can shoot dead as soon as he makes a physical appearance.
- Spidey Super Stories featured Thanos at one point, who traveled around in a helicopter and was arrested by the police after dropping the Cosmic Cube.
- The Star Wars What If? miniseries tones down several aspects from Star Wars like the Jedi and the Sith not having any powers since the Force functions more like a standard religion rather than a source of power for its believers. They are still very skilled fighters with lightsabers nonetheless.
- Suicide Squad (2021): The War For Earth-3 arc saw the Crime Syndicate note who were perfectly capable in their own comic taken down by Amanda Waller and C-list heroes/villains in their own turf. The worst member hit by this is Owlman, who goes from a tactically-dangerous cutthroat in the vein of his good counterpart Batman to a tryhard with no back-up plans and an easily-demolished attack jet who (after being effortlessly incapacitated with a spine-snap and later captured) reveals he doesn't even know how to use a computer.
- Supergirl:
- When Pre-Crisis Supergirl battled Luthor for the first time in The Death of Luthor, she easily beat his tricks and humiliated him before turning him over to the cops. When her vastly less powerful and more poorly trained Post-Crisis incarnation engages Luthor for the first time in Girl Power, she is easily beaten by his tricks, humiliated and nearly killed off.
- In Supergirl Special, Kara almost gets killed by a falling chunk of building. In any other comic, she would have not gotten one single scratch even if the whole building had collapsed onto her head. Also, a flashback shows her staying in her rocket until Superman showed up to get her out of there, ignoring that Kara was resourceful and bold enough to leave her pod on her own without waiting to be rescued in the original "The Supergirl From Krypton (1959)".
- Superman;
- Downplayed in Superman Smashes the Klan; as the book is set in the Golden Age, Superman's power set is around that of him at that time (powerful leaps, a measure of invulnerability, super strength, no extra powers). In the final book, when young Roberta convinces Superman to stop holding back, he starts displaying all of his modern day powers.
- Also applies in Superman: Kal, which features Kal-El's rocket landing on Earth in Medieval England. Kal is still physically powerful, such as being immune to basically all weapons used against him, and demonstrates Heat Vision at least twice, but he never demonstrates the full scale of Superman’s usual powers, such as requiring some effort to tear away a portcullis or only being shown leaping great distances rather than outright flying.
- Teen Titans: Earth One: This continuity's interpretations of Rita Farr, Steve Dayton, Larry Trainor, Cliff Steele and Joshua Clay are normal human beings who lack the powers they have as members of the Doom Patrol.
- Transformers:
- The Transformers (Marvel): Megatron of all people gets this. While no one could accuse the cartoon version of being particularly competent, he at least was able to stay in charge of the Decepticons throughout the majority of the series and killed Optimus Prime in the movie. This version, by contrast, gets overthrown by Shockwave in the 6th issue. Though he regains power, Optimus Prime's death (which he had no role in) drives him insane, causing him to seemingly kill himself. While he does return, he ends up being fused with Ratchet after the latter sacrifices himself and spends the end of the series comatose until the end when Ratchet crashes the ship they're on, seemingly killing them. Though the UK comic would give Megatron some more impressive feats, it would later be revealed that this was a doppelganger. This would change in the G2 comic, where Megatron would receive upgrades from Cobra and would kill several Autobots, reclaim leadership of the Decepticons from Bludgeon, and defeat Optimus Prime and steal the Matrix. The Transformers: Regeneration One would also have Megatron reestablish his villain credentials by razing the Earth and killing Springer, though he would function as that story's Starter Villain.
- The Transformers: Combiner Wars: Menasor in the original cartoon is one of the strongest combiners, and easily one of the most effective Decepticons. As he defeats Bruticus and in his debut and he overpowered Superion, a rarity for a show where the Decepticons almost always lose badly. In the comics, Menasor is one of the weakest combiners. His debut fight with Superion is a Curb-Stomp Battle with Superion easily trouncing him and when the other Combiners show up, Menasor is defeated easily and subdued by a trio of regular-sized bots. Coincidently Menasor's toy from the line that the comic is supposed to promote, is considered one of the most poorly designed.
- The Transformers: Windblade: Bruticus gets similarly hard hit, but it's more justified in this case because one of his components was brain dead and of the other four, only Onslaught and Brawn really are cooperating. Unable to effectively coordinate, Bruticus is easily beaten by Ironhide (who also had the most experience fighting Combiners of anyone on the planet).
- This applies to a lot of characters who are considered obscure or C-list, but their scant appearances beforehand wrote them as far more skilled. Boss of the Turbomasters is The Ace according to his bio, but he's usually a Red Shirt the few times he appears. Japanese leader characters like Metalhawk, Star Saber, and Dai Atlas lose their fantastical Super Robot skills in favor of being, at most, somewhat stronger than the average Transformer. And Emirate Xaaron was made a glorified extra who is only occasionally implied to hold anything like the high position he did in the original comics.
- In an oddball case of this, Fortress Maximus and Scorponok's toys and animated appearances depict them as truly gigantic sorts, with their altmodes being armored bases and their robot modes towering far over even Combining Mecha. In the comics, they're consistently depicted as big, but not much bigger than most characters, usually being about twice average height. This owes to the fact that the comic tends to play up the "leader" side of their characters, and it would be hard to have them giving orders if they couldn't fit in a building. The cartoons and toys resolved this by having them be Headmasters, meaning the part giving the orders was a Mini-Mecha and the giant robot was a mindless Meta Mecha used for combat — the comics used different rules for Headmasters and therefore couldn't do this.
- Ultimate Marvel has quite a lot of this compared to the 616 Universe which its based upon. Although it’s fair the 616 has simply have more history, so the Ultimate Marvel characters naturally come off as weaker.
- Carol Danvers. As did the original Carol Danvers, she starts as a Colonel Badass without powers. But unlike the original one, she stays that way for the duration of the universe, and never becomes Ms. Marvel or Captain Marvel.
- The Incredible Hulk is the strongest there is, literally. In one comic he literally punched a timestorm apart. The Ultimates Hulk while still very strong, is nowhere near his 616’s self level and is outright beaten by Thor (who breaks his jaw, ribs and punctures his lung) — unlike the 616 continuity where Hulk has beaten the Thunderer more times than Thor has defeated him.
- Janet Van Dyne aka The Wasp is one the greatest super heroines the 616 universe has known, she’s fought countless alien and otherworldly threats and is pretty much the Iron Lady of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes having led multiple Avengers teams. The Ultimates version of Janet does not evolve past “plucky Action Girl” status and infamously gets cannibalised by the Blob. She is brought back later though.
- Wendell Vaughn. This version of Wendell never becomes Quasar, and remains a hapless S.H.I.E.L.D. guy.
- Doctor Doom is one of the most powerful and victorious big bads Marvel has ever known (only really rivalled by Thanos). His Ultimate Fantastic Four counterpart, Victor Van Damme is nowhere as triumphant being a Smug Snake who gets killed by the Thing and even after coming back to life he gets captured by the Future Foundation and later is unceremoniously beaten by Miles and Peter’s Opposite Gender Clone Jessica Drew.
- The 616 incarnation of Kraven the Hunter is one of the strongest and most dangerous humans alive and an unrivalled hunter; Kraven is not only able to match Spider-Man in combat but has even proven capable of killing Spidey. Conversely in Ultimate Spider-Man (2000) Kraven is a pathetic Fake Ultimate Hero whom Peter knocks out cold with a single punch.
- Storm in the original 616 comics completely lives up to her title of “goddess”, being a Omega-Level mutant who’s Weather Manipulation can effect the entire planet, work in space and rival Thor’s own powers at times. Ultimate Ororo while not a complete pushover, much like the Fox film version is still much less impressive in comparison and can be injured by her own lightning.
- Cain Marko aka Juggernaut is the unstoppable avatar of Cyttorak who lives to make everyone his bitch on Earth 616. In Ultimate Marvel he’s just a strong mutant. True he does get Cyttorak‘s power later on but he also gets killed by a freaking poison dart, something that would just bounce off OG Juggernaut.
- Doctor Strange in the 616 universe is a OP Showy Invincible Hero Sorcerer Supreme. He’s casually gone up against the numerous outerversal gods and inter-dimensional beings and managed to defeat the likes of Dormammu and Loki. The Ultimate Universe Doctor Strange is much less impressive and during the shock for shock’s sakes in Ultimatum Dormammu constricts Strange’s body with his own sash until his head explodes like a tomato. Somewhat justified as this version of Strange is Stephen Strange Jr. with the original, his father having an Uncertain Doom.
- Kl'rt aka the Super-Skrull. The original 616 version of the character was granted the powers of all four members of the Fantastic Four. The Ultimate Version has no such powers, instead relying on an "anti-assassination" suit which allows him to duplicate the powers of any superhuman within a thousand mile radius. He is beaten by a human Ben Grimm who had no powers for the suit to duplicate.
- Ultimate Thanos is nowhere as epic or successful as his 616 self. Rather than being a Hero Killer who’s threatened the entire Marvel multiverse (and killed the Celestials themselves in alternate universes), he’s just a pretty powerful cosmic nuisance to the Fantastic Four and Avengers here. He gets decidedly outwitted by Ultimate Mr. Fantastic twice and Killed Off for Real by Reed in his second appearance.
- Downplayed but the Venom Symbiote rather than being an extremely powerful alien being (later retconned to be created by a God of Evil) is a Freak Lab Accident bio-monster that lived in a jar. It does become way more powerful later, but only after the Maker combines it with 616 Symbiote samples.
- Adamantium gets this in Ultimate X-Men (2001). The 616 version Adamantium truly lives up to its reputation being completely indestructible (even Thor has trouble denting it). The Ultimate version of Adamantium on the other hand is only slightly more durable than titanium and the likes of Hulk and Colossus can snap it (along with Wolverine) pretty easily.
- The Ultimates: James Braddock Junior. When your counterpart's powers include "multiversal reality warping", anything else is going to be a step down.
- The Defenders. Initially, they are neither good or evil, just a bunch of fans with delusions of grandeur. They made a deal with Loki and get super powers, and attack the Ultimates with them (except for Valkyrie, who became Thor's lover and an Ultimate herself).
- Emma Frost does not have telepathy, with only the power to turn into diamond.
- Mystique is the craven Woman Scorned lackey of Magneto and later Quicksilver’s female lackey here. Rather than being a Brotherhood of Evil Mutants leader and Big Bad in her own right, as she is in the 616 continuity.
- This Deathstrike might be a "skilled motorcycle rider and thief" but she lacks any of 616 Deathstrike's martial arts training. Unsurprisingly, she's not nearly as formidable a fighter.
- Ultimate Universe (2023):
- Ultimate Spider-Man (2024):
- Spider-Man himself is a victim of this when one compares him to the early years of his counterparts. In the main universe, Peter was able to take down plenty of foes in his early years thanks to a combination of his skill with his abilities and using ingenuity to outsmart his foes. This universe's Peter has a much steeper learning curve by comparison, being defeated numerous times throughout the early issues and only defeating Bullseye with assistance from Green Goblin. This is somewhat justified, as not only is this version of Peter inexperienced, but he also lacks the scientific expertise of his counterparts, due to his life going in a very different direction. And with all that said, he does end up Taking a Level in Badass as the story progresses, becoming a lot more competent as a hero over time. In Ultimate Endgame, this ends up leading to a tragic and horrific logical conclusion when his lack of experience that normally would make him essential to world ending events like the Maker's return results in him ending up completely out of his depth and ultimately killed (he gets better, though).
- This universe's version of the Green Goblin isn't enhanced with the Goblin Serum like his traditional counterparts, instead relying entirely on his Powered Armor, glider, and gadgets.
- While this universe's Kraven the Hunter is just as skilled of a tracker and hunter as his main universe self, he isn't a superhuman, meaning that when Peter finally forces him into a direct confrontation, he goes down fairly easily.
