Holding Back the Phlebotinum

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"You talk big, Bo-Starr, but you're no match for my legion of invincible death-bots! ... Which I'm not going to be using!"

—Skullduggen, Bo-Starr and the Champions of Galastrom

The chance of Applied Phlebotinum being applied more than once tends to be inversely proportional to its plot-resolving potential.

If you've got a Wave Motion Gun or all-powerful MacGuffin, it'll either be used just once (with a possible No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup handwave) or everyone and their mother has one and it's a big free-for-all.

There's a good narrative reason for this: if you've got something that could resolve just about any conflict by waving it around, then obviously people would use it all the time, and your stories would be dreadfully boring.

This is why extreme power comes in small packages. Expect explanations about the Balance Between Good and Evil, crossing the Godzilla Threshold, not abusing your powers, or how You Are Not Ready to justify why we can't use the thing that would solve all our problems, and why the All Powerful Bystander can't be bothered to lift a finger. Whatever the in-story reason, the writers are protecting the plot by Holding Back The Phlebotinum.

If there aren't even such explanations, see Forgotten Phlebotinum.

Compare It Only Works Once or Reed Richards Is Useless. See also Limit Break. If the all-powerful force is a character instead of an object, you've got Deus Exit Machina. If you try to use it again, you'll usually find that it was So Last Season. If not justified well this becomes an Idiot Plot. If the reason for holding back is a good chance of hurting yourself or leaving yourself vulnerable after use, you're looking at a Death or Glory Attack. Could possibly be a result of Too Awesome to Use

Examples of Holding Back the Phlebotinum include:

