"So the Khrimalith defenses are keyed to disable when someone does the thing that Khrima's greatest foes do best?"
"Remember who we're talking about here."
"Remember who we're talking about here."
— Adventurers!, "Hanging a lampshade"
A plot carefully constructed to use all the character-specific skills or abilities of the ensemble. Often referred to as "Eigen Plot", after a mathematical concept of mapping graphs around specific vectors.
For example, if your team plays Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors, they're going to have to face a water trap, a fire trap, an air trap, and an earth trap.
As a plot, it's a double-edged sword; don't do it, and someone gets left out. Do it too often, and it looks like the bad guys are conspiring with the good guys to tailor their defenses to the heroes' strengths. Also, when one of the heroes has a lame power, there has to be a really bizarre obstacle in there to require their ability or An Aesop on the uses of less flashy talents.
Most often occurs in series with heavy Superhero Speciation. Can be the result of a Thematic Rogues Gallery. A good hypothetical example is if the Justice League had to destroy a nuclear threat. Superman and other flying members would take out the strategic bombers, the not-launched missiles would go to the grounded members, such as Batman, and the sub-launched missiles would go to Aquaman.
As a variation, this may apply to multiple abilities or items which a single character has; each item or ability will always find some contrived use. This "item-ized" version of this trope is applicable to the gameplay environment design of metroidvania games; see Utility Weapon, Ability Required to Proceed, and New Weapon Target Range. Similarly, many games make use of this to subtly teach you how to use your new toy by making it necessary to use to escape the area you acquired it in: you learned to swim and now the only way out is underwater, you gained a grapple gun and the only way out is a sheer wall, etc.
In Comic Books, often the most limiting when dealing with any character whose power is water (especially underwater) based.
Compare This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman, which is when the plot improbably makes use of a single character's abilities. This frequently comes up in a Tournament Arc, where the heroes will have to pair off against their equal and opposite villains. It's also common in Tabletop RPGs, where it serves as a way to ensure that everybody's doing enough stuff to have fun.
Contrast with one-off stories involving The Caper or an Impossible Mission, in which members of the team are usually chosen precisely because their abilities are suited to the obstacles the team is likely to face.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, REALLY Love You:
- Chapters 97-99 feature Rentarou's Family participating in a Quad Town Public Sports Festival. A rival town's mayor has done everything within his power to rig the games in his favor. The pro athletes hired to be ringers dominate the mens' division of the competition but, after some initial difficulty, the girls manage to make up the gap in the womens' section. This is in part because the rival mayor's attempts to cheat are exactly countered by the girls participating in the respective events. Seemingly impossible demands in a costume creating contest and scavenger hunt are thwarted by Ahko's creativity and Uto's talent for sophistry. Substituing a a slice of bread in a bread eating race for a full loaf doesn't slow Big Eater Kurumi down for a moment, while Mei can run a blindfold race better than her opponent with a see-through blindfold due to already having her Eyes Always Shut. The final event is a 19-person relay race, which exactly matches the number of girlfriends in Rentarou's Family at that point in time.
- Chapter 128 features Shizuka, Kusuri, Chiyo, Momiji, Yaku, and Suu participating in a Fall Guys-based game. Each girl is able to navigate the obstacles to ensure success. Chiyo's OCD triggers her into organizing an obstacle course, clearing the way. Shizuka's extremely low weight lets her bounce high enough to reach the goal and collect the enough of the items needed to pass for everyone. Kusuri's and Yaku's resistance to drugs prevents a sleeping gas from affecting them, allowing them to pull everyone through. Suu's Number Obsession allows her to guide everyone through a game that requires standing on the right numbers at the right time. Finally, the last round requires everyone to hang onto a pillar without falling off. Everyone forms a chain to keep Shizuka from falling, with everybody ultimately held up by Momiji's "nutso grip strength" (or "grope strength", if you agree with Chiyo). Their combined skills allows everyone to succeed and win their prizes.
- Bleach:
- Ichigo vs Zaraki Kenpachi. Of all the captains for Ichigo to face, the first happens to be the Blood Knight who prefers an even fight over a Curb-Stomp Battle (although Kenpachi had been actively seeking Ichigo out since the moment he entered Seireitei). This provides Ichigo with the necessary motivation to tap into Protagonist Power and undergo the first of several power jumps that would be necessary to survive the arc. As we later find out, if Kenpachi had actually been trying, he would have wrecked Ichigo.
- Double Subversion with Uryu Ishida vs Mayuri Kurotsuchi. Both are highly intelligent and analytical and both love to point out the shortcomings of their opponents. At first, it seems like a subversion, until Kurotsuchi's arrogance from assuming he'd already analyzed everything about the Quincy proves to be his undoing. Quincy had two powers that he didn't know about, and the first happens to be the only one that can defeat Kurotsuchi's Shikai ability, and the second happens to be the one most perfectly tailored to fighting in a world made entirely of the stuff it uses for ammo. Even earlier, Ishida fought a 3rd Seat shinigami whose Zanpakuto ability is splitting into projectiles. Unfortunately for him, it's damn near impossible to out-projectile a Quincy.
- Kenpachi vs. Kaname Tousen. Tousen has an ability which causes complete deprivation of the opponent's every sense except touch in order to demoralize and terrorize them. Unfortunately for him, he was fighting Bleach's premiere Combat Sadomasochist, and he isn't afraid of anything. Eventually, Kenpachi allows himself to get stabbed because he figures out that the only way to pin down Tousen is to trap the sword Tousen is holding, and the only place he can tell where the sword is, is when it's touching him. So, he tanks a sword to the gut, trapping the sword in his body, just to grab the man holding it. His hand accidentally grabs the sword as well as Tousen's hand, thereby accidentally defeating the Bankai - he openly admits he doesn't know how he won, he just got lucky. Also of note is that Tousen never fights anyone with this ability again outside of a flashback. Kenpachi was essentially the only opponent he used it against.
- In Hueco Mundo, Ishida and Chad fight a strong, slow and defensively powerful Hollow, and a Hollow whose ability is to rapid-fire hundreds of tiny projectiles, respectively. Ishida had just upgraded his bow to fire thousands of projectiles, and Chad could easily overpower the physical Hollow, so they just switched opponents.
- The "Ants vs. Dragons" mini-arc in Fake Karakura Town featured this in almost every fight:
- In Yumichika's battle against Charlotte Cuuhlhorne, Cuuhlhorne locks the two of them in an impenetrable black sphere, which allows Yumichika to use his power draining Shikai, which he has been hiding from all his co-workers (since it wasn't based on physical attacks, which was shunned in his division), and specifically said he's rather die than use it where anyone can see it.
- The above was also subverted: while Yumichika was hidden and thus able to use his true power to win, Ikkaku was fighting at the same time and wasn't hidden, leading to his loss. Then it's double subverted when the Fraccion that beat him (Poww, who has the ability to grow ginormous) is beaten by Captain Komamura, who has the ability to summon a creature that's even bigger.
- Izuru Kira has had the opportunity to use his ability to repeatedly double the weight of anything his sword hits (rendering it unable to be lifted) twice in canon. The first was against Matsumoto, whose own power could render his meaningless (causing their fight to be tailored to her), while the latter was in this arc against Avirama Redder, a bird Arrancar that uses his wings to fly. Kira was able to use his ability successfully the only time here, pinning Avirama to the ground with his own wings. However, almost anyone else could fight in mid-air without wings, and Avirama's wings were large, slow targets that he used for attack, transportation and defense, making him cripplingly dependent on them.
- When the Captains pull a Big Damn Heroes move to save the protagonists in Hueco Mundo, the level that the match-ups are one-sided is just unbelievable. These also run near-simultaneously with the above "Ants vs. Dragons" fights.
- Byakuya Kuchiki fights Zommari, who has the ability to take control of one object or body part with each of his 50 eyes. Too bad for him, Byakuya has millions of blades that obey his mental commands.
- Mayuri Kurotsuchi fights against Szayelaporro Granz, his evil (well, eviler) counterpart. Szayelaporro has an ability to resurrect himself after death by using the body of the person who killed him. Unfortunately for him, but Kurotsuchi and his Opposite-Sex Clone assistant have saturated their entire bodies with poisons. Furthermore, Szayelaporro has the ability to basically make voodoo dolls that allow him to crush the organs and bones of his target nearly at will... Kurotsuchi is the only other character in the series with enough insane science at his disposal that in the time between discovering this ability (used on the guys Szayelaporro was fighting before Kurotsuchi arrived) and getting to the site of the battle he had REPLACED ALL HIS ORGANS WITH FAKES to render himself immune! This is exactly as insane as it sounds for every single other character in the series.
- Kenpachi faces off against Nnoitra, whose Hollow ability basically amounts to brute force (multiple arms to maximize offense and defense and hard skin that can't be cut without a great amount of force). Kenpachi's insane amount of offensive power just cuts through this, when he finally gets serious enough to stop dicking around. But if Kenpachi had faced either the aforementioned Szayelaporro or Zommari, he would have been thoroughly screwed.
- Harribel, a hydrokinetic, fights Hitsugaya, a cryokinetic, while he's later supported by two Visored ex-lieutenants. Their abilities mostly negate each other, and her lack of interest in fighting him decisively takes up her time until the plot requires a conclusion.
- The manga version of the Mew Aqua arc in Tokyo Mew Mew had the aliens taking a mew aqua into the realm of each of the girls' influences (For example, Mew Mint, whose power is air, had a chapter with a mew aqua floating above Tokyo Tower.), as they tried to use it to fuel a Death Trap for both the girls and the rest of the city. It never ended up working. In the anime, though, this was abandoned and Ichigo got every single mew aqua, ignoring the other girls' elemental advantages.
