r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Character_Growth_397 • 13h ago
Powers [Mixed Trope] Stripping heroes of their power or main power
I don't mean adaptations where they no longer have their powers, I mean them literally losing their powers
Justice League Apokolips War - Darkseid injects Superman with kryptonite which makes him lose his powers, turning him basically into a normal guy. While I really dislike this movie, I think Superman is one of the redeeming aspects of it as it shows that Clark will still be a hero without his powers and leaving him alive was a mistake on Darkseid's part
Green Lantern Future State - The Green Lantern corps lose their power rings, I honestly wasn't a fan of this one as I felt it took away what made them interesting
Naruto - In the end of the series Kakashi loses his Sharingan
The Unworthy Thor - As the title suggests, during this run Thor was unworthy of the Mjolnir, which was taken by Jane Foster
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u/no_technique 13h ago
Better Superman example - Justice League animated series episode "Hereafter" where Supes gets sent 30,000 years to the future when Earth's sun has turned red, and takes away his powers.
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u/BlameTheButler 13h ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/WYbbmUWZ7P25o75gDn
Deku (My Hero Academia)
At the end of the series he’s back to being g quirkless, however he doesn’t allow this to define him. He continues to teach the next generation of heroes and eventually gets a special suit of tech that allows him to return to crime fighting.
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u/Papaburk 12h ago
He gives it away, but All Might fits the trope. He still finds a way to join the fight anyways.
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u/Character_Growth_397 12h ago
He loses his power after passing AFO to Deku, so he does lose his power
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u/HauntingStar08 12h ago
Okay but you buried the lede here in that darkseid literally tattooed superman's own symbol on his chest with kryptonite, holy fuck
That's the most metal thing a villain has done in a while
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u/Kayteqq 12h ago
Fun fact: Kakashi without sharingan is actually stronger than with it, because he still has all the techniques he gathered and sharingan was draining his chakra way to much, because he wasn’t compatible with it. He even developed a version of chidori he can use without the sharingan.
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u/Book_Anxious 12h ago
Kakashi got the best outcome. He lost the sharingan but he has all the jutsus he stole and since most of his chakra isn't going to his eye anymore he has so much more reserves. so he can fight longer and stronger than before. He literally went from elite Jonin level to hokage level because he can use all of his chakra now
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u/RealDanoFano 12h ago
I don’t remember the exact details but at the end of the ultimate Spider man show, doc ock manages to create a cure to depower spider man and destroys his web shooters
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u/ducknerd2002 12h ago
Happens several times in Ninjago:
Losers in either the Tournament of Elements or the Tournament of the Sources have their powers taken (with the ToE it's part of the villain's evil plan, with the TotS they're temporarily given to the winner of each round and returned once the tournament concludes)
When Morro possessed Lloyd, the other Ninja lost access to their powers
After almost being killed by Garmadon, Lloyd lost access to his powers
Aspheera once drained Kai's Fire and used it for herself
The Ninja couldn't access their powers in Prime Empire (they didn't have enough XP for those upgrades), or in the Shintaro dungeon (Vengestone blocks Elemental Powers)
Aspheera drained Nya's powers to separate her from the Endless Sea
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u/DimensioT 12h ago
JLA: Act of God. All superpowered beings on Earth lose their powers all at once.
It could have been an interesting concept, but it was really character assassination with too many unexplained questions. Why did Martian Manhunter lose his abilities when his "powers" were really just things that his species could do naturally? What happened to all of the Atlanteans other than Aquaman, who could no longer breathe underwater? Most technology-based powers continued to work (though technology-based characters started suffering breakdowns later) but Green Lantern rings stopped working even though they were just alien technology. Also, Superman became mopey and depressed after losing his powers and eventually Lois leaves him -- because she apparently only loved him for his powers, even though in the comics she not only had stayed with him through extended periods of him being powerless but they got married at a time when he had been depowered with no indication of his powers coming back.