Anime and Manga

• In Blood+, chiropterans can only be killed by Saya's blood. But Hagi is a stronger fighter. Only once in the series does Hagi think to borrow Saya's sword after letting her coat it with her blood.
  • This case does, however, have some justification, since there's time limit to how long Saya's blood remains effective once it's drawn. Red Shield previously did try to manufacture bullets incorporating Saya's blood but found them ineffective, and Saya herself often has to redraw her blood during the same battle. Given that Hagi and Saya end up being separated from each other in many battles, it's not really an efficient strategy.
• In the very first episode of Yu-Gi-Oh!, the main character pulls off a miraculous come-from-behind victory by getting the five parts of Exodia in his hand for an instant win. In the third episode, a minor villain destroys the cards so suspense can be maintained in future duels.
  • Similarly, Yugi's god cards were stolen at the beginning of season 4.
  • Since his power is quite explicitly "the power of cheating", it's more "holding back the phlebotinum normal people use, while he wouldn't need it anyway.
• There are Magic Beans in Dragon Ball that can cure any wound sans death. In the earlier stories there are literately hundreds of them around. In later books there are less than 10, at any given time, making the preservation of magic beans a major plot point. This is justified by Yajirobe eating them all. In Trunks' Bad Future the plant dried off, thus no more beans at all.
  • In Dragonball Z Abridged, it's handwaved that these couldn't be consumed by goku due to a hole in his esophagus.
• Averted in Gundam SEED Destiny, where ship captain Talia Gladys is not afraid to use the Minerva's positron cannon early and often, whenever the situation calls for it.
  • Also played straight, however, with the SEED Modes. Kira almost always has it turned on, so its effectiveness appears limited and he gets (in)famously curb-stomped by Shinn in that one episode. In contrast, because Athrun and Shinn can't/don't keep it on all the time, there is a very clear increase in their abilities when they do.
• It's not just Gundam SEED Destiny, most Mobile Suit Gundam series have a weapon or two that are used only once or sparingly.
  • The original Gundam had the Solar System and the Colony Laser. No reason's given for Solar System's only use on Solomon, but the Colony Laser only had one shot because Ghiren was too anxious to use it.
  • Zeta Gundam had Gryps 2, and that was damaged in battle and couldn't be used again without repairs.
  • Gundam Wing had Libra's cannon, which was sabotaged into being recharged.
  • Gundam X had the various Satellite Cannons, which couldn't be used without a laundry list of right stuff.
  • Turn a Gundam had the Moonlight Butterfly, which everyone was frightened over.
• Alastor gets to be here instead of Deus Exit Machina because his power is only ever used once, in a manner much more like a Wave Motion Gun i.e,. a weapon, not someone who really does anything. He isn't used again (besides the obvious) because there's a chance it could kill Shana.
• Played straight and then averted (hard!) in Code Geass with the FLEIJA warheads. At first, Suzaku has one and is swearing to whatever god(s) he believes in that he will not shoot it, until he gets careless and goes up against an opponent he cannot beat. This being Suzaku, he's completely unwilling to accept this fact, and when it finally dawns on him he immediately accepts death. This being the trigger for the Geass Lelouch gave him last season, Tokyo goes up in a pink sphere of death and supposedly kills Nunnaly. In the final battle, Schneizel fires one about once every five minutes. Once Lelouch has control of the Damocles, he fires one to prove a point.
• In A Certain Magical Index, Index has all of the Church's forbidden magical knowledge stored in her functional memory but is not herself capable of actually casting magic... not that that stops her from taking down a golem using distracting phrases and safety pins. Of course, the end of the first arc makes it clear that she can use magic, and only everyone around her keeping her Locked Out of the Loop prevents her from essentially becoming a story-breaking Person of Mass Destruction.