- Digimon is often using it in a not too direct example, but still. In the first series (and second, and pretty much any) the Digimon would only evolve when the Chosen Children proved their specific most remarkable trait like love or honesty.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's brought on the Dark Signers, who were meant to fight and defeat the Signers. The group consists of people who have reasons to target the Signers, and many of them have weak points that are exploited by the opponent: Demak has a connection to the Duel Spirits and has Ancient Fairy Dragon, which connects him to Luca and allows her to get her Dragon; Jack's opponent is Carly, who ultimately forces herself to lose the duel to save Jack's life. Bommer becomes a Dark Signer in the middle of the arc, which gives Crow a chance to have a Riding Duel.
- The nightmarishly depressing mecha series Bokurano has a few examples. When the kid who's good at solving problems is chosen as the pilot (against his will, mind you), he happens to face a particularly strategically inclined opponent and is perhaps the only one able to unravel its tactics while successfully defending against them. Later, the emo kid chooses not to fight his opponent, which would doom the planet, but his opponent intentionally kills itself. This may very well be justified as you could easily interpret it to mean they're being assigned to fight the person in the other universe most like (or even exactly like) themselves.
- One Piece plays with this trope. It uses a fair number of these to drive home the theme of relying on friends. Every arc will have several fights and situations that will show off the varied skills (combat and otherwise) of the protagonists. For example, Luffy always gets to fight the Big Bad, Zoro often gets to fight the enemy's swordsman, and Sanji gets to fight the enemy's martial arts specialist.
- But then again there are also a lot of times where, in that they fight villain teams multiple times and not always with the best match up, and lose. By the time they get to the proper match up to defeat the villain the Straw Hats would have information on said villains.
- Luffy and Zoro always play it straight while Sanji usually subverts it at first before changing opponent, though justified in the case of Zoro, in that he is targeting the swordsman and his friends know it, so they consciously leave the swordsmen to him, if there are any around.
- Subverted in the third movie, where Zoro fights the martial artist and Sanji fights the swordsman.
- Sometimes invoked. Most notably in Enies Lobby:
Sanji: (to Usopp) Everyone has something he can and cannot do... I'll do whatever you cannot do, and you do whatever I cannot do!
- Usopp will either be matched against someone weak enough to barely lose to him (Arlong Arc, Alabasta Arc), or against an opponent with a fighting style specific enough so that Usopp has the best match-up against them (Little Garden Arc, Thriller Bark Arc, Fishman Island Arc), or won't get to fight at all but will meet at least one situation where his impossibly good sniper skills are required (Enies Lobby Arc, Dressrosa Arc).
- A parody of this trope is a minor Running Gag in the Punk Hazard Arc. Trafalgar Law will casually point out that they need someone with a specific power immediately before it's needed, and the Straw Hat with that very power is conveniently on hand. Lampshaded further when he asks for someone with power over wind who can blow away a cloud of poison gas his group was moments away from plunging into. The Marine soldiers he's with point out how absurdly lucky it would be for someone with that very powerset to be right there... only for Nami to pipe up that she can do exactly that.
- In the second-to-last mass battle of Rurouni Kenshin, Kenshin's True Companions are pitted against the Elite Mooks of the Big Bad, so four one-on-one battles ensue. It quickly turns into a subversion when it turns out that it was the mooks who picked their opponents based on each man's specialties.
- Ronin Warriors: The warriors are often pitted against their counterparts, such as Ryo and Anubis, but especially Sage (light) and Kale (dark).
- YuYu Hakusho does these nearly constantly. The plot arcs of the show rely heavily on Tournament Arcs, so this is to be expected, but except for Kuwabara sitting out the final arc, the core group members who actually do any fighting got to make major contributions in every arc of the show.
- In the second season of Mobile Fighter G Gundam all of Domon's Shuffle Alliance allies learn new ultimate attacks at the exact same time that they happen to fight Domon, the only opponent any of them have lost to, and they use these attacks against him (They, of course, lose again, because Domon is the main character and all). While this would sort of count, the more obvious example is, during the big, Gundam Fight Tournament ending battle royale on Lantau Island, they all use these techniques to help Domon get to Master Asia.
- Played with in the Sasuke Retrieval arc in Naruto placing the team against the Sound Four. While the big names were Naruto versus Sasuke, the other characters all had a strong showing. Large taijutsu user Chouji faces large taijutsu user Jirobou, while the pair Kiba and Akamaru face off with Ukon and Sakon. There was also the music-manipulator Tayuya versus the shadow-manipulator Shikamaru and taijutsu-expert Lee against kenjutsu-expert Kimimaro. Inverted in the case of melee combatant Neji, who faces long range combatant Kidoumaru.
- Kiba, Shikamaru, and Lee all had the trope inverted when it turned out they weren't a match for their opponents. It was only last-minute backup from the Sand that saved them... and said backup played the trope straight again (except for Gaara, who was saved by Deus ex Machina).
- Hilariously subverted in the second season of Black Butler. After giving attention to a number of odd characters early in the episode, once the train they're on is headed towards a broken bridge with a bomb strapped to it set to detonate if they stop and an assassin having kidnapped Ciel, they all get up an announce the skills they have that can save the day. Everyone rallies together, excited that they can pull it off, only for Sebastian to inform them he doesn't need their help before going and taking care of everything himself.
- Medaka of Medaka Box intentionally set the scavenger hunt up this way to help the participants grow as people. Some of the challenges were less than subtle, such as the Game Master Roleplaying Witch who could only be defeated by out-roleplaying her (there happens to be a girl deluded into believing she's the main character of a Magical Girl anime in the cast...). Unfortunately, Zenkichi is left out of this planning, leading to his Heel–Face Turn.
- In part 6 of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, the Big Bad is able to invoke/invert this. He has a large number of followers, and his Stand allows him to use Powers as Programs, enabling him to tailor the party to the plot.
- Happens coincidentally in Nyaruko: Crawling with Love! when an alien from a game company holds Mahiro's high school captive and offers to release the students if Mahiro's group can beat him. "Agent Smith" picks the games at which he excels, not realizing that the heroes completely outmatch him in every one; in Daifugō he faces Nyarko, who can create an infinite number of Joker cards, and in Darts he faces Mahiro, who has Improbable Aiming Skills when it comes to throwing forks.
- Invoked in My Hero Academia when the students have to fight the teachers for their final exams. Each match-up was deliberately chosen by the staff so that the students could make the most of their skillsets and powers and address their weaknesses to help them grow as heroes.
Comic Books
- Fantastic Four:
- Double Subversion in one issue: Cosmic beings conduct an experiment on the team, suppressing their primary characteristics (Reed's intellect, Johnny's temper, Ben's courage and Sue's compassion). Lo and behold, each one is presented with a challenge that is suited to a secondary characteristic - a monster protecting her child stirs Ben's compassion, an illusion suppressing Johnny's powers causes him to demonstrate surprising smarts, a battery of laser cannons forces Sue to summon up her courage, and an airtight cell forces Reed to tap his normally sublimated aggression to break free.
- Again with one of Doctor Doom's death traps for Reed, a simple corridor that keeps getting narrower and narrower, doors progressively sealing the way back. Reed is forced to push his stretching abilities to their limits in order to keep going... only to find a dead end.
- Sometimes discussed by characters who have the same powers as another, wondering the point in doubling up in powers. Best questioned by Elongated Man to Plastic Man in the miniseries Justice. Often answered: EM is a good guy, often said to be a competent detective and all, but PM is just more fun to have around to counteract how serious the other heroes are most of the time. Also, this leads to him using his powers in much more inventive ways than EM would.
- During the Apocalypse War arc of Judge Dredd, Dredd pulls together a team for a mission against the Soviets, including a telepath to obtain secret codes from the enemy's minds...and Judge Ocks, a Big Guy whose sole purpose on the mission seems to be to open a vehicle hatch.
- Played with (or perhaps double subverted) in a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures special, where reality-altering mole Headrush (acting on Splinter's behalf) tests the turtles with a series of threats obviously designed to fit the turtles' individual skills (a conveyor belt of doom for Donny, pizza monsters for Mikey, etc.). However, whenever it was time for a turtle to face his designated foe, Headrush would then incapacitate him, requiring one (and always one) of the other turtles to step in and handle the threat in his stead.
- The X-Men and spin-off teams repeatedly encounter obstacles that seem especially suited for one member or another. Some comics are worse than others, but the movies seem especially egregious as they essentially result in each character taking their "turn" to be in the limelight.
- Perhaps the worst offender was Cypher, whose ability to translate any language was not exactly suited to graphic storytelling. The writers consistently struggled to come up with plots that would make him useful. Later stories extended this power to include computer programming languages, allowing Cypher to become a master hacker and increase his range of expertise. It became especially obvious when you realized that the New Mutants - Cypher's team - encountered a foreign language that had to be translated in order to complete their objective on pretty much every major mission (if a doomsday device was about to destroy the world, you could bet it would include an instruction manual in an obscure alien language) but no other team ever seemed to encounter a language barrier.
- On the other end of the writing spectrum, the various X-Teams were often shown to train to gain greater mastery or find creative uses for their powers and to develop team tactics with creative combinations of powers (the most famous being the Fastball Special) specifically to try to avert this trope.
- The Transformers (Marvel): Used some few times, most notably in the Triggerbots' debut where each of them deals with one of the traps in Optimus Prime's way: Override dodges through some geysers, Dogfight cuts through a cable trap with his wings and Backstreet outruns a collapsing floor.
- During the DC comics series Infinite Crisis, while infiltrating the robotic OMAC satellite, Mister Terrific remarked that his power was to be invisible to technology. When asked whether such a power was useful, he replied, "It is today." Although given how many robots they end up fighting, that one just seems like a genuinely useful if slightly situational power.