- Norman Osborn never became the Green Goblin in this universe (that role instead being taken by his son Harry), meaning that he lacks any of the powers he has in other universes.
- A justified case occurs in regards to Matt Murdock. Because the Maker prevented him from ever getting his powers, this version of Matt is just a regular blind man.
- Ultimate X-Men (2024) depicts Earth-6160's Mister Sinister as just a regular guy with no powers who lives in fear of Sunfire & Viper telling him You Have Failed Me. He does manage to steal powers late in the series by obsessively drinking mutant blood, but it's not enough to save him from getting killed shortly afterwards.
- The Ultimates (2024):
- The Ultimates in general are this when compared to their original Ultimate Universe counterparts. The original Ultimates, while highly dysfunctional, were still all collectively skilled enough that they were able to defeat the Hulk and thwart an alien invasion by the end of their first series. This version of the team, meanwhile, has a much more difficult time when it comes to achieving their goals, only making mild strides in their fight against the Maker, and when they fight their own version of the Hulk for the first time, they end up as the victims of a horrific Curb-Stomp Battle.
- Doom, this universe's version of Doctor Doom, isn't Victor von Doom, but rather a version of Reed Richards who never became Mr. Fantastic thanks to interference from the Maker. As a result, he lacks both the magic powers of traditional versions of Doctor Doom, as well as the superhuman elasticity of traditional versions of Mr. Fantastic, instead relying solely on technology. In Ultimate Endgame, this gets subverted as it's revealed that he secretly managed to give himself the powers of the entire Fantastic Four at once and briefly fought the Maker head-on.
- Due to this universe's Giant-Man lacking the Super-Intelligence of the 616 or 1610 versions of Hank due to suffering from brain damage, he is a far less impressive fighter and has a tendency to get targeted due to his large size.
- The mainline America Chavez is a borderline Invincible Hero and usually one of heaviest hitters of whatever team she is on. While this version of America is undoubtedly still very powerful and possesses most of the same abilities of her mainline self, years of captivity and having her powers drained has resulted in her ending up far weaker than usual, to the point of being overpowered when the Ultimates fight against Hulk and the Immortal Weapons.
- Whereas 616 Hawkeye's Improbable Aiming Skills are the result of natural ability and training, this universe's Hawkeye relies heavily on the technology in their suit and bow to make their shots, openly admitting that they aren't that good of an archer without the tech.
- Thanks to the Maker's interference, Danny Rand never learned martial arts or became Iron Fist in this universe, remaining a completely normal human.
- Doctor Midas from the main universe has all of the powers of the Fantastic Four, similar to that of the Super-Skrull. Midas, his counterpart from this universe, doesn't have these powers, instead relying on gold-plated Powered Armor.
- The Earth-616 version of Justine Hammer has numerous abilities granted to her by her Crimson Cloak, such as flight, teleportation, and the ability to use the cloak itself as a weapon. This universe's Justine lacks the cloak, and so is simply a normal human.
- Jennifer Walters never became She-Hulk in this universe, instead simply being a normal human.
- Ultimate Wolverine (2025):
- On Earth-616, Sabretooth is able to make up for his lack of adamantium compared to Wolverine by simply being naturally stronger and faster than him. This universe's version of Victor doesn't seem to have that advantage.
- The mainline depiction of Mikhail Rasputin is an incredibly powerful Reality Warper, while his depiction here doesn't seem to have any powers at all.
- Ultimate Spider-Man: Incursion features this universe's version of the Spot. While the 1610 Spot only appeared a single time, he proved to be a serious threat that actually managed to put Spider-Man on the ropes, and even the 616 Spot, for as much of an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain as he can be, can still sometimes be a threat. The 6160 Spot, meanwhile, goes down with barely a fight.
- Ultimate Spider-Man (2024):
- Wonder Woman:
- Wonder Woman (1942): Originally, on what would be termed Earth-Two, Etta Candy was an incredible fighter who took no nonsense while having a sense of humor and the leader of a semi-secret paramilitary group that tracked down spies and fought super-powered foes on behalf of the US government. When the book moved over to Earth-One that version of Etta was a gossipy secretary who couldn't fight her way out of a paper bag and was the brunt of jokes rather than making them.
- Blue Snowman was not Wonder Woman's most threatening villain, but she did command an army of robots, successfully lock down entire times with her artificial blue snow storms, successfully find and bring down the invisible robot plane in mid flight, played a part in subduing several Amazons and was the only villain capable of subverted the Venus girdle Mind Control devices. She was a competent villain, a crucial part of Villainy Inc, and DC's first ice themed villain. Post Crisis Blue Snowman is a joke who gets killed in a few panels by a newer villain. Post Flashpoint reverses this somewhat, as Blue Snowman is still no match for Wonder Woman, lacks a robot army, and becomes increasingly comedic with each appearance, she's shown to be nigh unstoppable to the standard law enforcement officers of the DCU.
- Silver Age Nubia was Diana equal in physical ability and skill, with a cursed ring from War God Mars that actually gave her an edge over Diana until the Artifact of Doom was removed. Post Crisis, Nubia was no longer Diana's equal in ability, but had new Taken for Granite, teleportation powers Diana did not. Rebirth Nubia is just a baseline amazon. She is above most others in combat skill but has nothing on Diana, who proves herself The Ace among amazons in all conceivable competition since childhood and then gets a massive increase to her powers as an adult. DC Future State zigs by giving Nubia a crown from Oshun that makes her Diana's physical equal again, while DC Infinite Frontier zags by giving Nubia a staff indirectly empowered by three goddesses that can do things Diana cannot with her own tools.
- While Diana's aunt Melanippe is usually one of the weaker physical Amazons even in the main continuity she's no pushover and is willing to sacrifice herself to save her loved ones. In The Legend of Wonder Woman she allows herself to be bullied into aiding the villains and doesn't even put up a token resistance, just asking that her sister be spared but doing nothing but looking sad when she's told her sister will be killed if she gets in the way.
- Silver Age/Bronze Age Doctor Cyber was competent gangster with world conquering ambitions. Whenever she set about world conquest Cyber was always stopped by Diana, though she got close a few times, always got away when she was just committing petty theft, got Diana to give up without a fight by capturing and torturing Diana's sister Donna Troy and defeated a large majority of a Teen Titans team trying to save Donna before Diana saved them. Post Crisis Doctor Cyber is basically a villain team filler and minor nuisance to Diana's sidekicks Donna Troy and Cassie Sandsmark. Post Flashpoint Doctor Cyber is a Decomposite Character, one who is literally harmless, only able to insult Wonder Woman, the other a loser criminal who Wonder Woman doesn't even notice in her debut story arc.
- Pre Crisis Earth Two Osira was a Justice Society level threat who temporarily but successfully took over the world after seeking out and defeating The Justice Society, Wonder Woman included. Diana is only able to fight Osira to a draw after taking the gravity rod from an Osira controlled Starman and getting an assist from the fifth dimensional djinn that serves Johnny Thunder, the Thunderbolt only other JSA "member" Osira couldn't control. Even then this is just to slow Osira down enough to talk her out of her schemes, she's never outright defeated. Post Crisis Osira, on the other hand, is just a nuisance to side kicks Donna Troy and Cassie Sandsmark, who is really only threatening when on a team that out numbers the heroes rather than beating entire teams of heroes.
- DC Rebirth makes both Devastation and Genocide far less threatening than they had been, Pre Flashpoint. Devastation was roughly physically equal to Wonder Woman, with Human Shifting, Healing Factor and Fake Memory powers that wreaked havoc on Diana's allies and allowed Devastation to torment Diana's sidekick Cassie Sandsmark. Genocide was physically superior to Wonder Woman with curse and Emotion Bomb powers that also wreaked havoc on Diana's allies and affected Diana's side kick Donna Troy long after Genocide's defeat. Rebirth they have to team up with Warmaster, who only avoids qualifying for this trope by virtue of being an entirely different character, and Armageddon II, who is more or less her father's equal, to simply slow down Wonder Woman, don't display their trickier abilities that would have absolutely wrecked Donna, and their team is beaten by largely unremarkable, unprepared amazons, including an "honorary" amazon with no powers whatsoever. This is justified for Genocide however, as Rebirth Cheetah and Ares had no part in her creation.
- Pre Flashpoint Mayfly took on The Flash, Etta Candy and Wonder Woman at the same time and though defeated and captured, managed to put all three of them in the hospital for their efforts. Post Flashpoint Mayfly is beaten by just Wonder Woman and Etta Candy without causing harm to either, and it is highly possible Etta's assist wans't even needed. This is downplayed, however, by the fact Rebirth Wonder Woman is more badass at the point Mayfly shows up.
Film — Animated
- In most other incarnations Barbara Gordon is widely known to be an Action Girl who fights crime for the sake of justice and always looked up to Batman as a hero and even when disabled, remains a competent Mission Control for her senior. But in Batman: The Killing Joke, she comes across as a whiny, Clingy Jealous Girl who fights crime just to impress her own crush in Batman, does very little crime-fighting and the ones she did are because she perceives them as making a move on Batman. Essentially, the writers attempt to give an Adaptation Expansion in order to prevent a Stuffed into the Fridge situation ended up instead making Barbara a Satellite Love Interest for Bruce.
- Batman: Hush does this to Bruce's friend Thomas Elliot as in the comic he is the titular Hush who has been playing Batman like a fiddle faking his own death, manipulating Batman's Rogues Gallery and generally wrecking Batman physically and mentally in spectacular fashion. In the animated retelling, he's just a regular nice guy surgeon and the actual Hush is actually The Riddler.
- Batman Unlimited: Animal Instincts sees the Flash as a less experienced hero compared to the Bat-Family and Green Arrow.
- From the BIONICLE films:
- Takua in BIONICLE: Mask of Light. In the Mata Nui Online Game, Takua flew as Kongu's second during the Gukko Force's attack on a Nui-Rama Hive, led six Matoran in a hopeless defense of Kini-Nui against hordes of Rahi, and braved the depths of the Makuta's lair itself. In the Wall of History animations, Takua aided in the liberation of Le-Koro, stood up to an entire Pahrak swarm, and joined the Toa Nuva in their pursuit of the Bohrok-Kal. In Mask of Light... Takua constantly shies away from his duty and responsibility, panics in the face of danger, and abandons Jaller after getting scared by Makuta. It's not until he stands up to the Rahkshi in Onu-Koro that Takua finally shows off some of his former badass qualities.
- Onua from the same film. In prior media, he was one of the strongest, most capable, intelligent and reliable of the Toa heroes, and Onua saving others became a kind of running joke in the fandom because he was so good at everything. Yet not only does Mask of Light portray him as dumb and reckless, he's the first Toa to suffer a clear defeat with just barely putting up a fight, and his actions lead to so much trouble that others have to rescue him. A complete 180 compared to his original character.
- Sidorak in BIONICLE 3: Web of Shadows. In the books and comics, Sidorak was a fierce warrior king who led his Visorak hordes into battle. In Web of Shadows, Sidorak is a sniveling coward who always needs Roodaka to do things for him, and Roodaka even outright says that he would never dirty his hands with conflict.
- All of the villains, sans Metus who was a weakling to begin with, in BIONICLE: The Legend Reborn:
- Bone Hunters and their Rock Steeds: Short but deadly and merciless desert bandits riding on savage dinosaurs. In the movie, a bunch of weak Mooks who ride on dinosaurs that behave like horses.
- The Skrall: Spartan-esque soldiers who have never been beaten in a one-on-one duel before. In the movie, they run around squawking like animals and fall to a single hit. Elite Skrall are the same but more so — several times tougher than regular Skrall, even weaker and dumber than them in the movie.
- The "Mighty" Tuma: In the stories leading up to the movie, as well as in the novelization, he's a ruthless and savvy overlord who came close to conquering the planet, and was only defeated because his size made him a slow fighter in close-combat. In the movie, he's a bumbling, full-of-himself brute who considers pushing over a much smaller opponent a deed worthy of celebration. He is defeated by the hero battering a wound on his back, which he left entirely unprotected every time he turned his back on him to bask in his own glory. Even the story writer must have been aware of Tuma's laughable movie depiction, which is why he inserted an extra chapter into the film's novelization to flesh him out as a more respectable villain.