In reality, the three-part comic seems to be nothing but the author's attempt to glaze Batman. The "happy" ending has a bunch of formerly powered superheroes learning to embrace powerless heroism by training under Batman. And also Superman and Wonder Woman hook up, because that seems to be a popular pairing amongst the simple-minded.
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u/NanaDTio 12h ago
I watched the Justice League War movies without reading anything online and thought they were really cool. Human Clark Kent squaring up to fight Darkseid, Trigon taking over and then Superman overpowering him.
It was dumb fun, and exactly what I’d want the cartoon movies to be
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u/JustStormax 1h ago
they were really cool
Despite the absolute gore fest in the first quarter of the movie?
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u/Anybro 12h ago
Power Rangers Dino Thunder.
To transform into Power Rangers. They need to use these special crystals called Dinogems, imbued to their morphers. During the final battle, they use all the power that's in the gems into one final attack to defeat the ultimate villain. But the cost of the gems completely losing power, thus making it where they can no longer transform or use their powers that came with the gems.
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u/juijaislayer 12h ago
Yea but Kakashi losing sharingan almost helped him, he was going blind and it ate his chakra like crazy
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u/WhichHoes 12h ago
Plus he only used like 4 of the jutsu he learned anyway. Bro was in a coma everytime that eye patch dropped
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u/ConnectCulture7 12h ago
Kakashi apparently got stronger without the Sharingan.
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u/Poku115 12h ago
He can use more jutsus since he doesnt have the constant drain of the sharingan anymore but cant use chidori effectively, so he creates a better version lol
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u/ConnectCulture7 12h ago
It’s called purple lightning, right?
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u/PhantasosX 12h ago
Yeah, it diminished the speed and kinetic force of the chidori, but is more freeform/modular. In a sense, you could say that chidori have more power, but design-wise as a jutsu, purple lightning is better.
It follows that trope of "prototype is stronger than the final product, but the final product is more usable", with chidori been the prototype.
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u/PhantasosX 12h ago
I mean, "better version" is a strong word. I dare say Chidori is still better than the new jutsu Kakashi created.
But you know, his new jutsu effectively fix the issue of not having a sharingan, so it's an improvement over the chidori's main flaw.
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u/Character_Growth_397 12h ago
Then why did he just, not use the sharingan? He got stronger because he was getting stronger throughout the story, not because he lost the sharingan
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u/PhantasosX 12h ago
yeah, Kakashi is only "stronger" in the sense he have enough chakra to use the jutsus he copied and learned.
But it's a bit of a side-step. Since his sharingan had the Kamui and that is better than most jutsus in general.
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u/mklilley351 12h ago
I really liked it when Thor lost his hammer and was in a spiral of "i can't do it i don't have my hammer I can't beat her" and Anthony Hopkins as Oden asks him "Are you Thor the god of hammers?"
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u/JustAChillGuy609 12h ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/igtWcUaB6r0ee7mMJw
Deku gave up One For All to save Tenko Shimura
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u/FunWrangler666 12h ago edited 3h ago
Avatar: The Last Airbender
Ang is boardline killed by Azula until revived by Katara. This gives him an injury that makes him no longer able to enter the Avatar state for almost an entire season.
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u/13-Penguins 12h ago
Wonder Woman’s “mod” era, in which she loses her powers, boyfriend, and the Amazons (them leaving Earth for some time), but continues fighting crime as a fashionable super spy.
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u/BlueCrabbedPM 11h ago
Eddie Brock losing the Venom symbiote for over a decade irl. He was powerless for half of this duration and bonded with different symbiotes for the other half. But even when bonded to a different symbiote, without the Venom symbiote, Eddie's personality was very different and the character "Venom" was basically dead.
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u/Mysterious_Math_1204 12h ago
Amon or Noatak strips Avatar Korra of her bending abilities (The Legend Of Korra)
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u/That-Rhino-Guy 12h ago
Why the image being bisons?