- Legion of Super-Heroes: The Legion of Substitute Heroes were teenagers who applied to join the Legion, but their powers were too lame or too specific to be considered useful. But gosh darn if they didn't manage to save the day whenever fate conspired to present them with a crisis that only their lame and specific powers could handle. Example: Color Kid had the power to change the color of anything. Not very useful in a fight. But then he discovered that if he changed the color of green kryptonite, it no longer affected Kryptonians … while the Earth was engulfed in a green kryptonite cloud. In which case, Green Lantern should have permanently handcuffed himself to Color Kid, making both of them much more useful.
- Invoked and lampshaded in issue #33 of The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, where Squirrel Girl, her friends, and Kraven the Hunter are trapped in a series of deadly puzzle rooms which are solved by using their specific skills and super-powers. It turns out the Big Bad is secretly recording their escapades for a Reality TV Show on Mojoworld and uses the hero-specific traps to boost viewer interest.
Fairy Tales
- The French fairy tale Drakestail has the titular duck swallowing a fox, a ladder, a river and a wasp nestnote en route to demand his money back from the king. The king tries to murder him in various ways, but Drakestail is rescued every time by one of his companions, who just so happens to be suited for facing the problem at hand.
- The Russian fairy tale "The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship" follows this model perfectly. On his way to win a princess's hand in marriage, the Fool is obligated to pick up anyone who asks to come along with him. Each person he meets has a different bizarre skill, and each one saves his life once when he reaches the Czar and is subjected to various death traps and Impossible Tasks.
- The fairy tale "The Seven Simons" is about seven brothers named Simon, each of whom has one skill at which he excels—building an unbelievably fast ship, for example, or retrieving a piece of game no matter where it fell. Very specialized brothers, they are, and each skill just happens to be essential to winning the hand of a princess.
- "The Seven Chinese Brothers" tells about seven brothers who are all identical, and each of whom has a powerful ability (hearing, strength, weeping) or immunity (to fire, to cold, etc.) All of these powers allow them to evade execution and live happily ever after.
- The Brothers Grimm:
- In How The Six Made Their Way In The World, an unemployed soldier teams up with a strong man, a keen-eyed sharpshooter, a super-fast runner, a man who can blow gale-force winds out his nose, and a man who can generate a field of cold by straightening his hat to con a king out of a warehouse full of treasure.
- The Six Servants tells the story of a prince who wins the hand of a princess with the help of his six servants and their strange talents and powers, including one who can stretch out his neck to see far away, one who can hear just about anything with his enormous ears, a man who can stretch his body to incredible lengths, a man who goes around in a blindfold so he doesn't accidentally destroy things with the destructive beams he can fire from his eyes, a fat man who can consume enormous quantities of food and drink, and a man whose body produces biting cold in warm weather and burning heat in cold weather.
- Subverted in an Ethiopian folk tale: three suitors of a princess were sent afar to study some special abilities: the first one learned how to tell what was going on far away, the second one learned how to travel really fast, and the third one learned how to resurrect people from the dead. After they finished their studies, the first found out the princess had just died, the second took them all quickly to the princess, and the third one brought her back to life. This lead to a heated argument between the three men regarding which one of them deserves her for having saved her life, and so she is still a virgin to this very day.
- This folk tale is also included as part of Arabian Nights, though in that version the princes discover magic artifacts rather than having powers of their own.
- In The King of Ireland's Son, the eponymous prince gathers an assortment of traveling companions in his quest to find and marry the woman of his dreams, each of which has a gift that comes in handy during their quest.
Films — Animation
- Monsters vs. Aliens:
- When Susan/Ginormica gets depowered, the other monsters get to show what they can do. Who knew Dr. Cockroach had a Ph.D. in dance?
- Even Susan gets in on the act, using her uncanny ability to rollerskate using improbable gadgets.
Films — Live-Action
- The Adventures of Baron Munchausen gives the spotlight to the Baron's manservants in his wager with the Sultan. First, Berthold is dispatched to Vienna to procure some wine. When he takes a nap, narrowly missing the deadline, Adolphus wakes him up with a shot. Per the Sultan's agreement, The Baron is allowed to take as much treasure he can carry, which, thanks to Albrecht, is all of it. To escape from the Sultan's guards, Gustavus blows them away.
- Parodied and justified in Mystery Men. Invisible Boy has the power to become invisible, but only when no-one is looking, and only when he's not wearing clothes. But what modern evil genius doesn't use security cameras?
Invisible Boy: See that's what so cool about this team; I mean everyone has their own powers for all these different situations.
- In the climax of Sky High (2005), a situation arose for each one of the "sidekick" characters to show off their fairly useless powers. Zach, whose only ability was to glow in the dark, had his moment when he was used as a human flashlight by the protagonists escaping through a dark tunnel. Ethan used his ability to turn into a puddle to get the drop on a bully through a clever use of misdirection. Magenta, who could shapeshift, but only into a purple guinea pig, used her power to crawl through a small ventilation shaft and disable a bomb. As for Layla, well, she is a Badass Pacifist who could have used her Green Thumb powers at any time, but only does so when the situation demands it.
- Zoom: Academy for Superheroes, which regrettably came out about the same time as Sky High, shows the skeleton of its plot a little too often. The worst example of this is in the Final Battle, which isn't so much a battle as a recital. The Big Bad talks big for a few minutes, then gets hit by every main character's power exactly once, which puts him exactly where he needs to be so they can Finish Him!.
- In Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, the sequences of killer plant, flying keys, and life size chessboard allow Harry, Ron and Hermione to demonstrate their abilities. In the book, there were several other challenges (such as an angry troll that was supposed to be a guard, but was knocked out by the previous entrant) that made this fact less visible. In the book, it was stated that each obstacle was something from the area of expertise of one specific professor.
- Justified in Paycheck, as the main character was part of a team of researchers who reverse engineered a machine for viewing the future he was able to fill his pockets with just the right random crap to get himself out of the series of perilous booby traps, assassination attempts, and relationship problems that plagued him the rest of the film.
- The James Bond movies feature a variant type; whatever inventions Q cooks up for 007, they're always precisely what he needs for the mission. He rarely finishes the movie with an unused gadget and never needs more than one copy of a given device.
- Pretty much the whole point of Signs. All of the characters' neuroses and bad life experiences are essential to fighting off the aliens... leading the protagonists to deduce the existence of an "author".
- Spy Kids: In the climax, Juni uses his ability to mimic voices to speak in Floop's voice over the intercom. However, Floop was standing right next to him and could have done it himself.
- X-Men Film Series:
- In X-Men, to stop the machine, they needed both Storm's power and Jean's finer control to get Wolverine up to the torch, Wolverine's claws to land and to break the machine, his healing to bring Rogue back from near-death, and Cyclops' long-range Eye Beams as a back-up plan.
- X-Men: First Class: Xavier or Magneto probably could have found the Hellfire Club's submarine on their own, but Banshee can do it more easily by using his power as sonar. Beast's power isn't an obvious counter to Azazel's, but he's agile and strong enough to hold off Azazel, who is beaten when Mystique tricks him by turning into Shaw. Banshee and Havok team up to fight Angel.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- The Avengers has an interesting variation on this. Every member has a specific connection to the plot, but it has little to do with their actual powers. Iron Man was already the team consultant and his tower is used by Loki, Captain America had a previous engagement with the Tesseract, Thor's brother Loki is the mastermind behind the plot, Hawkeye has been brainwashed by Loki and knew of his plan, Black Widow is sent out to find and retrieve Bruce Banner, and Bruce Banner is tasked with finding the Tesseract since it emits gamma radiation and he is an expert in that field. Banner's involvement is extra interesting since, while the other members' special skills and powers are seen as a huge plus by S.H.I.E.L.D., Banner is meant to be brought in as a scientist and they try to make sure he won't turn into the Hulk (not that they are successful, mind you).
- The Suicide Squad parodies this as Waller tells Bloodsport, an expert fighter and marksman, that every member of his team has been selected because they possess a unique set of skills needed for the mission, then introduces Peacemaker, an expert fighter and marksman. It's clear that in truth the team members have been selected with minimal consideration, notably sending King Shark, a giant dumb Shark Man, on what is theoretically an infiltration mission, and not bothering to check whether Weasel could swim before having him jump from an airplane over the ocean.
Literature
- Frequently arises in A Series of Unfortunate Events, most obviously in The Vile Village. Reversed in The Miserable Mill, where the protagonists are each forced into situations best-suited to their siblings' specialties.
- Played with in China Miéville's Un Lun Dun: when the heroine learns that the apparently random and pointless series of quests she was supposed to follow were actually carefully designed so that she would end up with exactly the right set of items to deal with the final challenge. It occurs to her, a little too late, that skipping most of the quests to save time might not have been such a bright idea after all.
- Phèdre nó Delaunay, the main heroine of Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Legacy, is a professional courtesan. Among the challenges she faces, you would be surprised at how many of them she manages to solve by having sex with the right man or woman.
- There's an interesting play on this in the Alex Rider books. Yes, there are some similarities to Bond (meaning it's a blatant homage to Bond at times), but there are a few exceptions; for one thing, a lot of the gadgets are pretty generic, so it's not that difficult to think of somewhere to use them. The biggest subversion, though, is his metal-corroding zit-cream. He got it in the first book, where it was extremely handy and then continued to use it every so often for the next few books in the series, until it ran out.