- In Disney Fairies, nearly everyone is this, compared to the books. Tinker Bell no longer carries her dagger with her everywhere, and her personality became a lot brighter and more cheerful compared to her well-meaning but somewhat jealous and bitter persona in the novels. Most notable, though, is Queen Clarion; in the books, she ruled singlehandedly, and was a main character who went on quests and once fought a dragon using an earring as a shield. In the movies, she's more motherly, was Demoted to Extra, and gained a Canon Foreigner love interest.
- Hercules (1997): Hercules' adoptive father Amphitryon is depicted as an elderly farmer to make him an analogue to Jonathan Kent (in keeping with Hercules himself being depicted as a Superman Substitute). Contrast with the Amphitryon of myth, who was a skilled warrior that trained and fought alongside his demigod stepson.
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Disney): In the original book, Clopin was a roguish Anti-Hero who takes part in the battle to save Esmeralda and carves through horses and soldiers with a weaponized scythe, and he dies surrounded by hacked bodies and severed limbs after being brought low by a hail of musket fire - firearms at the time being special weapons reserved only for the French army. In the Disney film, he's a wisecracking thief with some impressive acrobatic skills but he's a far cry from the powerhouse book version of himself, and he never takes up a scythe and fights anyone.
- The Jungle Book:
- In The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling, Kaa the python one of the oldest, wisest, and most feared animals in the jungle. His wisdom and hypnotic dance make him one of Mowgli's most powerful allies, and even Bagheera and Baloo are wary about going to him for help. In the animated Disney adaptation, Kaa, while still dangerous, is a cowardly and unsuccessful villain who acted as Trope Namer for Smug Snake. He becomes even more of an Adaptational Wimp in the sequel, in which he is beaten with a stick by Mowgli's little stepbrother.
- Akela and the wolves also get this, as in the opening of the film they give Mowgli to Bagheera because they feel that they cannot protect him from Shere Khan. In the book, Shere Khan himself comes to demand the child, and the pack stands up to him. Akela remains an important ally to Mowgli until the wolf's death.
- Mowgli himself, who in the original story survived the jungle's and the man-village's dangers by being too badass for either of them to be able to handle, was reduced to just a defiant child who only is able to ward off Shere Khan when the vultures tell him about his fear of fire.
- Even Bagheera is noticeably less formidable in the movie. In the book, he's one of the jungle's most feared and respected inhabitants — not so much in the movie, where he's more of a Comically Serious Butt-Monkey. In the sequel, he's become a full-fledged chew toy whose sole role is to get beat up a lot.
- In the book, Hathi is a formidable fighter, who hates humans after injuring him and has razed human villages, and whom everyone minds their pleases and thank yous around. In the film, he is a bumbling, semi-senile old fart.
- Played for Laughs in The LEGO Movie with Green Lantern: An absolute badass in nearly all of his works (emphasis on "nearly"), but is just a whiny clingy nerd with a one-sided "friendship" with Superman.
- Shrek had the ability to breathe fire, swallow lightning, and shoot Eye Beams in the original book. While a formidable hand-to-hand combatant, he lacks the aforementioned powers in the films.
- Deathstroke from Son of Batman goes from a well-known villain of the DC Universe to the punching bag of Damian Wayne. In the movie, Deathstroke is considered a Leader Wannabe who loses his eye in a fight to a child, gets zero respect from everyone, and is defeated by the hands of said child he was trying to best. He returns in Teen Titans: The Judas Contract as the Psycho for Hire of the comics, capable of some of the same feats he did in its source material, but he still has to rely on Terra for help when capturing Damian. On the other hand, it takes the combined efforts of both Damian and Nightwing to defeat him here.
- Space Jam: The typical depiction of Bugs Bunny is widely considered to be the 20th century's answer to the classic trickster god archetype, able to take down any opponent through his sheer charm and cleverness. As classic cartoon director Chuck Jones bitterly noted about the film, if faced by opponents such as the dim-witted alien invaders the Nerdlucks in this film, a more classic portrayal of Bugs would have broken their spirit in the span of seven minutes, but that wouldn't carry a feature film. As such, Bugs is cowed into submission by the Nerdlucks' energy weapons and captured by them in their first scene together. He puts on a display of his usual guile shortly thereafter, when he effortlessly slips out of the ropes he's tied in, convinces the Nerdlucks that the proper procedure for kidnapping cartoon characters involves beating them at a game, and chooses basketball as the challenge under the assumption that the small and stubby Nerdlucks couldn't possibly beat the Looney Tunes in such a match. The rest of the film therefore hinges on Bugs's basketball skills rather than his usual trickery, and when the Nerdlucks turn out to have the ability to steal the powers of several top-ranked NBA players and transform themselves into monstrous all-stars, Bugs is forced to seek out Michael Jordan as a player-coach to have any hope of winning, when the classic Bugs would never see the need to ask anybody for help.
- In Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse Scorpion, Tombstone and the Green Goblin despite being very badass in the comics, are reduced to cannon fodder for Kingpin. Even Aunt May can beat up Tombstone.
- Downplayed by the Spot in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. His powers are as effective as ever, but in this film, they're finite. He has a limited number of spots to open portals with and has to absorb dark matter to replenish them.
- In Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay, this is the case for both Amanda Waller and Reverse Flash, aka Professor Zoom, though it's justified here. Regarding the former, she's known having some kind of terminal disease, most likely cancer, and is dying significantly younger here given that the card she wanted becomes used up. Regarding the latter, Deadshot points out he'd usually be able to kill them right there and then, but it's then revealed that the Zoom here is the same one from Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox, who was shot in the head by Thomas Wayne's Batman, and is literally moments away from death's row.
- In The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Mario himself is given this treatment. Unlike in the games, he hates mushrooms, and upon arriving at the Mushroom Kingdom for the very first time after he and Luigi are accidentally separated in the pipes leading to Luigi emerging from the wrong end and being kidnapped by Bowser, he has a hard time adjusting to the Toads' culture and even fails miserably during Peach's obstacle course during the Training Montage. Mario is also nearly beaten up in a fight against Donkey Kong, or at least until he obtains the Cat Suit powerup, and during the final battle against Bowser in Brooklyn, Bowser easily overwhelms Mario and his friends, or at least until Luigi, now rescued from Bowser's clutches, intervenes, and helps Mario defeat Bowser using the Super Star Bowser obtained since the beginning of the movie. On the other hand, Luigi, despite his cowardly nature and spending most of the movie as a Distressed Dude who gets kidnapped and imprisoned by Bowser, along with countless Penguins, Kongs, and Lumalee so that Bowser can kill them all in front of everyone during his wedding to Peach, as soon as Mario finally frees him and saves him from being burned alive in Bowser's lava pool, is proven to be far more competent than Mario when faced against the same enemy, and thus is the only way Mario can successfully defeat Bowser once and for all.
- In Superman: Doomsday, Mercy Graves is presented as Lex Luthor's personal assistant and not his bodyguard, hence not even having the combat skills of her DC Animated Universe counterpart.
- For the Golden Films Animated Adaptation of The Tale of Peter Rabbit (Which is an unofficial sequel) while Mopsy, Flopsy, and Cottontail aren't badass or violent. In the film "Peter Rabbit" Peter's sisters act more like goof balls and would sometimes be air-headed while all three of them are wiser and smarter (at least compared to Peter Rabbit) in the books.
- Turtles Forever: The 1987 Ninja Turtles from their series were jokey due to being Lighter and Softer to market them for kids, but were still competent fighters and knew when to take a situation seriously. The movie, however, displays them as being extremely childish even in the face of the entire multi-verse threat, joking every few minutes, can barely fight (although, what little fighting they do, they are portrayed as competent martial artists, as seen during their fights against the 1987 Foot robots, Bebop and Rocksteady in the beginning and especially against the Purple Dragons in the climax), and heck, one point, acting like crybabies when they barely avoid an attack by a powered up 2003 Shredder. Likewise '87 Shredder is showcased to be utterly incompetent; while the original show did turn down his threat level and gave him comedic defeats, he was still a leader and a mastermind.
- Due to the elseworld nature of Justice League: Gods and Monsters, the majority of the scientists murdered through are in the comics and other adaptations are major superheroes (Cyborg, both the Ray Palmer and Ryan Choi Atoms, the Kimiyo Hoisi Dr. Light, Bumblebee, S.T.R.I.P.E., the Michael Holt Mr. Terrific) and super villains (Dr. Sivana, Mr. Freeze, Emil Hamiltion when he's on the "Heel" side of the Heel–Face Revolving Door) in the DC Universe are just normal scientists. In fact the only exceptions are Cyborg's father, Slias Stone, and Stephen Shin, who are normal scientists in those other versions, anyway.
- In Norse Mythology, Fenrir was a genuinely ruthless and cunning Beast of the Apocalypse. In Legends of Valhalla: Thor, he's just Hel's pet, and not a very bright one at that.
- The Wild Robot (2024):
- Book Brightbill mastered flying with little issue. Here, it's shown that his status as a runt makes it very difficult for him.
- The RECO units. In the book, it took traps and strategy to take each one down, with casualties being suffered along the way. Here, the animals take them down far more easily.
Literature
- Applies to practically everyone in the widely hated Baldur's Gate novels (at least the two first ones) as compared to the original games.
- The protagonist Abdel Adrian is initially more like the opposite, because instead of starting out as a novice just out of his childhood home like the Player Character, he's already an experienced mercenary. However, by Shadows of Amn, he becomes an Adaptational Wimp instead, because he's still the same rather crude thug he always was, whereas the game has the characters advancing to pretty epic levels and fighting demons and dragons. If you think in terms of the game, it's like he started out at level 5note and stayed there. He gains vague super powers by the end of the book to compensate. He's also rather weak in terms of intellect and willpower.
- The protagonist's companions become pretty useless. The worst might be Jaheira, who's plummeted into Faux Action Girl status faster than you can say "Abdel saw a more delicate side behind her tough warrior exterior." Imoen is another candidate by virtue of not having any kind of combat or other skills even as an Informed Ability.
- The villains of Shadows of Amn: Bodhi turns from a menacing, superhumanly powerful vampire into someone who wants to seduce Adrian every time they meet and is torn apart by his Superpowered Evil Side. Meanwhile, Irenicus is still a vaguely powerful wizard, but this is nothing compared to his absolutely overwhelming power in the game. Besides, his personality goes from chilling monster to, well, like the most generic villain stereotype but with less personality. We're not even told what he looks like, probably because his game outfit was so weird.
- This applies even to minor characters (and scenes and plot elements, but that's not this trope) so that it seems almost like you're reading a parody. From Shadows of Amn: Aran Linvail, head of the Shadow Thieves in Athkatla and thus a Diabolical Mastermind by definition, becomes some random assassin who needs to be killed along the way for not much reason. Saemon Havarian, a flamboyant sea captain and repeatedly backstabbing Karma Houdini, becomes a drunk with a boat.
- In the novelization of Doom³ , Councilor Swann is a typical Dirty Coward Obstructive Bureaucrat corporate suit, while in the game he was an aversion of the stock character type, being actually competent and decisive.
- Ghostbusters: A Paranormal Picture Book: While the main characters still attack ghosts and defeat the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, in the movie, this prevented an entire apocalypse, whereas no such thing is implied in the book.
- Journey to the West:
- Story presents us with fictionalized record of monk Xuanzang (Tang Sanzang in the book) traveling from China to India to retrieve Buddhist sutras. Historical Xuanzang did it all by himself, risking his life not only because of perils of the long journey, but also because of Imperial laws of the time forbidding contacts with foreign cultures. By contrast, Tang Sanzang in "Journey to the West" is a Non-Action Guy and oftentimes a Distressed Dude who relies on his supernatural companions to keep him safe, and may also come off as whiny.
