Weaponized Weakness
What should be a hinderance turns into a strength
Better Name Up For Grabs Needs Examples Better Name

(permanent link) added: 2012-11-10 13:00:45 sponsor: KJMackley edited by: Paradisesnake (last reply: 2014-01-17 22:17:34)

Add Tag:
Nearly everyone has an Achilles' Heel, or some sort of Fatal Flaw that keeps them from performing at their absolute best. At the absolute worst they may even be The Load because of it. The skills they do offer are limited and anything else they exhibit doesn't seem like something that could help in the situation they are in.

But with a little creativity and the right circumstances, what seems to be a severe weakness can be utilized to their advantage. Maybe intimidating the bad guy to do some Power Copying also takes their Kryptonite Factor. Or the forensics lab assistant finds out their minor in Astrology is able to assist the veteran detectives on a case.

Effectively a subversion of the Achilles' Heel. Compare Chekhov's Skill, Disability Superpower, What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?, Heart Is an Awesome Power and This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman.


  • In Legally Blonde, Elle managed to get into Harvard Law School because of her excellent grades, but those grades were for a Fashion Degree and not much with regards to preparing her for the legal arena (political science or business degrees are most common). But when allowed to work on a high profile case, she managed to use her knowledge of fashion to poke a massive hole in the prosecutions defense via their key witness.
  • The Phantom Menace: Some people noticed that for all of Jar Jar Binks faults and clumsiness, he often ends up as the perfect Spanner in the Works and becomes his own Person of Mass Destruction whenever an action scene comes his way.

Live-Action Television
  • Used in Neds Declassified School Survival Guide, where Ned has a bad habit of procrastination and had a major project due within a few weeks. Mr. White encouraged him to use his procrastination to his advantage by parsing it down into smaller and more manageable pieces, thus being able to do what seems like distracting busy work but is actually moving him somewhere.

Video Games
  • In Halo 4, Cortana had slowly been going crazy via Rampancy, a condition where AI's have been online for so long they are trying to think about everything and can't focus. In the climax Cortana has Master Chief plug her into the computer system guarding the Doomsday Device and she purposely spills out her rampancy into the system to compromise its integrity.
replies: 88

Privacy Policy