Also to be fair she did awaken airbending after so many struggles which shocked Amon, helping her subsequently defeat and expose him as a bender before Aang was able to restore her other elements
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9h ago
[deleted]
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u/That-Rhino-Guy 9h ago
No I love the fluffy creatures, just confused as the image isn’t related to the text
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u/Jealous-Log7744 12h ago
My Hero Academia ends with the protagonist killing the bad guy by punching his superpowers into him so hard they're destroyed and after all is said and done he's left as powerless as he was at the start of the story
But his class paid for him to get a bootleg iron man suit.
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u/Tight_Grapefruit5280 12h ago edited 12h ago
Iron man 3, Tony spends half of the movie with nothing but a prototype armor that's low on charge
There's a great scene where he takes some materials from hardware store, makes a gun with them and then invades mandarin's base with nothing but that gun
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u/Level_Counter_1672 12h ago
Jotaro lost his powers twice, in part 3 he was turned into a child at which point he didn't have his stand and then in part 6 his stand was stolen from him putting him in a coma - source is Jojo's bizarre adventure
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u/ElkAcrobatic4862 12h ago
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u/LordToxic21 12h ago
Downvoted because it's stripping heroes, not piece of shit, narcissistic rapists.
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12h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/DienekesMinotaur 11h ago
Not really, he still has the suit, it's just that his body is too old to keep fighting, even with an advanced super suit.
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u/dragons_scorn 11h ago
Goku and Krillin in the Forest of Terror in DragonBall Super. The forest creates life like illusions using memories of their past enemies that grew stronger not only with fear but whenever they used ki (energy in the English dub). This meant no transforming, no blasts and no flying.
It forced Goku to rely on his Flying Nimbus to quickly maneuver the area and Krillin to develop the ability to perfectly control his ki and fear
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u/Mandarina_Espacial 5h ago
Is the unworthy thor the comic where he stop being worthy because Nick Fury told him that Gorr was right and he instantly lost the power of mjolnir?
Also, after that he began to live in a moon and start to train to be worthy again, but he becomes so worthy that he outmatch mjolnir by punching him so hard that mjolnir admits that it is not worthy of thor
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u/BlackDwarfStar 12h ago
There’s a run of Spider-Man where he loses his Spider Sense, one of his primary abilities. He ends up learning martial arts from Shang Chi to compensate until it returns.
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u/RadProTurtle 12h ago
Samus at the start of every game. She always loses her upgrades and has to find them again.
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u/shigogaboo 12h ago
At a certain point, it’s kinda her fault for not having backups
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u/RadProTurtle 12h ago
I think she did have backups on her ship in Metroid Dread but lost access to her ship until the end of the game.
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u/pokemonguy3000 12h ago
Deku.
As others have said, he gave up his powers to try and save the villain.
But I actually hate this example because he explicitly fails to do so, and has to kill shigaraki anyway, who just spit in deku’s face for all that effort.
(It is explicitly stated several times he could have ended the fight long before that point if he didn’t decide to risk all of Japan for someone who refused to be saved)
Then he’s right back where he started, a quirkless kid who gave up on being a professional hero, and it’s undone 8 years later with a power suit that mimics his quirks anyway.
(don’t @ me with he’s still a hero bs, because he was after the job of pro hero, and gave up until he got another handout. If helping people was all he wanted, and he was truly fulfilled being a teacher, he would have let someone else have the suit, who needed it more than his completely fulfilled self)
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u/sonadow365 4h ago
Absolute Power , amanda waller le quita sus poderes a practicamente todos los heroes y planea hacerlo en todo el multiverso
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u/Banes_Addiction 12h ago
I don't have a specific example, I just wanna comment on that Unworthy Thor cover. The quote at the top sounds like a really carefully selected sentence from a bad review. It doesn't say it's good, it says it sounds like it should be.
"The appeal is obvious. Unfortunately, it's shit"
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u/Peachypizz 13h ago
Superman in superman 2. I love when a story takes away a hero’s powers and forces them to face the world as just another person. It makes getting those powers back feel earned
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u/NinjaOfOnion 13h ago
There was also that Superman story where he decides to lose his powers permanently at the end and becomes a regular person, it was called Whatever Happened To The Man of Tomorrow