- The entire Chinese Buddhist pantheon got subjected to this, at least in relation to Sun Wukong: most of the gods are but punching bags for him. Of particular note is Jade Emperor: a powerful celestial leader and warrior in mythology, a passive authority figure who doesn't even dare to personally face Wukong in the book.
- While Paris wasn't much a renowned warrior in The Iliad, it's worth remembering he was the one who killed Achilles, in David Gemmell's Troy series however he's a nebbish Book Worm who gets killed by Achilles in a matter of seconds when he goes charging to face him when the Achilles launches a surprise attack on his home.
- So I'm a Spider, So What?: In the original web novel, Kumoko was typically powerful enough to easily best her enemies when she was ready to fight them or at least gave herself enough of a buffer to remain confident. The light novel and manga adaptations tone her power down or increase the strength of her enemies so that all of her major fights remain real challenges. Notable examples include removing a scene where she killed an eel just by looking at it with a new skill, making the fire drake an actual challenge, and having Rend be nearly half-dead even before Kumoko fought him and barely won. This change also extends to her apotheosis. Where the web novel gave her near instant mastery of divine power which made her even stronger, in the adaptations she's left weak and with no magic for years.
- In the Star Wars Expanded Universe this occurs in equal measure to both the New Republic and the Empire compared to their incarnations in the earlier ''Legends'' EU:
- While the Empire begins fragmenting after the Emperor's death in both continuities, thanks to attempts to consolidate power at various points by individuals such as Ysanne Isard, Grand Admiral Thrawn, and later Daala and Pellaeon the Empire remains enough of a threat that it does not formally surrender for another fifteen years. In the new EU these attempts are never made and things go to pieces much more quickly with the Empire losing planets and war materiel to the Alliance at a much greater clip in the wake of Endor, and the Galactic Civil War ultimately comes to an end barely a single year later. Of course, not helping matters for the Imperials is the fact that in this continuity Palpatine had a Thanatos Gambit in place intending to have his most fervent loyalists hasten the "failed" Empire's collapse in the event of his unexpected death.
- As a consequence of the above the nascent New Republic isn't forged in a crucible of continued war and greatly downsize their fleet in order to avoid potential bad PR after twenty-five years of Imperial rule, with the bulk of it kept stationed around the capital at any one time. By the time of the sequel trilogy the government is so complacent and conflict-averse that they stick their heads in the sand and ignore the warning signs pointing to the First Order's emergence, allowing them to wipe out their leadership and most of the navy in one fell swoop come The Force Awakens. By contrast, while the New Republic of Legends do make similar mistakes in The New Jedi Order series at the outbreak of the Yuuzhan Vong War, they start off on better footing and after reorganizing into the Galactic Alliance they come out victorious by fighting both harder and smarter.
Mythology & Religion
- The Bible: Cherubim are multi-headed four-winged badass warriors. In Renaissance art, they're tiny winged babies. Although this is largely due to mis-association with the puttos of Greco-Roman myth.
- Classical Mythology: Eros/Cupid went through this hard through the centuries: in some stories of Greek myth, he was a Protogenoi, that is, a fundamental force that exists in the cosmos and precedes the Olympian gods. Later, by the time of The Golden Ass, by Apuleius, Eros/Cupid has been demoted to Venus's son and one of the Erotes, attendant deites to Venus/Aphrodite. By the time of the Renaissance, the imagery of Cupid inspires the putti, little cute, chubby, winged children, which becomes the more recognizable pop culture depiction of Cupid in modern times.
Tabletop Games
- Yu-Gi-Oh!: This happens a lot when cards are imported from the various animes and mangas to the actual card game, for reasons of game balance. Monsters, spells, and traps that may have been ridiculously overpowered in the show are often nerfed to the point of unplayability when they are made into actual cards. A major example is the three Egyptian God Cards. In the anime and manga, they were nearly unstoppable, immune to almost every effect, and had tons of abilities, truly deserving the title of gods. The actual, playable versions in the real game, on the other hand, only retain weaker versions of a few of each god's abilities, and are much easier to deal with. The Winged Dragon of Ra, the strongest Egyptian God in the lore, is actually the weakest one in real life, as it's the only god card that can't be Special Summoned at all, it doesn't gain the ATK points of its tribute materials like it did in the anime, and the only way to boost its attack requires paying all but 100 of your life points, leaving you an easy target for any burn cards. If you choose to use this effect, it also locks you out of Ra's other ability, which requires paying life points in multiples of 1000 to destroy a card on the field.
Theatre
- This version of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from Coming Out of Their Shells are very easily frightened off by a device that is meant to nullify music (not their mutated physiologies, music) and seem reluctant to fight at all.
- In Hamilton, Aaron Burr is depicted as a quiet pushover who simply goes along with the winning side no matter what he personally believes (until he Took a Level in Badass following "The Room Where it Happens"), and politically he refuses to take any hard stances in order to avoid burning bridges. In real life, Aaron Burr was incredibly ambitious and was absolutely not afraid to get into a fight; he was the first of the show's characters to join the Revolution, and politically he was a bonafide genius, inventing the form of electioneering that we still use today and pulling an incredibly cunning maneuver to con the Federalists out of their banking monopoly. In fact, his catchphrase of "talk less, smile more" more accurately describes Jefferson than it does Burr.
- Intentionally played straight in A Very Potter Musical and its sequels: Draco, who was Harry's rival in the books, is now little more than a minor annoyance, making lame insults that rarely land. Additionally, in the books he was moderately popular, but now is liked by almost no one. This is all Played for Laughs, especially with Draco now being a Cross-Cast Role and his deeply pretentious nature.
- Westeros: An American Musical: Loras Tyrell in Act II. In Act I, he co-conspires with Renly to make Margaery Robert's mistress and is the figurehead of the Tyrell army in "The Siege of King's Landing". In Act II, Olenna has to intervene to keep Loras from getting harassed by the Sand Snakes and he's mostly silently helping out with whatever Olenna and Margaery are up to.
- Wicked gives this to Glinda twice over. In the Land of Oz books, she's both the most powerful and most knowledgable magic user in Oz and probably the wider world. In The Wicked Years, while she's not nearly as spectacular, she still has a genuine talent for magic (she enchanted Nessa's shoes, which become the silver shoes/ruby slippers of the Wizard of Oz fame). In the musical, she can't do magic until she gets the Grimmerie at the end.
Video Games
- Heracles (better known as Hercules) is arguably the best well known Greek hero and poster boy of inhuman strength. In Age of Mythology he is a hero unit from the Heroic age with some pretty mediocre stats, making him worse than heroes like Bellerophon, Perseus or Polyphemus, who all were strong but nowhere near Heracles' level originally.
- In Classical Mythology, Athena is usually portrayed as a Badass Bookworm Lady of War who can usually kick fellow War God Ares' ass whenever she feels like it; in Altered Beast (1988), she's reduced to just a Damsel in Distress who needs a resurrected, non-godly man to save her.
- Baldur's Gate III:
- In the actual tabletop game, archdruids are some of the most powerful spellcaster NPCs around with a high health pool, a wide arsenal of druid spells, and can wild shape into beasts of CR 6 or less. By comparison, the two archdruids present in the early game, Halsin and Kagha, are actually much weaker stats-wise than their title would suggest. Then again, Larian probably did this to prevent them from being Early-Bird Bosses. Although this gets downplayed with Halsin if he becomes a party member later in the game.
- Vampire spawn in the tabletop game are much stronger than Astarion ends up being. They have innate damage resistance to non-magical physical damage, necrotic damage, possess 60ft of darkvision, a lesser form of Vampiric Regeneration at the start of their turns, can climb walls, as well as multiattack, claws for extra unarmed melee damage and a bite that not only can be used more than once per rest, but deals necrotic damage, reduces an enemy's hit point maximum and heals the Spawn for more health. Astarion only has the bite, limited to once per short rest, deals only the piercing damage and can be killed with a wooden stake still. It's likely the illithid tadple is messing with his powers much as it's also protecting him from sunlight.
- The Shatter spell in the tabletop game is highly effective at destroying stone barriers. In BG 3, however, stone barriers are immune to Thunder damage for unknown reasons and instead Force damage is their vulnerability.
- The thaumaturgy cantrip in 5e is a utility spell with many applications, and can be a psuedo-gamebreaker with a creative player and a lenient DM. In this game, its only function is to grant advantage to intimidation and performance, the latter of which is only useful to bards in specific circumstances. Meanwhile, its related utility cantrips, prestidigitation and druidcraft, have been removed entirely due to there not being a real way to adapt it properly.
- Batman: Arkham Series:
- Harley Quinn. Of a sort, and oddly for this series. While the Joker trusts her with more than he usually does in other media, including being his main agent and controlling his gang, she's on the whole far less intelligent or capable a combatant than most other incarnations. Likewise, she lacks the (admittedly mild) super-strength and agility of her comics counterpart. Quite the opposite in Knight (mostly).
- In the comics Black Mask is a brutal mob boss, fond of torture, not afraid of anyone, and has no problem going head-to-head with any member of the Bat-family. His only appearances in Batman: Arkham City have him get his ass kicked by random Tyger Mooks and Robin in the DLC, in Batman: Arkham Origins he gets Hijacked By Joker, and in Batman: Arkham Knight, Red Hood kills him.
- While Deathstroke does display the assassin skills he has in the comics, he loses to an inexperienced Batman in his second year under the mantle, whereas in the comics, even a highly experienced Batman will struggle greatly to survive a fight against Deathstroke. Then, he gets taken down in one punch in Arkham Knight during their rematch.
- In the comics, Lady Shiva is considered to be the best and most feared martial artist in the DC Comics Universe and Batman has never beaten her in a fair fight. In Origins, she fights like the martial artist and ninja thugs and is ridiculously easy to take down. Of course she was only testing Batman's abilities and wasn't giving it her all. In the Initiation challenge map, she is a little bit tougher, being invulnerable to regular strikes and must be taken out with beatdowns or counter attacks.
- In the comics, Deacon Blackfire is an incredibly clever and charismatic cult leader who temporarily conquered the city and was able to defeat and humiliate Batman the first time they fought, leaving Batman so broken that he even considered retiring. In Arkham Knight, while he has his cult, he seems to be a rambling old man with no real plan besides causing chaos and ritual sacrifices, and Batman pummels him with relative ease.
- Rick Flag spends most of Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate in an office with Waller and thus, we don't get to see him in combat.
- Subverted and justified with Bane. In the comics, he's a Genius Bruiser who can match Batman both physically and mentally, and actually defeated Batman during his debut. Contrast that with Arkham City, where he's little more than a drug addict whom Batman both outsmarts and outmanouvers easily — in a cutscene, no less — and ends up trapped in a small space that a man of his size and strength could easily escape from. Arkham Origins, a B-Team Sequel, retroactively establishes that Bane used to be intelligent, to the point of figuring out it's Bruce Wayne under the mask, but a series of In-Universe events caused him permanent brain-damage that explain his previous wimpiness.
- Battle Cats Rangers:
- Strong Cats from the main game, like Dragon Cat and Titan Cat, are quickly and horribly outclassed by other helpers. One of the biggest examples is Can Can Cat — while it's insanely powerful for its cost in the original, here, it's superseded in power by Kotatsu Cat (a Stone Wall in the original) and Boogie Cat (a Cat only useful as Cannon Fodder).
- All of the enemies. Instead of actually fighting back, they just sit there and take hits until they die or the time limit elapses.
- Bucky O'Hare (NES) did this with Toadborg. While The Dragon in the TV show, here he is the boss of the Green Planet, which is arguably the easiest of the four worlds you can choose from. Add to that his attack pattern is easily predictable and his attacks are easy to avoid. A far cry from the Knight of Cerebus who delivered the heroes' first defeat. The arcade game does this too to a lesser degree, as the Toadborg has a vicious grab attack, but is still the second boss out of many, and doesn't get too strong when he returns.