  • Mikoto Misaka, one of the heroines of the series who's also the protagonist of her own spin-off A Certain Scientific Railgun never uses her full powers in almost all of her fights. But when she does, it's awesome.
• Late in the Fullmetal Alchemist manga Alphonse actually gets a Philosopher's Stone that Kimblee dropped, but only after the brothers had decided they wouldn't use it for themselves even if they got it.
• In the Chapter Black saga of Yu Yu Hakusho, Yusuke is joined by several psychics. One of them, Kaito, not only has the power to take anyone's soul that violates his rules but also prevent anyone from using violence in his territory. While this might have been useful during the ensuing chaos, the only time he is seen using his abilities is when Genkai is trying to prove a point to the heroes.
• Naruto faces this difficulty when it comes to the Kyuubi. If he drew on its power he could readily defeat many opponents who otherwise give him trouble, but when he does it quickly overwhelms his ability to reason. A large part of Shippuden revolves around his attempts to suppress the Kyuubi and find alternative powers.
  • In more recent chapters Naruto is training hard to avert this trope. The strength of the opponents he must fight is such that he needs to master the full power of the Kyuubi and soon.

Comic Books

• Uatu the Watcher is an embodiment of this trope. He is theoretically capable of using his vast power to intervene in just about anything, but refuses to do so for the sake of his vow of non-interference. (Not that he hasn't bent and broken his vow numerous times.)
• Showing up in comic books more and more. "Did you guys try calling The Avengers and the Fantastic Four?" "Yeah! The Avengers are on a mission and the Fantastic Four are in another damn dimension! We're on our own!"
• Similarly, the chances of Superman being off-planet are directly proportional to how easy it would be for him to bail out the guy with his name on the cover.
• In John Ostrander's writing of The Spectre, the eponymous character and his partner Nate Kane were taking a train. Nate asks why don't they just take a plane because it would be a lot quicker. The Spectre responds, "If speed is your concern we can always do the mirror trick again." to which Nate Kane responds "Forget about it!"
• Take a look at Batman who has access to space alien technology. He could use it to easily subdue criminals in Gotham. But no, whenever Batman is in Gotham, he is restricted to real world-level technology (or not too far away from).
  • Justified in the case of Oracle, who made the decision to forgo using any of the fantastic technology or magic that her friends from the Justice League could supply her with to cure her paraplegia until it can be made available to the general public as a show of solidarity with other disabled people.
• Look at The Flash; somebody who can run at supersonic or sometimes at faster than light speed, and whose perception of time when doing this gives him inhumanly fast thoughts should have ABSOLUTELY NO problem in dealing with villains who have ice guns or explosive boomerangs.
  • Averted in Kingdom Come where the Flash uses his powers to make Keystone City truly crime free.
• As for the kid superhero Impulse, who could run at supersonic speeds, the reasons that normal-speed villains could give him a hard time was that Impulse was such an impulsive thinker and was often his own worst enemy.
• Black Canary could defeat most of the relatively mundane foes the Birds of Prey face with a single Canary Cry. She doesn't because she usually follows the Thou Shalt Not Kill rule, and a Canary Cry could kill an ordinary human at close range. One of the few times she did use the Canary Cry in Birds of Prey was when she fought a supernatural life draining killer named Harvest and it barely even fazed her.
  • There was one issue where she had an internal monologue lampshading this; as a martial artist she's trained to fight with her fights and her heart, and using her metahuman powers would be like bringing a bazooka to a boxing match. On this occasion Oracle had been kidnapped, though, so she was using the Cry right left and centre with a 'screw them' attitude.