- Used in every Xanth novel where a character wishes to ask the Good Magician Humfrey a Question. Entrance to Humfrey's castle is guarded by three specific Challenges suited to the Asker's abilities, designed to test the Asker and ensure the Question is not asked trivially. The castle's defenses typically prohibit the Asker from directly using their abilities to solve the challenges, requiring them to really think hard and come up with creative ways of using their abilities (or just plain being smart about what they're doing) in order to gain entry. Of course, it's Justified by the fact that Humphrey's the master of divination magic in all its forms, and can therefore know exactly who will be coming for him far enough in advance to get everything set up.
- Piers Anthony is rather fond of this trope; it's used again in Wielding a Red Sword. Mim (the Incarnation of War) is faced with a series of challenges to get in to see Gaia (the Incarnation of Nature). A series of demons are impersonating him, and Nature is using the challenges to keep them out of her hair, though they're things that Mim (either because of his own innate abilities, or because of his powers as War) can fairly easily bypass.
- The Jennifer Morgue openly invokes it, hanging lampshades all the while. Ramona says that Bob is caught up in an "eigenplot," and she can't reveal any details lest he become contaminated — he needs to be clean of any knowledge of what's going on so he can make it past the "semiotic firewall." She does, however, discuss concepts such as "danger in a foreign land," "encountering the enemy agent" and "joining with the Dark Anima." The "eigenplot" in question? Bob's been geased by the villain to enact the tropes of a James Bond movie, so that only one British agent tries to stop the plot for world domination — and, since the villain controls the geas, he can stop it when the only thing that could stop him becomes just another boffin.
- In Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, most of the defences set up by the Hogwarts staff to guard the Stone were more a set of challenges to be overcome with the right skills than absolute obstacles, and of course the three main characters just happened to have those skills. Most (though not all) challenges were coincidentally tailored to one of them: Hermione beat the Devil's Snare plant with knowledge and magic and the potion riddle with logic, Ron won a giant chess game, and Harry got to fly a broomstick to catch a key — and also turned out to be just the right person to obtain the Stone and to protect it from the villain.
- Each obstacle was also devised by the expertise of each Professor: Hagrid provided the three-headed dog, Professor Sprout provided the Devil's Snare, Professor Flitwick bewitched the keys, Professor McGonagall transfigured the chess pieces, Professor Snape devised the riddle of the potions, and Professor Dumbledore placed the Mirror of Erised.
- This is a key plot point of The Belgariad. The Purposes of the Universe, at war, set events in motion that are calculated to require very specific people to perform very specific tasks. It is openly explained and discussed among the characters. It also crosses heavily over into Xanatos Speed Chess.
- Master of the Five Magics by Lyndon Hardy has the protagonist being the whole party in this trope on his own. He becomes apprenticed to each of the five schools of magic in turn, in each case his previously learned skills allowing him to get better results than others without needing to spend years in study first. Justified, since it turns out the trail of magic items he follows was created specifically with this in mind, in order to produce someone with the necessary knowledge of all magic schools to defeat a demon invasion.
- Edgedancer (a novella of The Stormlight Archive): The story plays with this. Lift can make herself immune to friction, and the place she has to reach in a hurry is down a mild slope, so in theory, she should be simply able to slick herself and slide down. However, she can't get her balance right and keeps on falling flat on her face, so she ends up simply running there.
- The Unexplored Summon://Blood-Sign: In the first volume, the information that the main characters possess on the villains' plot would only be useful for Kyousuke, something even lampshaded in the narration. Justified, as the Big Bad, the White Queen, is completely obsessed with him. She specifically arranges things to get him involved, sometimes even giving him information directly. For the same reason, Kyousuke is the only one capable of (temporarily) defeating her, as she always holds herself back to avoid killing him.
- A rare villainous version of this trope occurs in The Night of Wishes, where the skills of both main villains are needed to complete their objective.
- The protagonist of Cooking With Wild Game makes food. Not magical food, or epic-level food, just food. So around the 11th volume or so, the plot starts stretching a bit to keep him relevant to it. Of course, when your premise is about a rural village of warriors who don't leave their village and live a relatively normal day-to-day life, unlikely Outside-Context Problems are necessary for there to be any plot at all.
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory inverts this with different rooms on the factory tour tailored to the different children's vices, to entice them into misbehaving and imperiling themselves.
- The Star Trek: The Next Generation/X-Men crossover novel “Planet X” features a team of X-Men being sent to the Star Trek universe where they have already previously met the crew of the Enterprise-E during a clash with Kang the Conqueror, leading to the Enterprise taking the mutants on board just in time to investigate a crisis where a Federation-allied planet has had a small percentage of its population manifest mutant-esque superpowers. When the Enterprise arrives, they come into conflict with another ship attempting to take the ‘transformed’ for themselves, which leads to the various X-Men present all having the chance to make an impact on the subsequent campaign. A particular example is when the Enterprise has to send a boarding party on to the enemy ship to shut down their shields long enough to send a larger team to attack; Nightcrawler can just about teleport across to the other ship through their shields if the Enterprise can get in close enough, and while Kurt has limited knowledge of alien technology and would be left exhausted after teleporting across that distance, Data can accompany him in complete certainty that he won’t experience any fatigue and has all the alien technical knowledge they could ask for. The way the X-Men arrive just in time to make a difference is later further justified with the revelation that Q was responsible for them arriving in the Trek universe under the relevant circumstances.
- "Cold Snap" by Kim Newman is a Crisis Crossover story that brings together characters from many of his earlier works. In-universe, they've been hastily assembled as the only people available at short notice who might be some use, without being specifically matched to the problem at hand. All the same, in the course of the story each character gets at least one moment where their particular capabilities are of use.
- James and the Giant Peach: When the heroes airlift the giant peach out of the shark-infested ocean using seagulls, they all play a part in this operation. The Earthworm is the bait to lure the seagulls; the Grasshopper and Ladybird pull him out of danger; James catches each seagull and tethers it to the peach stem; Miss Spider and the Silkworm spin the silk; the Glow-worm provides the light for them to work by; and the Centipede brings the silk to James.
- The Temp: When wealthy accountant Mark Henley date-rapes Donna, and the case is dropped for lack of evidence, Donna's friends construct an elaborate plan to destroy Mark Henley's reputation, with each of them playing a part. The plan involves hacking his computer to find out bank details and passwords, the title character taking a temporary job in his company, luring him out of his office by smashing his fancy car, keeping him distracted while the temp steals money from Mark Henley's clients in his name and plants child pornography on his computer. Finally, Donna gets to launch the ship by tipping off Mark Henley's clients of the fraud.
- Lampshaded in The Invisible Library novel The Untold Story: Irene thinks she needs a Dragon, a Fae and a human to get past the secret founders of the Library, but it turns out that what she actually needed was her friends, and their species was almost but not quite irrelevent. Kai is determined enough to fight the Dragon King even though he's outmatched, hoping that the King wouldn't kill his own grandson; Vale's nature as a Great Detective means that he cuts through the narrative spun by the Fae Storyteller, demanding solid facts; and Catherine, the Fae who wants to be a small-l-librarian more than anything, is able to argue against the justifications of the human founder that she's keeping books safe, saying that a mere hoard of books is not a library unless people can read them.
- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: Dorothy's companions have just the abilities needed to complete their quest. The Scarecrow can see in the dark, thinks up solutions to most of their problems, and his experience with crows lets him kills the witch's flock of crows. The Tin Woodman uses his axe to make a raft and an improvised bridge, kill a wildcat to earn the Queen of the Field Mice's favor, and kill the witch's wolves. They don't sleep, so they carry Dorothy out of the Poppy Field and keep watch at night, and their straw and tin save Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion from the Witch's bees. Finally, the Cowardly Lion has the strength and prowess to get them across a gorge and pull their raft ashore, and he scares the Winkie soldiers away with his roar.
Live-Action TV
- Subverted and played straight in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Sometimes all the Scoobies do is get in each other's way, and often their powers or special skills only mess things up more.
- But in "Primeval", Xander, Willow and Giles used their specific personalities to help Buffy.
- And in "The Gift", they each used their skills to fight Glory and her minions.
Xander: And the glorified bricklayer picks up the spare!
- A villain version happens with the introduction of the Trio. "Life Serial" has them ostensibly testing Buffy for weaknesses, when they're actually demonstrating their skills (and personalities) to the audience (Warren's skill is technology, Andrew's is demon summoning, and Jonathan's is magic).
- In the Bunk'd episode "Serf's Uprising", Lou intentionally defies this trope. She gave each main character a role for Renaissance Week that was completely opposite who they were. The confident beauty queen Destiny was a chamber maid. Finn, the follower, was made king. Matteo, the scared was made a knight. Gwen, the girl who was reluctant with her reading and writing was made a bard. Noah, someone who was not good with girls was given a romantic role. Ava, the sardonic and sarcastic counselor was made court jester.
- Pretty Little Liars have an unusually high rate of gay or bisexual women, mainly so that Lipstick Lesbian team member Emily can go through the same drama as the rest of the straight cast. (Not that that stopped her from being stalker by a straight Guy a few times)
- Done in the 16th and 17th episodes of the Greek detective sitcom In the Nick of Time (Sto Para Pente)
sporting 12 people brought together in an effort to save one of the main characters under the bad guys' noses. Hilarity Ensues. It is explicitly stated, by the protagonists, that their plot is structured to match every character's defining attribute of personality; only most of these characteristics are not talents but annoying habits. This is so because all these characters were initially introduced as secondary gag characters but are later proven to all be important in the plot.
- Inverted in Mission: Impossible, in which the characters tailored their abilities to The Caper at hand. Justified in that the mission leader would pick operatives appropriate for the specific mission and target ahead of time.
- Stargate Atlantis inverts the trope in the episode "Quarantine" when everyone is locked in various rooms and each person has a part of the skills that they need to get out of the situation, except no one is in a situation where they can use those skills: McKay (The Smart Guy) does not have a computer, so Sheppard (The Hero) has to do all the technical stuff; Ronon (The Big Guy) is locked in a room and is thus forced to do nothing; and Zelenka (another Smart Guy) has to do the dangerous air vent crawl that is pretty much Sheppard's trademark.