- Castlevania:
- Castlevania: Lords of Shadow:
- Subverted with Carmilla and Death. They've both lost their signature powers (the giant floating skull that weeps acid blood for Carmilla and millions of sickles for Death) but have new powers making them equal to their counterparts (lightning for Carmilla, and Death is a powerful necromancer who can control who lives and who dies across the world).
- Justified in the case of Dracula, since this story takes place before he becomes a vampire. By the end of the two DLC chapters he has gained power equal to what he's supposed to have.
- Played straight with Brauner. In Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin he had the ability to create Portal Pictures and even bring his paintings to life, and he was so powerful that he almost managed to steal Dracula's Castle away from him. Like Carmilla and Death he loses his original powers, but unlike them his new powers are nowhere close to equal to what he had before.
- Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate: Sypha Belnades in the original timeline was a powerful sorceress that went on blasting the forces of evil with her magic, aiding Trevor Belmont and eventually marrying him, whereas her magic-inclined genes were passed on to the Belmont clan, augmenting it with magic powers and also occasionally has a branch family tree that aided the Belmont clan. In this new continuity, all that remained was Sypha's marriage with Trevor, she's otherwise a normal woman that gave birth to Simon and easily got killed by Dracula's forces in the beginning of the game, becoming a Missing Mom.
- Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2: While the game fully averts this trope with Death this time around by returning his trademark scythe to him, it instead plays it straight with Abaddon. In Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow and Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin Abaddon was a locust demon with the ability to summon swarms of insects against you. Even a single rush of his swarm could stun-lock and potentially kill you. Lords Of Shadow 2's version was just a generic demon. He was a very big generic demon, mind you, but not really special.
- Castlevania: Lords of Shadow:
- In Cosmology of Kyoto, the death of your character may result in him/her being reborn in a realm of Asuras. In Hinduism and Buddhism, they are semidivine beings who rival gods, and while they can't really overthrow heaven, they are powerful enough to have a superiority complex. However, the Asura that player is reborn into is a rather funny shrimp who looks a lot like Butt-Head, and the only thing we players can do in the Asura realm is to lose a Curb-Stomp Battle against Indra and to be reborn yet again as a human.
- The video game adaptation of The Crow: City of Angels had this bad. In the movies and comics, the Crow is difficult to kill because he's immune to pain and has a Healing Factor. Conventional weapons like handguns and rifles are little more than an annoyance. Even if his immortality is overtaxed and he is killed, his crow guide can revive him provided his body is still intact enough and the crow guide itself is not killed. In this game, he can be beaten to death by simple humans and guns can easily kill him. He will also permanently die if he is killed and not be revived like how he normally would.
- Final Boss Adam Smasher in Cyberpunk 2077 was an absolutely lethal force of nature in the TTRPG and anime, being a Lightning Bruiser Implacable Man who in the former is an SNK Boss. There was one fundamental rule with him in the tabletop game: you didn't fight Adam Smasher unless you wanted to die. In the game however, he's a lumbering Anti-Climax Boss who, after having Arasaka protocols getting fried, manages to be dispatched by a dying V on their last legs. However, later patches to the game buffed him to fix this.
- Danger Girl turns Natassia Kassle, a competent and dangerous Dark Action Girl from the comics, to a pathetic Dirty Coward and a "Get Back Here!" Boss who, upon having her doomsday device destroyed, then flees from Abbey (instead of fighting her directly like in the comics) while throwing mooks in the way. When she gets forced into a gunfight while cornered at the edge of a pit, the boss battle is hardly impressive, since Natassia's health bar gets shredded within seconds if Abbey happens to have an automatic weapon. She even whimpers as she falls to her death, something the comic version of Natassia wouldn't do no matter what.
- Dante's Inferno:
- The Devil, Lucifer in the flesh, is far less formidable than in The Divine Comedy. In the game, the devil pretty much loses to a mortal man who should have been easily crushed by his might and breaks down crying how God made his life horrible. In the original literary work, the devil was The Dreaded Emperor of Hell who made giants look like normal men and who would go undefeated until God gave the Last Judgement. He's still crying, all the time.
- Beatrice, who was a noble hero who saved Dante's soul all by herself in the original source material, ends up becoming a Damsel in Distress for him to save instead of the other way around.
- Nicole-458 in Dead or Alive 4. While she is an original character, created specifically for DOA4, she is supposed to be a Spartan-II from the Halo series, an enhanced Super-Soldier wearing Powered Armor. In Halo, even when not in armor, a Spartan-II is capable of easily beating (to the point of sometimes unintentionally killing) even multiple Badass Normal opponents. The MJOLNIR armor makes them even more powerful. In DOA4, though, Nicole is just as strong as any of the Stripperiffic female characters, and her MJOLNIR armor doesn't do much to protect her.
- Dead by Daylight: The game uses an assymetrical hide-and-go-hunt setupt based on Slasher Movies, which means that the Survivor players have about as much of a chance of fighting the Killers as the cast of a slasher flick has of fighting the slasher — that is, none. The roster also features numerous Guest Fighters from horror media; when these are from slasher movies themselves they slot into the gameplay without particular issue, but many characters from other forms of horror like Bill Overbeck, Steve Harrington, Ash Williams, Heather Mason, Trevor Belmont, and anyone from Resident Evil would in their home stories be more than capable of defending themselves and taking a lot of hurt or even just going monster-hunting on their own. Here, due to needing to fit the existing gameplay structure, they are unable to fight back due to a lack of weaponry and can be brought down to a crawl in three hits from any of the killers.
- DmC: Devil May Cry:
- In the classic Devil May Cry continuity, Vergil is one of Dante's most powerful foes and actually wins their first battle in each of the games they fight in, whether as himself or as Nelo Angelo; with Dante needing to embrace his powers and get considerably stronger over the course of the story in order to first give him an even fight and then finally beat him. In both the story as well as the actual player controlled battle, Vergil remains one of the toughest bosses Dante ever faces. In DmC, Vergil is still powerful, but Dante is far stronger and Vergil needs him to act as his enforcer. When they duel at the end of the game, Dante wins handily.
- Sparda gets it even worse. The original continuity's Sparda was a One-Man Army Ascended Demon so powerful, skilled and fearless that when he decided to fight for humanity, he singlehandedly took on the entire legions of Hell, and then on Mundus himself, and won. This Sparda, after Mundus finds out he betrayed him, goes into hiding. When Mundus finds him, Mundus easily kills Eva, before his demons capture Sparda and take him away to be imprisoned and tortured without much resistance. This is even reflected in his design. The original Sparda looked like a truly imposing demonic warrior. DmC Sparda looks like just some dude with horns. Keep in mind this version of Mundus is also not stronger than his original self, since he is easier to kill.
- In the Nintendo port of Dragon's Lair, Dirk is much weaker than in the original game. He dies by walking into a door.
- Fate/Grand Order:
- The mythological Jason was a warrior who was strong enough to pull two bulls at the same time with the only help he received for the task being a fire-resistance potion from Medea, not a wimp who relies on others for protection. The fact that he was trained by Chiron is still there, but he didn't seem to really get any of his lessons and would have preferred if he had taught him how to deal with landmine-like women like Medea. He's still a Servant worthy of the Throne of Heroes by the usage of analysis and trickery, but compared to his mythological self who also does the physical weight-lifting in the same time... In general, it seems to pull heavily from his famously unsympathetic portrayal in Medea.
- Mephistopheles from Faust is a homunculus in the Nasuverse rather than a demon. While Mephistopheles has excellent Magic Circuits, he has nowhere near the amount of mystical power an actual demon would have in this setting.
- Kazuradrop in the manga adaptation of "Abyssal Cyber Paradise, SE.RA.PH." is not the same intimidating, super-powerful AI she was back in Fate/Extra CCC Foxtail. This is justified, as not only was Kazuradrop so powerful due to having already eaten Meltryllis, Passionlip and most of BB- and thus getting access to their powers- but here, BB is controlling her id_es to make her more obedient.
- Tokugawa Iesayu is usually depicted as either a Smug Snake or a Grumpy Old Man in popular fiction. In "Tokugawa Restoration Labyrinth: Ooku," he's a Nervous Wreck, albeit one who can technically still fight. While it's a rather novel direction, it's a bit of a step down from most popular fictional depictions.
- Fate/Grand Order Arcade introduces Larvae/Tiamat, who is essentially Tiamat in Sleep-Mode Size (or at least, a Giant Woman's equivalent). As a fragment of her true self, she's naturally less powerful than she was as a Beast, but she suffers most in areas in which she formerly excelled incredibly. She specialized in her absolutely tremendous rankings of her physical attributes, possessing unparalleled strength and durability, befitting of being the primordial dragon of Mesopotamian myth, with a Monstrous Strength skill to make her even more of a juggernaut. In her Larval incarnation, they rank at a subpar C, with the aforementioned skill removed and her agility score still being worse.
- In Fate, all heroes are roughly in the same league. Some might just be a dude with one weird trick while others can tear apart dragons with their bare hands, but that's about as big as the differences get. However, many heroes are far stronger than that in their own legends. For example, Rama was capable of destroying the entire universe with an arrow: Merely threatening to use it had demons shitting bricks. In FGO, however, he is a top tier Servant but nowhere near that level of ability. There are also certain abilities the writers generally won't let a hero have, such as Asclepius being unable to actually raise the dead despite that being his whole thing.
- Fate/hollow ataraxia has Caster describing Jason as weak and cowardly, a far cry from the charismatic leader of the Argonauts in the myths. We don't see exactly what she means until Fate/Grand Order, where a trip to Okeanos shows him to be all that and more; he doesn't even fight alongside his troops, preferring to hide behind them while they do his fighting for him (which is even demonstrated in his playable version). In fact, according to a younger Caster, all he had going for him was his charisma. However, as shown in the Atlantis Lostbelt, Jason is an incredibly skilled strategist when backed into a corner, he's just too much of a coward to show it most of the time (and even then he's closer to a Cowardly Lion).
- Felix the Cat has a couple instances of this:
- Master Cylinder, who was a much greater threat in the 1960's TV cartoons than The Professor, is now working for him in this game, and is fought as a boss twice. He's barely as big as Felix in-game and has a ridiculously simplistic attack pattern. If you use the plane power-up against him, the fight is turned into a complete joke, since he goes down in a few hits. In the second fight, he uses bubbles instead of lasers to attack. That said, if you fight him without power-ups, he becomes the hardest boss in the game.
- The Magic Bag of Tricks also goes through this. In the Joe Oriolo cartoons, it was a Story-Breaker Power that could turn into or create anything and could get Felix out of any situation. The NES game significantly nerfs its powers to where it can only do four different attacks, three of which need power ups and have a time limit, and occasionally turn into vehicles in certain contexts (i.e. canoes, a plane, a spaceship). Understandably, it would be impossible to properly transition the Bags limitless abilities into a video game, and giving the bag limits ensures that the gameplay still has challenge.
- The Magic Bag gets hit with an even worse case of this (and combined with Demoted to Extra to boot) in the video game Baby Felix Halloween. It's not even a regular gameplay item anymore — it's reduced to a trivial item that merely refills your health bar when you grab it.
- Final Fantasy:
- Final Fantasy VII Remake: In the original Final Fantasy VII, Reno's Boss Battle at the Sector 7 Plate involves him facing a full party alone. Despite being defeated, he still manages to initiate the plate separation sequence and escape on his own. In Remake, he's fought early and decisively defeated by Cloud alone in a Duel Boss, and his second boss fight against AVALANCHE has Rude joining him. Both fights would have ended with him being killed by Cloud had it not been for outside interference.
- In Crisis Core, Aerith is reduced to a Damsel in Distress, relying on Zack to save her and generally afraid of SOLDIERs and violence. In Final Fantasy VII, she is a street-smart woman who runs away when she knows she is outmatched and to avoid capture by SOLDIER, but isn't afraid of violence if needed (and threatened to castrate a slum lord to get the truth out of him). Here, it is implied that Shin-Ra's only reason for not capturing her is that they are observing her instead. Crisis Core was a prequel, but it's still noticeable considering Aerith's accomplishments in the original game.