Fanfiction

• In Kyon: Big Damn Hero, Haruhi's powers are filtered through Yuki to hold back the phlebotinum as well as make them controllable. Then she changes them even more so Closed Space isn't formed.
• Consciously averted in With Strings Attached; the author's stated philosophy is pretty much that if the four can solve a problem or win a fight in three seconds, that's what happens, and the plot will deal with it.

Film

• Iron Man, no actual evidence. But Tony Stark's philosophy on weapons seem to work. "Some say the best weapon is one that never has to be fired. I, respectfully, disagree. I say the best weapon is one that only has to be fired once. That's how I do it, that's how my father did it, that's how America does it and it's worked pretty well so far."
  • Not really. That statement illustrates the fact that Tony prefers weapons so utterly imposing that that after firing it once your enemies immediately surrender. Basically "Shock and Awe" (as opposed to Shock and Awe) to the extreme.
  • In the second film, he actually raises this point himself when testifying to the Senate commission. He calls the suit (or rather himself) the new nuclear deterrent. As a result of his influence, the world's experiencing a long-lasting period of peace and will continue to do so as long as the suit remains under the control of a stable, trustworthy entity. The irony is that he's an alcoholic dying guy who later uses above-miltary grade weaponry to explode glass in a crowded room and considers himself "stable and trustworthy".
  • Another example of this trope in the second movie are the lasers Death Blossoms. Extremely powerful and capable of ending any confrontation but they can only be used once.
• In Star Trek, the Genesis Device would undoubtedly still have been enormously useful as a planetbusting (or, indeed, nebula-busting) WMD, even if design flaws in the prototype made it useless for its original purpose of planetary terraforming. Fortunately, the ST writers made sure to end that particular movie arc with the device revealed to be unstable due to the use of protomatter, which presumably accounted for its abandonment, even though it would've made a hell of a weapon despite the instability, and even though the inventor of the technology, Carol Marcus, was still around (despite being Brother Chucked from the franchise after one movie).
  • There's also the fact that, as Star Treks III and especially IV showed, the Klingon Empire was none too thrilled to see the Federation have a planet-killing weapon. Had the Federation been able to salvage the research, there could easily have been a war.
  • A non-phlebotinum example: in "Whom Gods Destroy", a shape-shifting impostor captures Kirk and copies his appearance to escape the asylum planet where he is imprisoned, only to be stopped due to Scotty refusing to beam up the Captain without saying the proper response to the code phrase "Queen to Queen's Level 3". The code phrase had never been mentioned before and would never be mentioned again, even in situations featuring impostors running around (such as "Turnabout Intruder" where the omission is quite glaring)
    • Not to mention Garth's shapeshifting power itself, which he was "taught" by the natives of Antos IV. If the skill can be learned, why doesn't the Federation send its intelligence agents to Antos IV to acquire shapeshifting ability themselves?
  • Star Trek is practically brimming with Techno Babble innovations fitting this trope. If the Federation actually used every one-shot invention in the franchise, such as de-aging people with transporters or phase-cloaking ships or traveling at transwarp speeds, they'd practically be gods.
    • Most of the one shot inventions have restrictions built into the story: The Federation is barred from using cloaking technology due to a treaty with the Romulans, Transwarp causes turbulence which can destroy ships, etc, etc.
  • Even going beyond one-shot transporter applications, such as de-aging ("Rascals) and cloning ("Second Chances"), if you think for a moment about simple, straight-forward applications of the transporter ... you could really wreak some havoc on your enemies with one of those. Try transporting a chunk of antimatter into the enemy ship's bridge. Or into their engine. Transport the "fuel" out of their engine, into outer space. Transport your enemies into space. Transport your enemies' internal organs out of their bodies and into outer space. The possibilities are endless. I know that transporter technology is constrained by shields, but there have to be opportunities when enemies' shields are down to lob some antimatter into their ship.
    • This is actually brought up in the Star Trek Voyager novel, Section 31 Shadow. One of the reasons the aliens don't trust the Voyager crew is they could beam whatever they wanted off their ship.
    • Enterprise of all shows brought up the "transporters as a weapon" issue, despite being a prequel. The episode with the second Enterprise (Time Travel was involved) had the fight ended when Arcer started transporting essential equipment off the 2nd ship. Maybe this is why shields were designed to block transporter beams?
• Averted in Star Wars: While the original plan was to use the Death Star once and rule by fear, the Empire does use it every time they can.
• In Quest of the Delta Knights, a made-for-TV movie popularized by its appearance on Mystery Science Theater 3000, the Delta Knights were an organization dedicated to finding Archimedes' lost inventions, and using them to "bring the world out of the dark ages." In the end, the heroes decide to destroy the inventions because "the world isn't ready for such power." Of course, most of those inventions were used heavily in the Renaissance Period, the time period in which the movie is set.
• Holding Back the Phlebotinum can happen with real technology too. Cell phones destroys a lot of dramatic tension in movies. For evidence, see this montage of movies holding back the 'phlebotinum' and this example of what movies would look like if they didn't