- Doctor Who:
- During the Episode 2 cliffhanger fight in "Robot", the new Doctor shows off his personality by using all the comical parts of his new outfit as a weapon against the K-1 - he uses the hat to block the robot's vision, the scarf to trip it up, and the contents of the oversized pockets to distract it.
- "Journey's End" is carefully designed so that the resolution requires the TARDIS to be linked to the Cardiff Rift via Mr Smith, using base codes provided by K-9. Something similar happens in the previous episode "The Stolen Earth", when Mr Smith, the Rift and the Subwave network are all used to contact the Doctor.
- In Sanctuary, in the Season 1 Finale, five characters, each with a distinct "power", are given some form of challenge that makes use of that power, and all five must complete their challenges in order to obtain the "source blood" that they were after. Two of the five, however, had abilities that did not lend themselves well to dangerous challenges. Specifically, the man who had been gifted with ultra-high IQ had to figure out which of two doors he was to enter based on which of two Latin phrases more accurately meant "truth", while the woman who had been gifted with longevity had the task of personally knowing her father, who was the creator of the challenges.
- Will does tease Magnus about her contribution, though, lampshading the less-than-exciting nature of her "superpower."
Will: And what's your power? Just showing up for the meeting after 135 years?
Magnus: I'd like to see you do it.
- Will does tease Magnus about her contribution, though, lampshading the less-than-exciting nature of her "superpower."
- Smallville, in the episode "Justice": Arthur Curry, the future Aquaman, would have been entirely useless if it weren't for the location of the enemy base; next to water and with an aquatic entrance.
- In an episode of Team Knight Rider, the team figures out where a group of thieves is going to strike by finding the one place that would require all their individual skills. One of them was a contortionist.
- Leverage actually inverts and reconstructs this, In-Universe:
- Hacker, Hitter, Grifter, Thief, Mastermind... and none of it would work if they were short a skill. They quickly realize the need to understand the rudiments of each other's specialties, and cross-train accordingly, just in case. A season or two into the series, everyone on the team is capable of basic pick-pocketing (lifting things like ID or a wallet); establishing and maintaining a basic cover identity; defending themselves in a fight against opponents without professional combat training; and even planning particular stages of the job. Only the hacking skills and the actual masterminding remained mainly specialized (though the computer guy is slowly being trained in how to plan jobs).
- And by the end of the series everybody has taken a level on a job; they can all do some minor hacking, and the Thief — who planned complex jobs when working alone — becomes the new nominal Mastermind.
- Warehouse 13:
- The It's a Wonderful Plot Christmas Episode has Pete assemble the regular team, even though in this universe they don't know him or trust each other, in order to break into the Warehouse. This requires Artie's knowledge of the Warehouse (to get to the back door), Myka's knowledge of literature and language (to access the door), Claudia's mad tech skillz (to hack the security system), and Pete's vibes (to tell which of the identical doors in the next corridor is a bad door to go through).
- Inverted in the episode "Buried" where Pete solves the mental challenge, Myka the soul challenge, HG the physical challenge.
- Sense8 is about eight very different people from around the world who have a telepathic link to each other. They can access each other's skills and knowledge to overcome obstacles. As such, they frequently find themselves in situations where they need someone else's skills to resolve.
- In Person of Interest the episode If-Then-Else is one of these, mixed with a "Groundhog Day" Loop. The Machine is running simulations to discover what characters are best suited for what roles.
- Blake's 7. In "Games", the Seven have to break into a satellite protected by Deadly Games. Soolin handles the Quick Draw game, Tarrant handles the flight simulator, and Villa gets them through the lock.
- The introduction of the "Queens of Darkness" on Once Upon a Time (2011) seems to be this: Rumplestiltskin assembles them because their unique talents can overcome each obstacle on the way to retrieving the Dark Curse template. So Cruella can magically control animals and gets rid of flesh-eating beetles, Maleficent can extinguish the flames by breathing them in, and Ursula can retrieve the Curse from across a chasm with her tentacle. Turns out to be a subversion, however: Rumple only needed someone evil as bait for the guarding Chernabog, so he could run away undetected with the Curse while the ladies dealt with (or were killed in his stead by) the monster. Their talents were purely incidental.
- Cluedo: As every episode featured the six suspects from the board game, each of them would have a reason for wanting the murder victim dead. In the final episode of series 2, the six main characters had roles in a wedding: Mrs Peacock as the bride, Colonel Mustard as the groom, Reverend Green conducting the service, Professor Plum as an usher, and Miss Scarlet and Mrs White as bridesmaids.
Myths & Religion
- African Mythology: In one "Anansi the Spider" story, he has many sons, each with a strange power or skill. When Anansi goes missing trying to retrieve a rare treasure, his sons team up to track him down and rescue him. Anansi decides to gift the treasure, an enormous ball of silver, to one of his sons, but they can't agree on who deserves the most credit. In order to stop his sons' bickering, Anansi has the god of the sky place the silver ball in the heavens for all to see, which is where the Moon came from.
Pinballs
- In Zen Studios' The Avengers, the game has a different pinball for each team member; different characters provide different benefits and bonuses.
- Sega's Star Wars Trilogy has a Heroic Mode for each of the trilogy's main characters: Luke, Leia, Han, R2-D2 and C-3PO, Chewbacca, and Obi-Wan.
- Doctor Who allows the player to collect and select from the seven Doctors in the game; each one changes the rules in a different manner.
Tabletop Games
- Considered something of the "ideal" adventure plot in a tabletop roleplaying game like Dungeons & Dragons, where each character advances in a class that defines their talents. A smart Game Master keeps in mind the characters' capabilities and comes up with an adventure that allows everyone in the party to contribute something. A great Game Master applies this to the Player Archetypes as well, with satisfying battles for The Real Man, loot that The Munchkin can use in creative ways, an NPC encounter that lets The Roleplayer shine, and a chance for The Loonie to have some fun without endangering the rest of the party. A Killer Game Master inverts the trope by creating challenges that the party is not capable of facing.
- Published adventures try for this as well, though not every player group has the standard fighter/rogue/wizard/cleric dynamic these adventures are written for, and so multiple solutions for critical moments are necessary, making it possible for one character to steal the spotlight from the others by solving nearly everything through the solutions meant for his character type (the answer that works no matter what is usually "bash it apart"). That, or every important plot point is decided by either a fight (which all classes are designed to be able to take part in), or a simplistic puzzle (which doesn't rely on class abilities at all, but the players' ability to figure the puzzle out). Classic tournament adventure C1 has a puzzle specifically designed for the 3-man (Fighter, Wizard, Thief) party - what it's doing in a bunch of ancient Mayincatec ruins is best left unasked.
- The Plot-Tailored-to-the-Party nature of many Dungeons & Dragons modules, coupled with the fact that many PC parties lacked a Thief (the least combat-effective class in 1st and 2nd edition D&D) required the game to provide commonly-available ways for Thief-less parties to do all the things you nominally needed a thief to do. Knock, Invisibility, Detect Traps, Spiderclimb, Comprehend Languages and Silence 15-foot Radius were all fairly low-level spells that duplicated thief abilities, often more effectively, while the Chime of Opening, Boots of Elvenkind, Cloak of Elvenkind, and Ring of Invisibility were all very common magic items that did the same thing. The end result was that the only thing a Thief could do that a magical item or spell couldn't was pick a pocket. One Thief-less party infamously filled the role with a log they rolled down corridors, which proved surprisingly effective.
This tendency was satirized in the Dragon Magazine comic Nodwick, where the role of "thief" in the noble adventurer party was filled by a disposable henchman, who the party used to disarm traps and open doors in the most inhumane ways possible (i.e. tossing him into them until one of them broke). Fittingly the comic still follows this trope, because said henchman is incredibly experienced (not to mention incredibly cynical) as a result of a lifetime being (ab)used in this manner and ends up solving a number of mental conundrums his Genre Blind employers can't.
- Fred Hicks of Spirit of the Century and other Fate RPG system games fame referred to this as "the secret language of character sheets" in a blog post. To summarize, it means that the contents of a character sheet should be read as a player's vote for what kinds of things they want to do in a game. As an example, if nobody took stealth skills then don't rely on a stealth sequence as mandatory to advance the plot - let people bash, charm, bribe, or even magic their way around an obstacle instead, if those are the abilities they focused on. As well, if only one person took a particular ability, why, there you have a perfectly tailored way to put them into the limelight.
Toys
- Happens almost on a constant basis in BIONICLE, so that every character could show off their mask or elemental power, because hey, when toy advertising and plot advancement go hand in hand, why not? Though subversions were nearly as common as straight examples. Video and web games abused this to no end, however they often resorted to completely changing the characters' special powers.
Video Games
- Arknights: A minor version. Events with their own stage and enemy designs tend to be tailored to show off the specific skill set of the new 6-star units. Some examples include: "Invitation to Wine" has unblockable enemies that take a specific amount of hits to defeat and a Merchant Specialist that can push back enemies when he attacks, "Where Vernal Winds Will Never Blow" has enemies that can climb on high ground and a new Phalanx Caster with constantly refreshing barrier, and "A Flurry to the Flame" has enemies that take less damage in a specific direction and an Executor Specialist that can quickly reposition to target the enemy's weak point.
- Subtly used in Assassin's Creed II. Each thief, courtesan, and mercenary guild in Florence and Venice will help Ezio with at least one assassination target. Less subtly used in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, where each guild helps Ezio with exactly one target. However, when preparing to assassinate Micheletto, the thieves pull out last-second, "forcing" Ezio to use his own Assassin guild instead.