- Shinryu is a recurring Superboss in the series, completely optional and the player has to either have maxed out his party or berserk it in its debut appearance to even stand a chance against it. Nova Dragon, as Shinryu is called in Final Fantasy IX, is a storyline boss so it is mandatory for the heroes to beat it.
- Fire Emblem:
- Fire Emblem Heroes does this to many characters across the franchise who suffer from poor statlines or lack advantages they had in their home games. Two of the biggest examples are Seth from Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones (who goes from being widely considered the most powerful unit in the entire franchise to a mediocre sword cavalier outclassed by nearly every other sword cavalier) and Fallen Takumi from Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest (who goes from being an absolutely monstrous Final Boss who has 4 range, takes half damage from all attacks, and spits out energy waves every 2-3 turns to a Master of None with a gimmicky and situational weapon).
- The OAV of Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light does this to both Marth and Caeda. In the game, Marth was somewhat naïve with a soft touch but eager to get the job done. Caeda was a devoted Action Girl who was fighting beside him right from chapter 1. Here, Marth is much more mopey and cries at the thought of killing a deer while poor Caeda catches the Distress Ball and instead of rushing in to fight the pirates, tosses Marth the sword and sits in the backlines folding bandages — and she's portrayed as a Tsundere to boot.
- Fortnite: Supplementary materials and some in-game dialogue explain that anyone who gets trapped in the Loop are stripped of their memories and identity, any superpowers or abilities they might've had are suppressed (thanks to the memories of being able to use these powers being stripped), and their bodies are genetically modified to be vunerable to bullets, had they originally had immunity to them. Given the copious amount of Guest Fighters the game has, this ends up being a very common trait among them, as while the likes of Superman, Goku, Darth Vader, Saitamanote , The Hulk, Godzilla, and many others could probably easily trounce a Battle Royale otherwise, and characters like Ryu, Spider-Man, and even someone like Ed could put up a decent fight, due everyone needing to fit into the gameplay structure of Fortnite, all of these characters are incapable of using any abilities they originally had (outside of the occassional tie-in Mythic weapon) and are just as susceptible to bullets and other sources of damage as the average person would be, meaning that the only way they'd be able to win is to get their hands on any guns or weapons they can get their hands on.
- In Friday Night Funkin', the protagonist and his girlfriend, Boyfriend and Girlfriend, are depicted as Fearless Fools who can beat up the likes of even Sonic.exe once they find out that there is no McDonald's in his dimension. The dozens of Game Mods, however, don't depict them as such, like in Vs Whitty and Mid-Fight Masses where Girlfriend shakes in fear when Word of God confirms that she won’t, and in the case of Vs. Auditor: Gateway to Hell, Boyfriend audibly screaming in fear of something that isn’t thunder or bugs, like the appearance of the titular Auditor, who has a fire motif.
- The God of War series does this hard to Typhon. In the Greek myths, he was a giant monster that sent most of the Olympians running in fear at the mere sight of him with only Zeus staying to fight him and nearly losing, and the battle describing as ripping mountains out of the ground and throwing them. When he appears in God of War II, he's demoted to just being one of the titans, with little power besides his size and nothing implied to special about compared to the others. Even the way he attacked, blowing cold air, giving hints of him having wind powers, falls flat when Chronos in God of War III is seen doing the same thing, hinting that again only came from his size.
- Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters Melee: Mothra, the heroic giant butterfly who serves as one of the toughest giant monsters and Godzilla's greatest ally is rendered one of the weakest characters in the game. Not helped by the fact that her larvae form is the one you must start out with, which only renders her vulnerable to serious attacks. This was the same creature who scared Gigan and King Ghidorah while still in her basic form.
- Godzilla Unleashed: Double Smash: The monsters in the game are much weaker than in the films, as the military can actually noticeably hurt you. Bigger vehicles are even able to make the monsters flinch.
- Thanos appears as the first boss character in Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series, and is significantly weaker than he is in the comics. The Guardians actually manage to kill him, and the rest of the plot revolves around what happens when they take a powerful artifact known as the Eternity Forge from his corpse.
- Gundam 0079: The War for Earth: The Gundam in the original series is a Super Prototype, demonstrating its power before it has even stood up for the first time when the shots from Gene's Zaku Machine Gun bounce off of its armor. Here, that same machine gun can destroy the Gundam. Notably, Char in the anime has to get creative when trying to destroy the Gundam by bringing heavy weaponry or applying brute force so that Amuro being thrust around in the cockpit will inflict injury, while one of the fail screens here show that his Zaku punching the Gundam in the face is enough to destroy it.
- Hyrule Warriors:
- Stalfos were difficult minibosses in Ocarina of Time. Here they're just mid-level squad leaders. Granted, they were low-level Mooks in the first game, and in the series overall, the state of any monster can fluctuate between this and Adaptational Badass from game to game, but in this case they have their Ocarina of Time design.
- On a similar note to Stalfos, Gibdos in most games are Nigh-Invulnerable, only able to even be harmed at all through the use of fire. While they're still fairly tough and have the ability to resist flinching from attacks, they have lost their resistance to non-fiery attacks.
- King Bulblin was a unique individual from Twilight Princess who was the leader of the Bulblins and a Recurring Boss. In this game, not only are there multiple copies of him, they're Elite Mooks at best. Ends up getting subverted as of the Twilight Princess DLC pack. It turns out the others weren't King Bulblin, they were just particularly large elite bulblins. The King Bulblin appears in a few of the new Adventure Mode missions as a major NPC. He's bigger than the common versions, with much more HP and damage potential, and almost always comes with a duo of elite henchmen.
- In most Zelda games, Darknuts are some of the most dangerous Elite Mooks. Here, if anything, they are weaker than the other captains such as Moblins. Stalmasters have also been weakened considerably, to the point where they are little more than Palette Swaps of Darknuts.
- For pragmatic reasons, The Imprisoned only appears in its base form, without its arms or tail, and fighting it here is much more straightforward than it was in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. He's still one of the hardest bosses, second only to Ganon himself.
- Injustice 2 has this happening to Wonder Woman of all people. The comics that expand the universe showcase her as a Flying Brick that can stand toe-to-toe with Superman in an even no-holds-barred fight and can shrug off massed assault rifle fire like it wasn't even there (her Super-Toughness is such that she doesn't even use her signature "bullets and bracelets" trick, just letting the bullets bounce off her skin). The cinematics of this game show her getting curb-stomped by Batman without prep time (take notice that every other fight the Dark Knight has with another superpowered being in Story Mode has Batman pulling out some gadget to weaken his adversary beforehand or using Powered Armor) and using her bracelets to prevent Harley Quinn's magnum rounds from hitting her.
- Judge Dredd: Dredd vs. Death: Judge Mortis. The reason he's so dangerous in the comics is because his decaying touch works on pretty much anything, making him basically an Implacable Man who can melt his way through doors, walls, and people. Here he becomes trapped by an ordinary chem hazard containment room.
- Jurassic World: Evolution 2: In the first game, sauropods were impervious to attack by any predator save the Indominus rex, whereas in this game they're canon fodder for even smaller predators with relatively little in the way of defensive capabilities.
- All individual Velociraptor go from being the Big Bad Ensemble to just foolish Elite Mooks in every Jurassic Park video game. But the games that weaken them the most are Jurassic Park: The Game and LEGO Jurassic World, where the raptors are easily distracted. At least in the latter they can never be directly taken on in a fight due to their size.
- Speaking of LEGO Jurassic World, the Spinosaurus from Jurassic Park III goes from being the Big Bad to a Big Bad Wannabe who suffers a near-Death by Adaptation. While still relatively fearsome, the Lighter and Softer nature of the game meant a lot of its more brutal kills were censored via Spared by the Adaptation.
- In LEGO Marvel Super Heroes, despite the fact that he's the leader of one of the most technologically advanced nations on Earth, Black Panther can't use the computer panels that other geniuses and tech-based characters like Iron Man, Doctor Doom, M.O.D.O.K., Black Widow, and Ant-Man can. Thankfully, they rectified this in the sequel.
- The Little Mermaid (Capcom) severely downgrades Ursula's One-Winged Angel form, where despite possessing Triton's trident, she lacks the ability to cast lightning or summon shipwrecks, only controlling the sea currents.
- In Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story, this trope gets played with in regards to Madoka Kaname. She's still a pretty powerful magical girl by default and has the latent power she's known for, but given that this is a timeline where she joins with all the magical girls in Kamihama to bring down Walpurigsnacht instead of fighting her on her own or with Homura's help, Madoka actually manages to prevent Homura's time-travelling and increasing Madoka's karmic powers as much as they were in the original series.
- In Make a Good Mega Man Level Contest 2, the end boss of The Stage Nobody Asked For, Spiked-Wall Man, is toned down considerably from their appearance in the Flash cartoon "Dr. Wily Fails at Life", where it kills Mega Man instantly by simply being a room full of spikes. Since such a situation would make the level Unwinnable, it's changed into a proper boss battle that, while still difficult, is fair and allows Mega Man to actually win.
- (Mario) The Music Box: Mario and Luigi in both the mainline Super Mario Bros. games and their spin-offs are easily capable of taking down dozens of threats to the Mushroom Kingdom and/or the world. In this game however, they're about as vulnerable and helpless as average Explorer Horror protagonists are against the ghostly menaces they're pitted up against — this is more evident with Mario, who in canon has always been more courageous and full of bravado than the timid and cowardly Luigi, but here is more often than not terrified of what he's going through.
- Many of the more powerful Marvel characters suffer from this in the Marvel vs. Capcom series. For the sake of gameplay balance, absolute powerhouses like the Hulk, Apocalypse, Onslaught, Thanos (with the Infinity Gauntlet!) and Galactus can be defeated in physical combat by human characters like Jill Valentine, Hawkeye, Ryu, Chun-Li or Phoenix Wright. Yet the biggest sufferer of this is undeniably Shuma-Gorath. Shuma-Gorath in the Doctor Strange comics that introduced him basically treated him as up there with the Powers That Be. He's older than the universe, a Reality Warper, rules countless dimensions, him simply existing in our world is treated as a massive threat, and Doctor Strange, himself one of the most powerful Marvel heroes, struggles to even keep him contained. The only character in the entire roster who would stand even a chance against him is Thanos with the Infinity Gauntlet, and even that's arguable — Shuma-Gorath fighting someone would basically consist of him blinking them out of existence. But the developers of the franchise didn't know any of this — rather, they picked Shuma-Gorath because they liked his design and thought it would make a fun and unique character for a fighting game. As a result, he shows almost no signs of having any of the powers of his comic counterpart: his moves almost universally focus on simply having him jump around hitting people with his tentacles, with the occasional round of shapeshifting or Eye Beams to break things up. He's not an overpowered SNK Boss-type character, either—he's not even top tier in any of his appearances. He did have one move reworked to imply a bit of his true power (Chaos Dimension), but other than that, he comes across as downright cuddly rather than terrifying. Even his endings in Marvel vs. Capcom 3 play him for comedy, with him becoming a gameshow host.
- Metal Slug Code: J, a 3D remake of Metal Slug, noticeably weakens the rebel air force units from the original games. The Eaca-B planes (which weren't too tough to begin with) can now be destroyed with just a handful of shots, which players blast out of the sky in droves (for comparison, the original games usually have the Eaca-B showing up three to five at a time) while the Masknell choppers have their firing rates decreased, making them easier to avoid and removing their Demonic Spiders status.
- In Monster Strike, some monsters are weaker than their origin. Amaterasu, who's one of the greatest gods in Japanese mythology, is reduced to nothing more than a weak 4-star monster.
- Alucard makes a cameo appearance as a playable character in Obakeidoro!... as a member of the human team. Suddenly the son of Dracula can be easily bested by a Bed Sheet Ghost plopping him in a cage.