Literature

• In the third Grey Griffins book, Ernie gains superhuman speed as the result of some weird fairy blood magic or something. But he can't use it. How come? Because it'll hasten his transformation into a changeling. If that's not enough, Natalia is given a magnifying glass that lets her see magic. She tries it out in a world filled with magic, and it nearly blinds her. Too much magic, dont'cha know.
• In Hero.com, the eponymous website first offers a free one-hour trial with a limit of one superpower. If you want to get more powers, more variety, and more time with them, you need to pay up.
  • In the sister series Villain.net, the protagonist doesn't need to pay (with money, anyway), but he can only use four at a time and the powers have an unspecified time limit. Villain.net itself was ripped off of Hero.com by the bad guys, and they don't completely know how it works.
• Averted in Plato's Republic when Glaucon discusses the impact of the Ring of Gyges on morality. The ring makes its wearer invisible and Glaucon posits that anyone possessing such a ring would more or less be obliged to use it at all times. Effectively multiple ring bearers would find that they all HAD to wear the ring to avoid being taken advantage of by less moral citizens. Reputed to be the origin of the One Ring

Live Action TV

• Early in the run of Babylon 5, the heroes discovered an ancient superweapon on the planet below. To prevent it from being misused, one of their allies took charge of it, but promised to help out whenever he could. He was then conveniently absent whenever the weapon would have been useful.
  • The forgetfulness was Lampshaded later when, needing power to boost a La Résistance broadcast, Franklin suggests to Ivanova they use the super weapon on Epsilon III to help. Ivanova then realizes that only an idiot would not realize the obvious, and beats a hasty path to the planet below.
  • On at least one occasion it was mentioned that they tried to contact the him but their transmissions were being jammed by the forces attacking the station.
  • They do use it as a holographic PA system and for spying, though.
  • Other attempts at justifying this were set up. Amongst other things, when a large group of Shadows attacked, they purposely moved very close to the station, so that the weapon couldn't fire. Oh, and in the payoff for the Chekov's gun, it's used to solve a Time Paradox.
• The Babylon 5 spin-off show, Crusade featured a brand new class of ship with an extremely powerful main weapon. So as not to make the ship all-conquering, firing this main weapon drained the ship of its power, leaving it vulnerable for up to a minute, thus ensuring it was only used as a last resort.
  • The Excalibur was actually introduced in the film Babylon 5: A Call to Arms along with its sister ship the Victory (in fact, it is the lead ship of the Victory-class destroyers, depite both being built at the same time). The power drain ended up being a plot point that required a Heroic Sacrifice.
• During season five of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy comes into possession of a powerful magic hammer, which is completely ignored up until the final episode, where it is suddenly pulled off the shelf and used to quite handily beat the villain, a frigging god, into submission. After this impressive display, the weapon is never seen or mentioned ever again.
  • It has been established that magic tends to backfire on its user. Maybe it was not what the writers intended, but look at the after-effects of said hammer battle. Brutal injuries and deaths all around.
    • This is the implicit reason for never using the enjoining spell (used to defeat Adam at the end of season 4) at any other times - although the power boost would have let Buffy kick Glory or Caleb's asses, the fact that it nearly killed her and her friends the first time makes them hold off.
  • Also in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Xander gains a level in badass by the mystical implantation of military fighting prowess. Seasons later, he explains it comes and goes and has mostly just gone.
• Over on Angel, the reason why Willow (basically god-like in her powers by the end of BtVS) doesn't step in during the Illyria arc and help Fred, previously established as a good friend of hers, is that she's "on another astral plane". The (insanely stupid and out of character, but guest-star-availability-motivated) reason Giles doesn't bother trying to contact her is that Angel now works for Wolfram & Hart, and the Scoobies fear he's turned evil. Again. Some more.
• Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis frequently did bring back old phlebotinum, but occasionally it's shown that various political organizations and red tape often make it difficult to pull them out quickly, as a lot of it is being examined or stored by other organizations at Area 51. Whenever they get something truly shattering and usable, it tends to get blown up eventually culminating in the destruction of Area 51 itself during the Atlantis finale
  • There was also an interesting case, in which the cast had to trick the Goa'uld into believing that they are doing this, when in fact It Only Works Once, as they'd be defenseless to an outright attack at the moment.
  • Probably the most egregious case is the Kull warrior armor that made it's wearer Nigh Invulnerable. Even after building a weapon they could use to kill the supersoldiers without damaging the armor, by stopping the effect of the ancient healing device used to give them life, no effort is made to collect armor sets for SG teams.