- In Zork: Grand Inquisitor, you find three totems: a griff (small, less powerful dragon), a brogmoid (a small, strong creature), and Lucy Flathead (a human woman with telepathy). And where are the Cosmic Keystones located? A sleeping dragon archipelago, a cave behind a strongly boarded door, and a casino. Any of the three creatures can visit any of the locations, but if they're not the right ones, they're next to useless (though Brog can't reach a mailbox before the White House, and Lucy or Griff will have to go there to send mail).
- In the The Legend of Zelda games, each dungeon in sequential order is tailor-made with obstacles that require the treasures from the previous ones that the hero had access to. Apparently one can only get around dungeon D with a hookshot (or grappling hook, or magnet gloves) that is only found in one chest in dungeon C. You typically also need dungeon D's item to beat dungeon D's boss. Another method of dungeon design in the Zelda series is to make half of the dungeon inaccessible until you find the right tool in the same dungeon. For example a dungeon in The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask where the player can't access the upper levels of the dungeon until they find the bow and arrow in the lower level, but it is common enough in any of the game's incarnations. However, whenever a dungeon doesn't require an item or ability from a previous point, enterprising players WILL try to sequence break. Somewhat justified when the dungeons are specifically made for the hero to pass, most notably in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, where the Shrine entrances will only activate when Link uses the Sheikah Slate made of the same Magitek to do so (Zelda tried using the Sheikah Slate to enter one Shrine, but it specifically needed to be Link using it).
- Mega Man:
- In the Mega Man series, and the following Mega Man X games, all of the end level bosses have specific weakness to weapons that you get from other bosses. This ensures that even the most useless weapons for fighting through the stages have a specific use. However, since bosses in some games are selectable in any order, they CAN be beaten without the specials. It's just a lot tougher. Playing 2 for the first time and thinking "I'll try going against Quickman first." is a sobering lesson in Nintendo Hard level design. Messed with in X, wherein the bosses had a particular order of weaknesses, but the special items (boots, armor, etc.) had a different optimal order. To get all the armor pieces without backtracking, you had to completely disregard the boss' vulnerabilities.
- A stage in Mega Man 8 takes it further, though. After clearing the first four Robot Masters, you face four more before tackling Wily's base. Sword Man's dungeon gets special mention for the first half of it is testing your skills in using your new powers: Ice Wave to freeze instant-death fire pillars below the pathway to cross, Tornado Hold to push the hover switches up and open pathways, Flash Grenade to see the signs in the dark rooms for a button puzzle later, and Thunder Claw to swing around chasms and push switches while a spiked wall of doom chases you.
- Some games give bosses more than one weakness, or at least make other weapons useful against them; for example in Mega Man X, Boomer Kuwanger's weapon can be used to lop off Launch Octopus' tentacles and Flame Mammoth's trunk.
- The Lost Vikings and its sequel are based around this trope. Each of the vikings has a specific set of abilities (not necessarily including combat) which are required to solve all the puzzles in their path. Sometimes levels divide into distinct parts, tailored for each particular character. The sequel goes even further with adding two more characters, while still allowing you to control only three at a time. Each level can be solved by a given combination and only by it. Thankfully, you're forced to use that combination.
- Trine attempts this; with the Wizard able to create objects and move then with the power of his mind, the Thief's grappling hook and ability to jump higher leaving the Knight to take out the numerous creatures that attacks the group. Only the Thief also has a bow which can be very powerful once upgraded a few times leaving the Knight to be rather useless. Other than breaking blocks of course.
- Same goes for Avatar: The Last Airbender licensed games for Game Boy Advance. Players always control up to 3 characters out of a minimal roster of 4. When and only when you get a new character, you start getting puzzles for him.
- Many, many, many console RPGs have at least one door that cannot be opened unless a set of switches are pressed simultaneously, where the number of switches is precisely equal to the game's Arbitrary Headcount Limit for no adequately explained reason.
- Subverted (?) once in Sonic Chronicles, where one of these puzzles appears, but there's six buttons and only four characters in the party. Played straight the rest of the time, though.
- Happens twice in Tales of Phantasia, with the second being an aversion in every version of the game after the first. Since Suzu was promoted to Optional Party Member, it's possible to have one more character than needed.
- The entire point of Superhero League of Hoboken, where there's at least one puzzle that requires any given superpower... except for the main character's, which is never of any use at any point in the game.
- In the various Lego Adaptation Games, the path used to complete the stage will only contain obstacles that your party can overcome, no matter who that party consists of. Obstacles within levels that require abilities that your current party doesn't have exist, but only ever lead to optional collectibles or easter eggs. Inverted during Free Play mode, where the earlier games gives you a team including least one of every type of character in the game, before later ones allowed access to the entire pool. In most but not all instances as well, only objects the player interact with are actually made of LEGO bricks, while environmental decorations can sometimes be semi-realistic props. (The LEGO Movie game received some praise for averting this.)
- Some of the specific game cases are worse than others as well. The blaster options in the LEGO Star Wars games make some sense in a universe where blasters are the primary weapon of most characters, not only the protagonists, and Jedi abilities are often masked as brick-built parts of the environment. In the Super Heroes games, however, most of Gotham City seems to have been built to work with Batman or Robin and their specific collection of power suits, while LEGO Marvel Super Heroes has elements such as 'claw switches' that only make sense as a video game mechanic designed to make specific characters useful enough for rewards that could be hidden any other way.
- Subverted in both City of Heroes and Champions Online. Especially in the latter game, due to the ability to take almost any combination of powers, there's really no "default" team setup or even default set of powers that designers can rely upon. Played straight in certain encounters, such as the Hamidon Raid which has 3 different sets of weak spots, and each set can only be countered by a specific type of attack: yellow spots are weak to melee attacks, blue spots are weak to ranged attacks and green spots are vulnerable to paralyzing attacks.
- In the Wii version of A Boy and His Blob, you're always given the specific set of jellybeans that you need to get through the level, no more, no less.
- Mass Effect:
- Mass Effect 2 has the Suicide Mission where you take out the Collector Base, which gauges your success based on how well you're able to invoke this trope. Choose the wrong person for the wrong job and people will die. Inverted with Thane: a lot of the pre-release marketing focused on the drell assassin, to the point where he features on the cover art, but he plays no key story role in the suicide mission, although his biotic abilities are useful in the actual gameplay segments.
- The only 'specialist' role that anyone is qualified for is escorting whatever's left of the Normandy crew back to the ship - provided you've secured their loyalty, anyone will make it. Mordin, Tali or Kasumi are who most people pick, though, as they contribute the least to holding the line even if loyal.
- The third game takes this Up to Eleven; the plot is extremely reliant on the decisions made in the first and second games, most obviously who you managed to keep alive. Multiple quests need established characters around for you to get the best outcome.
- With Shepard's assistant position in 2 and 3. In the second game, being your glorified secretary is just Kelly's excuse to hang around the comm panel; she's really a psychologist trying to study the team's inevitable mental issues, which is the secondary plot of the game. In the third game, Traynor gets tapped for the same post on the basis of "she's available", but her actual training in communications theory, data analysis, and codebreaking does see use from time to time, unlocking missions by deciphering details of enemy communications anyone else would have missed.
- Final Fantasy X:
- The game masterfully uses this for the battle system, with each character being especially effective against one enemy type: Tidus can hit nimble/evasive enemies, Wakka takes down flying targets, Auron can pierce the defences of armoured enemies, Rikku can dismantle mechanical enemies, Lulu deals with enemies that are weak against magic, Yuna is your primary healer (and her summons are ideal for facing or finishing off bosses), and Kimahri does a little of everything
- The physical abilities of the characters are also suited to the plot. Tidus and Wakka, because they are Blitzball players, and Rikku because she is a deep-sea diver, are called on in a few spots to do swimming maps. In Final Fantasy X-2, we find out that although she can't swim, Yuna picked up some serious agility from all those mountains on her pilgrimage (not to mention ruin-exploring), and can now jump up and down landforms that Tidus had to swim around.
- The Air Force Delta Series plays this straight with multiple specialized pilots. Some missions require slow prop or VTOL fighters, some are for air superiority fighters, some for ground attack, one for Mach-3 recon aircraft.
- The first three games of the Wild ARMs series will let you use the entire party members to do a specific task, like jumping, finding things with the use of a radar, changing gems, and so on and so forth. The latter games, however, ditched this concept.
- RuneScape: In the final scene of "Salt in the Wound", you need Ezekial's explosives expertise to break through damaged walls, Kennith's persuasive abilities to manipulate a mind-controlled villager, and Eva's strength and combat skill to hold off the guards and deal the finishing blow.
- Legacy of the Wizard has five playable characters. Four of them have areas requiring their special abilities (at least in concept), and at the end of each is a crown. Once all four crowns have been collected, the fifth character is needed to obtain the Sword of Plot Advancement and fight the Final Boss.
- Everyone's skills are needed at some point or another in Magical Starsign, but the funniest example has to be during a massive forest fire. The water mage locates an underground aquifer. The earth mage cracks open the ground so that the water can reach the surface. The air mage uses the spring the previous two mages created to start a massive rainstorm that douses the fire. The nature mage regrows the forest. And then the fire mage decides it's his turn to contribute, and is promptly stopped by the rest of the party because all that work to stop the fire, they really didn't need another one.
- Dark Cloud:
- There are pits with a single stalactite poking out only Xiao can cross, big buttons only Goro's hammer is strong enough to push down, magic crystals for Ruby to activate by magic, smoke barriers Ungaga can blow away, and deep gaps Osmond can fly over.
- Both games include levels with seals on them that only one character can be used on. Usually there is a level like this right after you get each new character to make you try them out.