- Oriental Legend is an arcade game based on Journey to the West, and actually tones down some of the novel characters' powers for balance of gameplay.
- Sun Wukong is nowhere as invincible as his novel counterpart, though he's still stronger than his brothers. His abilities to leap 3,000 miles with a single jump is also reduced to a slightly longer leap.
- The Magic Gourd used by the Horned King Brothers, in the novels, can imprison gods, and anyone sucked in it will remain trapped for good. In the game, players can perform some Button Mashing to escape; the brothers themselves are nowhere as dangerous as their novel counterparts, serving as a pair of Warm Up Bosses.
- Meanwhile, the Mighty Garuda, who's the strongest of his brothers and a dangerous enemy in the novels is a Fragile Speedster Mini-Boss, who is not stronger than his brothers.
- Probably the most glaring of them all, Hong Hai-er the Red Boy who was a dangerous, cunning enemy who defeats Wukong in the novels, necessitating Buddha himself to intervene, is now the game's third boss fought less than halfway through. His ability to breath Samadhi flames, which is impossible to extinguish is absent as well, with his flames being quite normal instead.
- One Piece: Pirate Warriors:
- Averted for Kaido in the fourth game, keeping up with what was already known about his threat level in the One Piece anime and manga. In gameplay, he's incredibly powerful and only fought as the Final Boss. In narrative, said fight involves every allied character in the arc dogpiling his dragon form with their most powerful techniques just to open him up to one good hit from Luffy, and all that does is convince Kaido that holding Wano isn't worth the effort and he leaves of his own volition, unharmed.
- Played straight with Big Mom in terms of story. While she’s still plenty powerful, she doesn’t quite measure to Kaido here. In canon, she’s his equal in terms of power, yet Kaido effortlessly sends her flying in the prologue (albeit, while she's caught off guard). Also unlike Kaido, Luffy and the others managed to definitively defeat her in Wano, something that in canon took Kid and Law using his Devil Fruit Awakenings at once.
- In the mainline Persona series, the protagonists from Persona 3 onward are the only party members capable of switching Personas, cycling through twelve at maximum, making them a Master of All capable of filling any niche. In the Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth series, this ability is crippled by the Sub-Persona system, locking them to their Initial Persona and only allowing them to add one more Persona to their skill list. On the upside, the Sub-Persona system is available to all the playable characters, allowing the player to customize the party with whatever Personas they have in the Compendium.
- Pokémon GO's simplified, faster-paced battle system had this effect on many Pokémon, mainly ones that use status effects or other tricks in combat, since this game only features direct-damage attacks and the stats were, for the most part, not rebalanced to compensate for this change.
- Resident Evil:
- One instance in Resident Evil (Remake) that few fans objected to was making the Hunter enemies a good deal less terrifyingly deadly, knocking them down from the top-tier Demonic Spiders they were in the 1996 original to Elite Mooks. Not by making them any less aggressive or strong, but simply by undoing the Fake Difficulty they benefitted from that took away their damage hitbox when leaping at you or getting up from a knockdown. It's now possible to blast one out of the air when it jumps to slash at you and then run up and shoot it again before it can get back up, where doing either in the original game would just waste your ammo. They also now telegraph their One-Hit Kill attack by announcing it with a screech, giving you a second or two to react as opposed to handing you an instant "You Died" whenever the 1996 game felt like it.
- In the Resident Evil 2 (Remake), Femme Fatale Spy Ada Wong out of all the cast gets this, especially compared to Claire Redfield. While Ada does get a strong introduction saving Leon from a zombie dog and then Mr X, it all goes downhill from there. In the remake, Ada notably lacks any of the combat skill she had in the 1998 version and instead relies on gadgets, and Leon (the rookie cop) to aid her throughout the game. Perhaps most embarrassingly Anette Birkin a middle-aged and sleep-deprived scientist takes Ada out twice in Leon's scenario, while in the original game Ada soundly overpowered Anette in a physical confrontation.
- Resident Evil 3 (Remake) does this with both its main characters!
- The original game had Jill Valentine being able to go toe to toe with the Nemesis and she's caught off guard only once when it uses its tentacle to infect her. The remake has her getting her ass kicked and tossed around like a ragdoll by the Nemesis and she's nearly always limping away when she finally loses him each time. Furthermore, unlike in the original where she is the one to always take down Nemesis, either by outrunning, outwitting, or outfighting him, where other characters only ever serve to slow him down or briefly distract him — in this game it's Carlos and Mikhael who do the most damage to Nemesis, with the former blowing off his coat with a rocket to save Jill from him, and the latter blowing him up on the train which severely damages him into his One-Winged Angel "dog" form, and Jill rarely escapes or fights him without help from others.
- At the same time, Nemesis was severely nerfed from his status of Hero Killer in the original to much more of an ineffective killer. He's much less resilent when you encounter him in streets, whereas the original standing your ground against him was suicide without being very good at the game and properly equipped, the remake has him go down to a single grenade and has him be rather easy to evade and fight with small arms fire. It's best summed up by Pastra's review
which goes into great analysis how the game's heavy use of scripted chases, big spectacle boss battles, and serious changes to the game's mechanics severely Nerfed Nemesis into someone "who anyone could take down":
"About 15 minutes into the game, and so far we have stopped him with a bookshelf, run him over, called him "Fuckface", and blown him up, all before he's even killed anyone or we've had the opportunity to interact with him outside of poorly-done scripted chases or RE6 style quicktime events. This game completely and utterly humiliates Nemesis every single opportunity it gets. Characters constantly insult him and throw him around, every time he can kill Jill he just chooses not to, and the only two people we actually see him kill are Mikhael on the train, who blows himself up before he can even secure the kill, and Tyrell who he literally kills in the final area of the game!"
- In the original SCP Foundation canon, SCP-096 is a docile humanoid that will fly into an Unstoppable Rage if its face is seen, becoming incredibly fast with no attack being able to stop it. It'll run towards whoever looked at it and kill them with a 100% success rate. However, in SCP: Secret Laboratory, its rage is under a cooldown, and if it takes enough damage, it will drop to the floor and start sobbing in a fetal position. It was even more absurd in earlier versions where he could be killed outright. This is justified, of course, so that players that got selected as 096 don't immediately demolish the other team, but SCP fans are bound to get a giggle at the idea of one of the setting's biggest powerhouses getting gunned down.
- Exaggerated in Silver Surfer (1990), where one of the most powerful superheroes in the Marvel Universe became a wimp who can easily be defeated just by grazing a rubber duck.
- In the original timeline of the Soul Series, Chai Xianghua was considered The Hero of the original Soulcalibur and canonically she was the one who used Soul Calibur to defeat the Humanoid Abomination Inferno. Also, her Love Interest Kilik was injured after defeating Nightmare, and couldn't take part in the battle. In Soulcalibur VI, a Continuity Reboot that retells the events, one major change was that Kilik was given a case of Adaptational Badass that also had the effect of making her this trope by extension. In this version, Kilik defeats Nightmare and then uses his Purified Malfested Form to defeat Inferno after Xianghua failed to beat him, herself getting injured from an earlier fight. Though in the end, Xianghua used Soul Calibur to land the final strike, it was largely Kilik that did the heavy lifting.
- In Space Jam (Acclaim), The Monstars, in comparison to their dominant portrayal in the movie, are horribly under-powered compared to the Tune Squad. Playing as them is essentially giving yourself a deliberate handicap.
- Spider-Man (PS4): Silver Sable Inc. mercenaries are, in most continuities, a highly skilled, professional and disciplined force of Private Military Contractors. In this game, they are... roughly on par, morally and in terms of skill, with the random goons Kingpin employs. It's given a handwave, in that it is mentioned that Silver Sable had recently been on a massive mission and taken heavy losses, and was scraping the bottom of the barrel to make up numbers.
- This is done a lot in the Star Trek: Armada games, for reasons of game balance. For example, the Defiant-class starship, one of the most effective and powerful Federation warships in canon, is reduced to little more than cannon fodder. Borg Cubes are also changed from unstoppable engines of death that can plow through entire fleets to slightly above-average battleships. Species 8472, despite being one of the most powerful races ever seen in the show and the primary antagonists of Armada II are widely considered the weakest faction in Armada II multiplayer, due to their hard-to-master playstyle, and their overall power and effectiveness not being any greater than that of the other factions. It also doesn't help that their superweapon, which was capable of rapidly destroying entire planets in the show, is turned into a nearly useless gimmick in the game, requiring 8 ships to create a perfect formation and an impractically long charge time, and just one of the ships being disabled or destroyed before it's ready will make the entire thing fail, meaning that 99% of the time you'll never get a chance to even fire it.
- Star Wars Chess: Zigzagged with Luke and the Emperor. While the battle sequences involving both depict them as being just as powerful as would be expected from them, during gameplay, they are used to represent the King and are therefore not particularly useful for capturing other pieces.
- A number of Superman games downplay Superman's powers in order to provide some risk for the player character. The problem is for those that they go too far and also remove the fun of playing as a ridiculously powerful character like Superman.
- The notorious Superman 64, aside from making Supes an absolute weakling, also did this with many of Superman's Rogues Gallery. Darkseid in particular went from being one of the most powerful and dangerous villains in the DC Universe to being punched out and taken to the police station.
- The Fighting Game Justice League: Task Force for Sega Genesis and SNES has Superman, Wonder Woman and other super-powered heroes go toe-to-toe with the likes of Green Arrow and Batman with straight punches as if they are all equally strong.
- In the 16-Bit game The Death and Return Of Superman (based on the eponymous comic arc and Reign Of Supermen arc), Supes can be hurt by simple mooks with baseball bats.
- Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe reduces Superman's power level to prevent him from simply punching the Mortal Kombat fighters into orbit. The game justifies it using Superman's somewhat well-known weakness to magic. To be fair, though, his primary opponent is Raiden, who is an actual Physical God.
- Injustice: Gods Among Us plays with this trope a little. While characters like Harley Quinn and The Flash can hurt characters like Superman and Wonder Woman simply by punching them, super attacks show them at vastly different power levels (with Superman literally punching his opponent into space) even if they all do about the same amount of damage. Plus, story-wise, things only shift in favor of the heroes after the non-evil Superman is brought to the Injustice universe.
- Super Mario RPG: Axem Black, as shown here, was hit particularly hard by the remake's general balance changes. In the original, he could use either or both of his attacks per round to throw bombs that were unblockable and dealt extra damage, and if you used magic attacks against him, he would be happy to deal even heavier damage with Spritz Bomb, which also can't be blocked; both made him one of the Axem Rangers' biggest threats. In the remake, however, not only does he have to contend with his bombs (including the aforementioned Spritz Bomb) now being blockable, but Bowser's Ally Buff of boosting Defense is bound to neuter his attack power by Damage Reduction, which would be softened by the Chain needing to be built up if Axem Black didn't attack so often with easy to block attacks. Needless to say that Axem Black, although still worth considering a threat for anybody not using Bowser, now puts the fragile in Fragile Speedster.
- This trope is evident in any Massive Multiplayer Crossover, but especially so in Super Smash Bros. Major examples include:
- Shulk, who even in his early game form can still see into the future. Sure, he uses it as a counter, but it decreases in power each time it's executed.
- Kirby, who can crack planets.
- Bayonetta, who slows time with every dodge, kills gods, and fights like this.
- Justified with both Kirby and Yoshi, who can usually One-Hit Kill foes by Eating the Enemy. Since that would have been overpowered in a fighting game, enemies can somehow survive being eaten (Kirby just copies their power and they pop back out, while Yoshi lays an egg the fighter bursts from).
- Mewtwo. Compared to the anime version, it's pretty pathetic. In the movie, his Psychic Powers are so excessive that he's practically invincible, and can mind-control people and teleport himself or large groups great distances. He's not quite as overpowered in his home games, but he's still one of the most powerful Pokémon, being considered essentially uncounterable in his debut, and would have no problem dealing with any of the other playable Pokémon unless they had a massive level advantage. In Smash Bros. he's nothing special, and in Melee is actually considered somewhat underpowered.