• Many additional rangers for Power Rangers were supposedly more powerful than their team mates, so as a counter, they were often given some kind of limitation to prevent them from swooping into the fight and running rings around the others. The most common excuse is that they are kept in reserve for when things go bad. Or they were busy doing something else.
  • This was actually given a Hand Wave pretty early in the first season, where Zordon explains that one of the core rules of being a Ranger is to never be the one to escalate a battle. Only use more powerful weaponry as necessary to defeat the Monster of the Week.
• In Kamen Rider Den-O, The Lancer Yuto Sakurai/Zeronos is debatably more powerful and skilled than Ryotaro/Den-O. However, he has to leave matters in Ryotaro's hands several times because he has a limited supply of the cards that allow him to become Zeronos, and more troublesome, using them causes people to forget his existence.
• In the remake of Battlestar Galactica, season 3, much fuss is made over how Cylons aboard some ships were completely wiped out by a space object that carried a virus that can instantly infect every single humanoid Cylon in the universe thanks to their Downloading ability. The Cylons run away, leaving the human fleet to find it later. Turns out the virus is just a childhood disease like measles, but the Cylons don't have the antibodies to fight it. There's some worry that Sharon will die (she doesn't). Now the human fleet holds a weapon that can completely destroy their enemy completely if just used. And what do they do? Chuck it out the airlock! Admiral Adama isn't comfortable with using bioweapons. So that entire arc is basically pointless filler, and a trump card that could possible save humanity if the Cylons attack (as they often do) is lost forever.
  • You can blame Helo for that one. For the uninitiated, the entire human race lost its means of salvation because of one self-righteous buffoon. He was the only one who objected to using the weapon, even after he discovered that his wife was immune to it and she would still loyally serve with the humans if her kind was wiped out.
    • Or he was the Only Sane Man, since using it would have meant genocide of an intelligent species that humanity had created and then enslaved.
    • Who then later came back and reduced humanity's numbers to 0.004% of their prewar totals (which is borderline guaranteed extinction within several generations) through the precise application of a nuclear holocaust. And are determined to hunt them to extinction. After years of humanity attempting peaceful relations with them. No matter how you cut it, the weapon was a viable solution, even with the ethics factored in.
    • Even if such a biological agent was never used, it would make an effective "Sword of Damocles" for the humans to possess, and potentially force the Cylons to halt their campaign under the threat of mutally assured destruction if the humans were pushed to the point of using it.
    • If the humans simply told the Cylons about it, the Cylons would have needed to hold back Resurrection Ships from battle, making battles significantly more costly for the Cylons.
      • Unless the Cylons routinely bring every Resurrection Ship they have within range of the humans, this is another reason for Helo to do what he did. If you can defeat the tactic simply by being out of range then it won't exterminate the entire Cylon race if you use it once, and once they know it exists it will never work again. Also, the human race is now inevitably doomed to extinction as even the theoretical chance of reaching an accord with the Cylons is now gone forever, and they vastly outnumber you. So, yeah, withholding it made sense.
• Star Trek in general, in fact, tends to do this a lot with its more mundane gadgets as well as the shiny new McGuffin Of The Week.
  • In any typical episode from any series, if any of the crew are trapped somewhere, you can expect something to go wrong with the transporters. Send a shuttle craft? That ion storm that's blocking the transporter already downed the last one, which is why the away team is trapped, so it's best not to go throwing away another one. Try to air-drop some supplies? The ion storm will destroy them too.
  • Likewise, if the ship is trapped in some Negative Space Wedgie, expect not only the warp engines but the impulse engines and thrusters to go offline, the dilithium crystals to be drained of power/shut down to prevent their being drained of power, and whatever can get the ship free to be in tragically short supply at the moment.
  • In less dramatic moments, you can also expect the tricorders to have no readings on what this strange new phenomenon the crew are investigating is, and sensors to be either broken or giving unreliable readings.
  • By the way, if this is another holodeck-gone-wild episode, don't expect the holodeck's built-in safeties to work. Either the computer's not taking orders today, or the villain of your favorite holodeck adventure still knows how to trap you in a dungeon or force field when the safeties keep his ray gun from destroying you. There's also a good possibility one of your enemies is at the controls trying to get you killed, having successfully locked out all of your teammates who are trying to rescue you.
  • This is why at least one popular theory among fans is that what happened between episodes wasn't interesting enough to be worth showing us because all those times, the phlebotinum worked.
  • In the Next Generation episode "Darmok," the command crew learns that the two words "Darmok" and "Jalad" both refer to a particular body of myths and legends. They learn this by querying the ship's computer. So who does nobody think to say "Computer: Cross-reference: Darmak, Jalad, Tanagra?"