- Desert Moon. On Days 2-4, you encounter a new enemy, and you so happen to get a unit that counters said enemy:
- Day 2: Bursters are very fast and explode when killed or if they reach a unit, killing any nearby units. You get the Fuel Launcher which has an extremely long range and covers them in fuel, greatly slowing them down.
- Day 3: Hunters have a lot of health and are immune to damage until they are near a unit, then they surface and charge. The flamethrower is a near-range unit that does constant good damage and also pushes the hunters back.
- Day 4: Infected are slow but very durable zombies that attack in hordes and turn your units into more of them. The Imploder unit uses a One-Hit Kill that causes an enemy to explode and also pushes back all foes in the explosion radius, preventing the horde from getting near.
- Most RTS games with single-player campaigns feature this to some extent. In early missions the player will only have a few basic units, with additional units being added one or two at a time as the campaign progresses. When a new unit has a special ability, it will inevitably be necessary to the completion of the mission. Sometimes this is justified by having it noted that you're given the new unit specifically because its ability will be needed, but often it comes completely out of the blue with no way the person giving your orders could have known about it.
- Maniac Mansion downplays it. There are multiple means of solving the crisis at hand, but which method you use depends on which of Dave's friends is recruited for the task. Dave and Jeff have no special skills. Syd and Razor can recruit the Green Tentacle (who wants to be a musician like them). Wendy can ghostwrite for the Meteor and get his memoirs published. Michael can recruit Weird Ed by developing the photographed commando plans, and Bernard can repair the radio and contact the Meteor Police to have the Meteor arrested.
- StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty generally downplays or tries to avoid this trope in the campaign, since the playable faction is a rebel group and new units and upgrades are unlocked per mission with multiple choices after each one, so a player might not have access to a certain unit or its key upgrades by a given mission. Even missions that introduce new units try to not make them an outright Game-Breaker for that single mission that can be spammed without consequence (for example, Firebats and Hellions are unlocked in two missions to kill hordes of small, weak enemies susceptible to the Splash Damage these units provide, but one is an Escort Mission, so there are plenty of faster alternatives to the Firebat, while the other mission introducing the Hellion emphasizes mobility and building destruction, the latter of which the Hellion needs help with). There are a couple of glaring examples of this trope played straight:
- In "The Devil's Playground," you have to amass a ton of minerals for the mission, while still using some of your stockpile to produce units to defend against a (relatively weak) Zerg presence and surviving timed magma flows that periodically change the terrain and kill anything on the low ground. Gabriel Tosh explicitly acknowledges this and hands over a crew of Reapers, an extremely mobile, relatively cheap unit that excels versus small enemies and buildings and can jump up and down cliffs without a ramp. You can mass this single unit to destroy the entire map, even killing the optional, not-small-at-all Brutalisks via Death of a Thousand Cuts.
- In "The Great Train Robbery," you have to destroy fast, armored trains and steal their contents. Raynor's Raiders find some abandoned Diamondbacks — Confederate vehicles that are fairly fast, can fire on the move and deal double damage to armored units, like the trains you have to destroy, as well as the bunkers and escorts the Dominion eventually uses to protect the trains. It's entirely possible to beat the mission massing this single unit. Also doubles as This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman as Diamondbacks are Overshadowed by Awesome in all other missions, especially by the Siege Tank, which excels against the same enemy type and is also strong in this mission if a player has it unlocked.
- At the climax of NEO: The World Ends with You, the plan to stop the Soul Pulvis from destroying Shibuya involves all of the protagonists' abilities. There is, however, one exception— the protagonists note that Beat's Soundsurf is useless and basically gives him the job of fighting the Noise.
- Paper Mario 64 and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door: Each party member (with the exceptions being your first party member Goombario or Goombella and the Optional Party Member Ms. Mowz) joins you during chapters where their field and battle abilities will be useful.
- 64:
- Chapter 1: Kooper can be used to safely detonate ignited Bob-Ombs besides Mario's hammer (using Goombario's Headbonk will result in him being hurt by explosion), and Bombette can knock over the Koopa Bros. with her Bomb.
- Chapter 2: Parakarry's attacks can be used to hit the enemies on ceilings like Swoopers and Buzzy Beetles (Mario can hit them with Quake Hammer or Hammer Throw too, but they cost FP). He also has Shell Shot, which deals the same amount of damage with Bombette's Bomb but can hit anywhere, making it very useful against the chapter boss (who is standing on a platform too high for Bomb, and Goombario doesn't have Multibonk yet).
- Chapter 3: The chapter has a lot of enemies (including the chapter boss itself) that can charge up for a powerful attack, and Bow can be used to make Mario avoid them. Mario also needs her to avoid the security guards in the dungeon that will try to throw him out.
- Chapter 4: Watt can pierce the defense of General Guy's tank (2, which is pretty high at this point and Mario's jump can't damage it without buffs), and soon after that she'll also be needed when you fight Fuzzipede (otherwise it gets too dark for anyone to see).
- Chapter 5: Sushie is recruited soon before you explore the dungeon of the chapter, which has a lot of fire enemies weak to her water attacks
- Chapter 6: Lakilester's Spiny Surge, while not too powerful, is good enough for clearing the add-ons the chapter boss will summon as they all only have 1 HP.
- TTYD:
- Chapter 1: Hooktail Castle features tons of Dull Bones that like to pretend to be normal skeletons until you get close. The safest way to deal with them is to use Koops' field ability to test each skeleton and score a First Strike from a safe distance. In addition, Dull Bones have 1 defense, but only one HP and can summon more Dull Bones. Goombella will be absolutely useless against them at this point in the game, but Koops will be able to deal with them all at once with Power Shell, or individually with Shell Strike.
- Chapter 2: The chapter features many fast and airborne enemies, which Flurrie can use her gust on to daze them to both stop them from getting in a first strike and make it easier to score your own. In addition, the chapter features larger encounters with bulkier enemies that you might not have enough power to deal with. Flurrie's Gale Force can reduce the number of enemies you have to deal with, especially all the airborne enemies in this chapter, which are more vulnerable to Gale Force.
- Chapter 3: The exploration portions of this chapter involves alot of going back and forth between the Glitz Pit, and the rest of Glitzville, which allows Yoshi to get alot of mileage by speeding up foot travel. The Glitz Pit Major League also features many enemies with high defense, and Yoshi's Gulp attack ignores defense.
- Chapter 4: The Twilight Trail and Creepy Steeple feature a ton of narrow areas with enemies that Mario might want to avoid in the later half of the chapter since you don't have access to most of your party members. Vivian can hide Mario in order to either better ambush these enemies or just avoid them entirely. Alot of enemies also have the ability to "charge" their next attack, and your new party member has the ability to make you invincible for a turn, allowing the charged attack to harmlessly whiff against nothing.
- Chapter 5: Keelhaul Key and the Pirates' Grotto has a bunch of ledges and small islands that Admiral Bobbery can be thrown onto to get the First Strike on enemies. There are also a ton of fire enemies that damage anything that tries to make direct contact, and Bobbery's explosions are explicitly recomended against them.
- 64:
Web Comics
- Relevant to the story of the black iceberg in Gifts of Wandering Ice.
- The "Demon Seed" arc of The Dragon Doctors is the first one that makes full use of the abilities of all four magical doctors at once. The patient is a man with a sentient parasite slowly devouring him from within, can see everything he sees, and will take over his body and attack if they alarm him. First Kili the shaman/therapist puts the patient into a hypnotic mind-meld trance, then his body is magically petrified by the wizard to trap the parasite and keep him stable, then the Magitek diagnostician and surgeon drill it out of his body one piece at a time.
- Lampshaded in General Protection Fault's Harry Potter parody
Harry: Am I the only one who thinks it's suspicious that each of these tests is something one of us is good at?
- Parodied in Irregular Webcomic!'s Supers theme, where DMM complains about the difficulty of tailoring a plot to a party comprising Captain Spatula, Dino Boy, Refractive Man and Worm Master.
Worm Master: Yes! Now I can control the mutant space worm!
Refractive Man: So the dinosaur DNA filtered by a laser fired through my torso and fed to it on a spatula worked? - In the second arc of Katamari, the Future!Prince specifically seeks out cousins with specific talents required to Save the World from a Bad Future. Thus, he knows exactly what and who they need for his plan to work... But not everyone's available.
Web Original
- In Noob, the eponymous guild gets the following random challenge meant for level 20 players: the guild's tank must take control of a provided level 100 avatar to fight a necromancer and its zombie Mooks. In the case of the protagonists, the tank happens to be a former level 100 player while the healer routinely accidentally heals enemies and Revive Kills Zombie applies to the game.
- Achievement Hunter's VS series inverts this trope — one of the Achievement Hunter members chooses a game that they're certain they can beat the current champion in. A lot of times, the games chosen are those that the challenger has played numerous times.
Western Animation
- The Simpsons. In "And Maggie Makes Three", the Show Within a Show Knight Boat ran on this trope.
Not Michael Knight: We’ll never catch ’em now.
Knight Boat: Incorrect. Look, a canal.
Homer: Go, Knight Boat, go!
Bart: (rolling his eyes) Oh, every week there’s a canal.
Lisa: Or an inlet.
Bart: Or a fjord.
Homer: (angry) Quiet! I will not hear another word against the boat. - In one episode of Winx Club, the Winx had to conjure up a simulacrum out of their fundamental powers when they were trapped in the simulator room.
- Aquaman of the Superfriends gave rise to an infinite number of such plots. Superman is a member of the Superfriends, and arguably pretty much every plot which involves him is kind of an inverse of this trope, as they have to use Kryptonite or otherwise disable him somehow to give everyone else something to do.