- In his home series, Ganondorf is a master swordsman, highly proficient in dark magic, can fly and teleport, and possesses a number of other Antagonist Abilities that make him a consistent thorn in Link's side. However, due to being added as a last-minute clone of Captain Falcon in Melee and retaining the moveset in subsequent games despite it not fitting his character, the playable Ganondorf lacks most of these abilities aside from a select few sword attacks in Ultimate.
- Goldeen, a somewhat decent Pokémon in the main RPGs is regaled to the role of a Critical Failure when it appears from a Pokéball in Smash Bros. One wonders if Goldeen was mistakenly substituted for Magikarp, who, until it levels up, really is that useless, but on the other hand it may be a nod to Pokémon the Series, where it often did that in early episodes.
- Super Robot Wars swings between this and Adaptational Badass in order to allow its crossover between a myriad of giant robot shows to stand on even keel with one another. Some common examples on the wimp side:
- Aura Battler Dunbine has a major plot point that Aura Battlers become vastly more powerful on Earth than in Byston Well due to how much more abundant Aura is, to the point where even a single mook becomes an invincible weapon of mass destruction. Even when Dunbine appears in games that feature travel between the two worlds, this is never acknowledged: Aura Battlers will instead always get the Aura Barriers that they have on Earth, but weakened into a relatively modest defensive barrier for game balance.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion has the near-impossibility of breaking AT Fields with anything but another AT Field as the primary reason why the Evas exist at all. To make it so that other characters can contribute in fights with Angels, the AT Field is simply made a barrier that can block any attack below a high but comfortably beatable damage threshold.
- Shin Mazinger Zero gives the titular Mazinger ZERO a number of broken abilities such as being able to alter probability so that even the slightest chance of failure when acting against it guarantees failure. In gameplay, this is nerfed down to anything under a 30% success rate, and it's never acknowledged in story at all, nor are most of the various other abilities that make ZERO different from a normal Mazinger. It still manages to be The Dreaded simply because even without those powers, its weapons are still Mazinger Z's but amped up to a cataclysmic scale.
- Shockwave in Transformers: Fall of Cybertron gets really downgraded compared to his animated counterparts. He's the Evil Genius of the Decepticons, but relies on the Insecticons to fight for him. In most incarnations, Shockwave is a Genius Bruiser who was a potential candidate to be the leader of the Decepticons if Megatron were to fall in battle. This one displays no skills of fighting or leadership whatsoever compared to Starscream and even cowers at the site of Grimlock in his T.rex form. Averted in its later prequel, Transformers: Rise of the Dark Spark, where Shockwave has a level as a playable character and is not only as battle-competent as anyone else, but shows that he essentially gained control over his Insecticon minions by beating them into submission.
- Some special weapons in Vermintide II are much weaker than what is described within the lore of Warhammer:
- Bardin's Drakegun and Drakefire Pistols. In-game, they are a typical example of Video Game Flamethrowers Suck. In lore, Drakefire is the fantasy equivalent of napalm. It burns white-hot for days on end, and the heat is so intense that even heavy gromril plating crafted by master Dwarf artisans cannot protect from it; Irondrakes have to be provided with special armour enchanted with magical runes just to stop the operators from broiling themselves alive with their own weapons.
- Kerillian can use arrows tipped with Hagbane poison. It creates a little puff of green smoke that takes a couple of seconds to kill anything they hit, and deal decreased damage from impact compared to normal arrows (which is why many Kerillian mains consider it Awesome, but Impractical and stick with her basic Longbows most of the time). In lore, Hagbane poison is crafted from forest deadwood corrupted by the spilt blood of a particularly evil Beastlord, Morghur the Shadowgave, and is so potent that, quoting official description, "should one of these arrows so much as break the skin, their victim is destined to end their life in screaming agony".
- Kruber and Saltzpyre's repeater handguns have much lower damage-per-shot than handguns to avoid making them straight upgrades, which is what they are on the tabletop. On the other hand, blackpowder guns also only take two or three seconds to reload and shoot again; presumably this is Rule of Fun, as taking half a minute out to reload your matchlock pistol/musket would rapidly kill any enjoyment out of using them.
- War in Middle Earth despite being at the core a strategy game portrays the Nazgul as surprisingly weak. Even right at the beginning of the game just the four hobbits have a good chance of killing a lone Nazgul, should they encounter one.
- Warhammer 40,000:
- Dawn of War (the first game in the series) does this to Space Marines, both Loyalist and Chaos ones. In the lore, they are quintessential Super Soldiers, vastly superior to most enemies they can encounter, but taking a lot of time and resources to properly create and equip. The game makes them individually much weaker but more numerous; during one game mission or skirmish, one can easily lose so many battle-brothers that it would be a crippling blow to their Chapter, if it counted.
- Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun does this to Chaos Space Marines. In the lore, they're as powerful as Loyalist Space Marinesnote and have additional advantage of being blessed by Chaos Gods. Boltgun, however, turns them into Cannon Fodder as a lone, even if exceptional, Loyalist Space Marine slaughters them in hundreds. This is particularly glaring with Chaos Terminatorsnote , whom Malum Cadeo easily kills in troves with a mere shotgun (which wouldn't even dent their armor lore-wise). Announced sequel to Boltgun takes it even further, making a lone Adepta Sororitas (a non-enhanced human with lighter versions of Space Marine armor and weapons) wipe the floor with the whole Black Legion just like Malum Cadeo did.
- The Primarchs are described as living gods and show it in the novels (doing things like stopping a Titan with their bare hands). But in the Talisman Horus Heresy video game, the Primarchs are really no better than the regular Space Marine heroes in the game (for example Corvus Corax has a melee ability of 3 and shooting of 2, while a Space Marine Praetor is 3 and 3 in those skills).
- Berserk gets hit with this in Wild ARMs: Million Memories. In both the original game and its remake, winning against him in Adlehyde resulted in him mocking you for failing to give him a challenge. In this game, your party absolutely trounces him at the same point, and he fares even worse in later fights. This is justified as your party is significantly larger and he spent the last thousand years Taken for Granite in the Abyss.
Web Animation
- Dark Secrets of Garry's Mod: G-Man's control over spacetime is simply nonexistent in this series and has the same abilities as regular human.
- Gaming All-Stars:
- In their home series, the Rabbids are usually shown to be pretty durable, but here, it does not take much more than a pickaxe to the head for Steve to kill one of them.
- In Super Mario Galaxy 2, Cosmic Clones are nigh-invincible and only vanish after the player grabs a star. In this series, they are easily taken out by ToeJam & Earl, a far cry from the Mario doppelgangers' original incarnation.
- SMG4: Bowser from the games is a rage-fuelled One-Man Army that even the Mario Bros. have trouble with. The Bowser in this series is easily pummeled and restrained and much more prone to collapsing into a sobbing heap when things go wrong.
- Many villains in Something About are a lot less threatening there than they are in their source material. No matter how much of a fight they're able to put up in their source material, they all tend to be defeated within a minute, if not seconds, by the protagonists. There are a few exceptions to this, being the Bonus Game car, 02, and the Speed Demon.
Webcomics
- Though not physically weaker in Akuma's Comics, Dr. Cossack is portrayed as a less impressive roboticist. His Robot Masters are revealed to have been created by Dr. Wily and Cossack stole the credit, both to get back at him for kidnapping Kalinka and because his own robots weren't impressive. That said, he does make original Robot Masters later in the strip.
- While Palpatine in Darths & Droids is still relatively formidable — a ruler and a Master Swordsman — compared to the original, he goes from being the Big Bad, The Chessmaster and generally the most dangerous character in the series to someone who gets manipulated more than he manipulates others, is unsure about his harsh methods for Utopia Justifies the Means, and gradually loses his grip on sanity (and not in the enjoyable kind of way either).
- Lore Olympus:
- In the Greek myths, Thanatos was the personification of death, feared and hated by all, and is close to Hades in the Underworld food chain. In the comic, he's a mid-range employee at Undercorp and something of a whiny suck-up. He's frequently belittled by his superiors and co-workers and it's implied that anyone could fill his shoes in retrieving mortal souls.
- Ares is shown to be the only Olympian Zeus is afraid of and the only one who can physically stand up to him. However, in the original myths, Zeus frequently has to help Ares in even minor fights and he makes it clear that he considers his son the most pathetic of all the gods and that he would have killed him if it wasn't for his mother.
- In My Hero Academia: 10-B, Izuku is this to both Ben and to the Canon Izuku according to author comments. In a post MaariiBoops states that there are two reasons for this. First is because there are 20 students in each class who would have no reason to be in the story if Izuku became too powerful. The second reason is thematic, Izuku's quick thinking is the core focus of his growth, so even one more alien would disrupt this theme. This means no quick changing or master control. In addition, there are three disqualifying factors for what transformations will be unlocked. There will be no OP formsnote , no additional transformations that share the same powers as other transformations, and no transformations that combine the powers of multiple other transformationsnote , since almost every other quirk is a single power. Stated best in this post
MaariiiBoops If by the end of the series a peak condition Izuku Kayama is somehow able to beat Izuku Midoriya at the height of his power, then that's a sign I've lost sight of the AU's original purpose.
Web Original
- Hellsing Ultimate Abridged:
- In the source material, Luke Valentine was always a Big Bad Wannabe, but his Badass Boast about how he surpassed Alucard in every way managed to impress him for a bit, though the moment was short-lived the instant Alucard went Release Restraint Level 1 on his ass and discovered that Luke was all bark and little bite. Even then, Luke at least attempted to fire back with a Breaking Speech before he was rendered "dog food" by Alucard's familiar. Here, all of Luke's hyping just annoys Alucard (though the annoyance was more so caused by him breaking his recently-acquired television), and he's hardly taken the least bit seriously before Alucard reduces him to an inelegant mess.
- Schrödinger gains a weakness that was absent in canon: his powers can be activated only when Schrödinger himself is not observed by someone else.
- One Piece Is Hilarious: Zig-Zagging Trope with Sugar's Hobby Hobby Fruit's memory erasing effect for the sake of Rule of Funny. During Doflamingo's POV of Dressrosa, Sugar can erase memories because it makes for a funnier scene to have the Warlord forget one of the toy slaves in his room is a random one-legged swordsman who can jump him the moment Sugar is defeated. During Jimmy's POV, their memories are kept because it would be more humorous to have Jimmy get distracted trying to find Nico Robin a cowboy hat.
- In Shadowrun Storytime, the GM took except to WildCat being something of a Creator's Pet in the canon Shadowrun universe. Instead of being the Sioux Nation special forces, he downgraded them to a fourth-rate police PMC just one step above the laughably incompetent HardCorps.
- Played for Laughs with Silver in the Real-Time Fandub of Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), who suffers from insomnia and depression, moans in pain whenever he's attacked, and struggles to carry Elise as an 11-year-old girl.
- Sword Art Online Abridged inflicts this on The Skull Reaper, the titular game's 75th boss. Its original counterpart puts up a brutal fight with its speed and One-Hit Kill attacks before it's finally destroyed by the entire raid party. In the abridged series, Skull Reaper only gets a short amount of time to show that it was probably intended to be just as bad as canon (as it one-shots the party tanks) before it glitches out and self-destructs. Of course, its abrupt death didn't open the exit door, leaving the raid party stranded.
- Yakuza: Powered by Nihon Toitsu: In both Yakuza 1 and Yakuza Kiwami, Kyohei Jingu was a major Climax Boss, managing to put Kiryu on the backfoot (though part of his difficulty can also be attributed to him being a Flunky Boss). In this live-action mini-series adaptation, Jingu doesn't even put up much of a fight. After Kiryu takes out all of his goons, he exhausts his three remaining bullets, trying to fire at Kiryu in a panic and missing all of his shots. Jingu attempts to bribe Kiryu as a last-ditch effort before getting his lights knocked out in one punch.