Video Games

• Wing Commander Prophecy put it best, concerning a Wave Motion Gun that was mounted on a space carrier:

"...a fire-and-forget weapon... we fired it once, and now we can forget about firing it again."

• In Star Control, the Ur-Quan don't bring their ultra-massive super-duper Precursor battleship the Sa-Matra into play in the first war until it looks like the Alliance of Free Stars may actually stop them. Once it is brought into play, though, the war winds up pretty quickly to an Ur-Quan victory. It's never brought into play afterwards, mostly because it's being held as the prize fought over between the Ur-Quan Kzer-Za and the Kohr-Ah.
  • Part of the lore suggests, apparently, that at least part of the reason that the Ur-Quan are so hesitant to use the Sa-Matra is because it's practically a religious artifact to them, representing the power to ensure that nobody can ever enslave them again (long story). Using it except in direst need presumably gives too much credit to the opponent and debases the Sa-Matra itself.
  • They also don't use it during the end of the Doctrinal Conflict, when the Kohr-Ah are winning. This is presumably because it would be cheating, since that was the only reason the Kzer-Za beat the Kohr-Ah last time.
• In God Hand, Gene wears a Deitic Brace on his arm in order to seal off the full power of the eponymous God Hand, requiring a bar to be filled first before he takes the Brace off and goes to town. But considering the game's difficulty, it makes some people wonder why he can't just leave the brace off. The answer is that by sealing off the power of the God Hand, Gene is able to build it up so when he does release the Brace, he's virtually invincible. This actully makes Gene a more effective fighter than Azel, who doesn't use a Brace.
• Ragnell in Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, in which Ike had apparently been carrying Ragnell since his father's death but doesn't pull it out until encountering the Black Knight. The same sword is held back again in Radiant Dawn, but you get it earlier and there's a reason Ike doesn't have it up to that point.
• Metroid: Other M: Adam Malkovich, Samus' "Commanding Officer," must give her permission to use mission critical items, such as her Morph Ball, Super Missiles, and others. The real annoyance in this game is that Samus isn't actually under Adam's command. She does it to protect any survivors on the station, and for the sake of the Galactic Federation Marines she's commanding. And for some reason, she doesn't turn on several purely defensive upgrades until Adam tells her to, even at serious risk to herself.
  • Samus then counters this trope midway through the game. Once she's lost contact with Adam, she then cheekily transmits on his designated frequency a request for authorization for several of her upgrades, saying that if she doesn't hear him counter it he must have approved.
• After retrieving the Apple of Eden from the Borgias in Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, Ezio rarely uses it again unless he really needs its power and knowledge. His ally Machiavelli encourages him to use it more often, but Ezio refuses since he doesn't want to become too dependent on it. Eventually it stops working for Ezio entirely since the Apple itself tells him it is time to relinquish it so that future generations of Assassins can use it.

Webcomics

• Pretty much anything Time Travel related in Sluggy Freelance. The Ray Gun that can freeze someone in time or blast them into the past runs out of juice after two shots. Both attempts at building a Time Machine break down after their first use. Time-Turners are gathered up and destroyed by wizards and quickly forgotten about. And, while Timeless Space can be used for Time Travel, it's such a Crapsack World and the Physical God in control of it is such a Cloudcuckoolander that no sane person would ever go there of their own free will.
• Done in the Order of the Stick where Xykon holds back the Monster in the Darkness from revealing itself because of how incredibly powerful it is. While it has a very childish demeanor, the times it has given us a taste of what it can do we have seen it create a massive chasm in the ground just by stomping, and "fail" a contest of "Who can hit the lightest" by launching an armored human miles away.
• In the Jet Dream Remix Comic, J.E.T. D.R.E.A.M. has developed its own beneficial and voluntary feminization treatment, but it's apparently only available in limited amounts for the very best J.E.T. T.E.E.N. recruits. Also, a recruit is not eligible for the treatment until after his 18th birthday. This explains why J.E.T. T.E.E.N.'s Elle-Boys don't all just become girls, and why there are so many Elle-Boys in the Jet Dream Auxiliary Corps.
• Awkward Zombie here and here demonstrates how internally consistent is "diversification" of characters based on gimmicks based on gadgetry, as in Team Fortress 2 (not much, really).