- Semi-enforced in both Ben 10: Alien Force and Ben 10: Ultimate Alien. Producers Glen Murakami and Dwayne McDuffie would generally allow the writers to use any aliens they wanted, but would still consult with them to suggest alternatives to Ben just smashing the problem away with Humongousaur or Four Arms. Thus, a Running Gag where Ben turns into the wrong alien after declaring his intent to turn into the former was birthed.
- Averted in the Teen Titans episode "For Real". Control Freak, a teenage TV addict super villain, comes up with a Plot Tailored To The Party featuring a trial for all of the Teen Titans. He is upset to find that they're out of town and a secondary team is in their place. As the challenges were tailored to the exact limits of the main cast, the secondary team easily manages them. He has a temper tantrum and then returns with specific challenges for the substitutes. This is practically an inversion of the trope, as each Titan is given a challenge where their powers won't work. Aqualad has to face a mechanical shark - that is, his fish-controlling powers won't work. Bumblebee is stuck in her small form. Speedy has no arrows. Mas y Menos (who need to be touching each other to activate their superspeed) have to simultaneously push two buttons on opposite sides of the city. They all get around it, of course.
- Kim Possible gives Ron's father, an actuary, a chance to demonstrate his heroism by coming up with a math-themed villain specifically for him to have a Let's Get Dangerous! moment against. Being Kim Possible, the implausibility of this is obviously lampshaded.
- Usually justified in the animated series M.A.S.K. Each episode begins with the leader choosing which team members to bring based on the mission at hand. Therefore, all characters in an episode have a legitimate reason to use their specialty. For example, if a mission is in the middle of a desert, they just don't bring along the underwater specialist. This still results in a lot of lucky guesses as to who will just happen to be needed, though.
- The James Bond variant is spoofed in an episode of American Dad!, where Steve plays the Q character, S, and all his inventions make the boobs of the nearest woman larger. Of course, it comes in handy later on...
- The Family Guy episode "Oceans Three and a Half" sees Cleveland, Peter, and Quagmire, each demonstrate unique knowledge/skills in order to clear security checks and break into Carter's vault on Joe's behalf. Cleveland pulls off a perfect vocal impersonation of Carter and Peter is able to successfully guess the least attractive male name in the English language: Keith. Quagmire bypasses the penile identification scanner by sticking his penis inside it; he didn't match the shape, he just broke it.
- Played straight most of the time on Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers. There were usually computers to hack, hostile environments, something that could usually be psychically "read," and a need for the captain to coordinate things. However, just as often they'd end up short a teammate who would have been really handy at that particular moment.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
- A variant is used in "Friendship is Magic, part 2". As the six leads make their way through Everfree Forest, they run into obstacles that give each pony the chance to display their greatest virtue, such as Applejack's honesty helping reassure Twilight Sparkle during a Literal Cliffhanger, and Pinkie Pie literally laughing in the face of danger. In this case, it serves two purposes: getting them through the forest and helping Twilight recognize what each of her new companions' biggest strengths are.
- Another variant is in play in the "Key" episodes of Season 4, with each of the Mane Six learning a difficult lesson about living up to their respective Elements and helping somepony else to learn a similar lesson in the process. note Having all six keys proves crucial in the season finale.
- Inverted in the Map episodes, where the Cutie Map sends the ponies best suited to fix the friendship problem wherever it is. Played with in that the way the plot is tailored is not always clear, as the map doesn't always send someone because their strengths are useful, but because their flaws are important (e.g. Starlight Glimmer is sent to fix a problem because her impulsiveness and tendency to try and brute-force a problem end up being useful), or because the ones that are being sent have something to learn from the experience as well.
- The Season 6 finale "To Where and Back Again" uses this with the team of Starlight, Trixie, Discord, and Thorax trying to save the day. Played with in that Discord and Starlight's greatest strength, their magic, is stripped and they have to rely on other talents (Starlight's brains and Discord's affinity for distraction) while Trixie uses her slight of hand illusions and Thorax is the only one who knows where they're going and what they're facing.
- One episode of Wolverine and the X-Men (2009) invokes this trope explicitly. A ship carrying mutants to Genosha is attacked by pirates in search of mutants with useful powers. They end up kidnapping all of the adults and leaving the kids behind on the sinking ship. The kids' abilities are: breathing underwater, making "sticky goop", talking to machines, making things shatter by focusing on them, and butterfly wings. Initially, they mope around on the ship because they believe their powers are useless, but Nightcrawler appears to show them that no-one is useless. At Nightcrawler's direction, they shatter some cargo crates and have the underwater-breathing kid glue them onto the breaches using the sticky goop. The girl who talks to machines navigates the boat, and the girl with butterfly wings makes and puts up a flag of questionable usefulness. Then they chase after the pirate ship, where Nightcrawler uses his powers to duel the pirate captain and save the grownups.
- X-Men: The Animated Series: Inverted at least once, wherein Xavier and Cyclops — the normal team leaders — are completely uninvolved, Beast has abandoned his Genius Bruiser ways and gone on a literal Roaring Rampage of Revenge, Wolverine has come up with an ingenious and non-violent way to defuse the situation, etc. The only one still up to her usual tricks is Jubilee, who snarkily points out the fact nobody's acting normally.
- An episode of The Powerpuff Girls (1998) used a variant somewhat similar to the James Bond example above: A gigantic flaming meteor that's too hot to approach menaces Townville shortly after Blossom learns that she has ice breath. Unlike Bond, however, Blossom tried to use the ice breath in other situations and only made things worse, resulting in a Heroic BSoD. After saving the day in the end, she says she thinks that she used it all up but it pops up in a few later episodes instead of just disappearing after its debut.
- The Powerpuff Girls (2016) episode "Splitsville" centers on an inversion where the girls have to use each others' skills for three separate obstacles in which the other could've easily dealt with.
- Adventure Time:
- Played with when Finn and Jake enter a dungeon at different times, and follow different paths to prove that they don't need the other. Each winds up coming across challenges that the other could do easily, but which are very difficult for them, prompting them to realize that they need each other.
- Justified in "Mystery Dungeon", where the Ice King, Lemongrab, Tree Trunks, Shelby and NEPTR wake up in a dungeon and have to work together to get out. Eventually it's revealed that the Ice King needed to get through the dungeon and kidnapped the others specifically because their abilities would be useful. Also played with because a) Shelby tricks Tree Trunks into taking on the job that was meant for him (being bait for a fish) and b) the Ice King actually meant to grab BMO instead of NEPTR (though NEPTR proves capable of helping out anyway).
- Averted in an episode of Justice League, during a Robot War that turned out to be an advanced training simulation. It was designed to get the team to work together, utilizing each others' strengths to their fullest and figure out how to exploit every situation in the manner of the trope; then Superman flies in and smashes all the robots basically single-handedly. When called out on this apparent show-boating, he explicitly points out the fact that he's Nigh-Invulnerable, and it didn't make sense to send in the guy with a bunch of gadgets or the guy who's fast but squishy when he can just take care of something that needs brute strength. He has a point, even if he suffers heavily from The Worf Effect during the initial show's run, not to mention the fact that Wonder Woman — who canonically is one of the top-tier strongest characters in the DCU — is right there as well.
- Played with in the Young Justice episode "Misplaced". When the world gets split into two dimensions, one for adults and one for kids, Captain Marvel's ability to change from an adult to a kid is used quite effectively to establish communication between the worlds. The reason it's a played with example is that this has happened before in DC continuity, and yet no one thought of this. It's more a case of In-Universe Fridge Brilliance.
- Parodied on KaBlam! in the Show Within a Show, Action League NOW! with Meltman — with the power to... melt!
Chief: Okay you guys, listen up. The president's in town next week. Thunder Girl, I'm gonna need your super flying power, Flesh your super strength, Stinky your super sharp shooting, as for Meltman... um... um... well... um...
Stinky Diver: He can get the donuts!
Stinky, Flesh, Thunder Girl: Donuts, donuts, donuts! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! - Both Totally Spies! and its successor The Amazing Spiez! use this trope in the same manner as the James Bond example above; no matter how different and seemingly random the gadgets that Jerry gives them for a mission, you can bet that for every single one of them the protagonists will encounter at least one situation in which that gadget is precisely what they need. Never will a gadget remain unused for the entire plot. That said, the gadgets are not always used in the way the designers intended. A good example is the Totally Spies! episode "Wild Style" with the Scan Man 9000 Portable Radio and Radar Scanner; the spies never need its radar scanner abilities, but the fact that it can still play music like a regular radio proves vital to beating the villain.
- The Yum Yums is tailor-made for Peppymint Kitty's smarts, Lucky Lemon Lion's wishes, Jumpin' Jellybean Bunny's speed, and Chuckle Chip Bear's jokes coming in handy.
- Double subverted in Herself the Elf. It seems like every elf's individual powers will be used to save the day, but their powers are a hindrance individually, the wands stop working due to Herself's magic fading and they're captured before long. Then Willow Song uses her voice-changing powers just long enough to distract Thorn to get the wand back, and everyone else uses their powers to stop the villains and escape safely.
- The Avengers Assemble episode "Thanos Triumphant": Each of Thanos's uses of a single Infinity Stone is primarily countered by one Avenger. First he uses the Time Stone to age them into dust, which just shifts Thor into Allfather Mode. Then he uses the Mind Stone to make them all angry with each other; Hulk knows how to direct his anger and gets the others to do the same. Then he uses the Space Stone to teleport around them, but Hawkeye and Black Widow spot the pattern and aim where he's going to be. He uses the Reality Stone to convince them they've already won, but Cap's too grounded to believe it. And finally, he just starts blasting them with the Power Stone, which is the point at which Iron Man unveils his plan to stop him altogether.