Western Animation

• On Kim Possible, despite achieving status as a regular gadget, Kim hardly ever uses her super-powerful, all-purpose battle suit, which received a weakness in the initial episode of the series' return. Would've made the missions even easier for her.
  • Ron's Mystical Monkey Power, that by creating a Battle Aura can defeat ANY opponent, is hardly used and quickly forgotten until the special episodes where Ron can prove his manliness. The lack of Mystical Monkey Power Kung Fu is even lampshaded.
    • Justified in that Ron is terrified of monkeys.
    • And the power itself is...well...pretty powerful. He nearly killed Monkey Fist in their first fight, and understandably for a pacifist like Ron, that's pretty scary. His refusal/inability to use it may be a psychological block...one he overcomes in a big way in "Graduation" when he has to save the world and the girl he loves.
• Partially averted on Jackie Chan Adventures, where the talismans from the first season are used, on occasion, throughout the entire series, usually to a great effect. They're still left to Section 13 for most of the time, however.
  • They still only seem to bring enough talismans to the battle to keep it interesting.
• The android AMAZO as seen in the Justice League Unlimited episode "Return" and "Wake the Dead". Here is a being with the powers of a god (think Dr Manhattan) who defeats the entire Justice League and shifts the Green Lanterm homeworld of Oa to another dimension in one episode, has a Heel Face Turn and is later called in to defeat a relatively minor villain in another episode. Fortunately averted in that this villain can absorb AMAZO's power, rather than be instantly obliterated. AMAZO departs the earth and is never seen again in the series. The writers may have wisely concluded that his presence would for the most part, render the Justice League completely irrelevant.
  • To elaborate, this "minor villain" is the reanimated corpse of Solomon Grundy. Grundy, in the DCAU, regularly fought Superman on even terms and literally died beating Cthulhu to a bloody pulp. Not so much of a minor villain in terms of power level.
• This trope was used regularly in Disney's Aladdin animated series to keep Genie from solving every problem with just a magical handwave.

Real Life

• Nuclear weapons anyone?
  • I believe you're thinking of uranium
  • Justified as the Nuclear Option may well be The End of the World as We Know It. How about a nice game of chess?
  • Isn't this trope only for fiction?
  • Apparently not? Also: how about tic-tac-toe instead?
  • Or any WMD, for that matter. The poison gasses used in World War One were such a hideous weapon that the civilized world agreed to outlaw their use. Not that that has stopped those same nations from stockpiling the stuff, and there's always worry about less scrupulous nations or organizations getting ahold of them. Keeping these genies in their bottles gets harder every year as they get easier to make and new "genies" keep getting invented.
  • Nuclear weapons probably don't count since the only thing they are really useful for is killing civilians while not under fire from enemy forces and rendering the area uninhabitable. Comparatively speaking, anything a nuclear weapon can do can be done much safer and easier with the appropriate conventional warhead for the situation. If nuclear warheads had a legitimate purpose beyond mass civilian casualties that couldn't be done better with other types of warheads, they might see more usage. Right now, their only real purpose is as a threat rather then an actual weapon. Even for attacking civilians, nuclear warheads aren't always the best option.
    • Not really true. There are a huge number of military situations in which nuclear weapons would be far more useful than their two orders of magnitude less conventional cousins; it's just that civilised societies (rightly) have such a horror of SUSTAINED nuclear weapon use that no one is willing to set the precident of using a nuke if a conventional weapon will possibly suffice. The "nuclear weapons are useful only for killing civilians" belief is a direct consequence of the US cold war policy of MAD, where they reacted to any hint of Soviet aggression with the threat of global extinction.
      • For example, the neutron bomb was originally invented for the job of stopping a Soviet field army on the advance without permanently poisoning the territory you were defending (and not for the job of 'killing civilians without ruining the loot', as was claimed at the time). Using one would have taken the Fulda Gap scenario from "we get Zerg Rushed" to "we press the 'I Win' button". The problem is that nobody could guarantee that the Soviet response would not be even more nuclear, so they abandoned the project.
• Read a popular science magazine. Any of them. Once a week there is special feature on some technology that surely should have solved all the problems of the world by now.
• The United States is blessed with the world's largest supply of helium, with some 78% of world production today; in the past, before significant sources were found in Algeria, Russia, and elsewhere, the proportion was even higher. In the early 20th century, the US intentionally banned foreign sales of helium for strategic reasons; this is why the German Zeppelin company was forced to use hydrogen rather than helium in its eponymous airships, which (in turn) led to or at least exacerbated the Hindenburg disaster.