One Hero, Hold the Weaksauce

In a World where superpowers are commonplace, or at least common enough to be common knowledge, it tends to be the case that these powers come with certain drawbacks. Maybe there's a price that has to be paid, or a ritual that must be performed, or some other caveat that can make having these powers a pain, or using them annoyingly cumbersome.

And then you have this protagonist. Born under the right stars, blessed with the protection of a supernatural entity, armed with certain unique talents or just plain lucky: he happens to be the only one in the whole world who is exempt from this ironclad rule. A wizard who can cast magic without a wand, for instance, or a superhuman immune to the local flavor of Kryptonite. A more "fair" treatment may make holding the sauce a trade-off for reduced powers such as with the Dhampyr or other Half-Human Hybrid characters. Ultimately this is not required though and all the trope concerns are heroes who are special because they can flout the rules that all other metanormals in the setting are chained by.

The name is a play on a phrase commonly used for making a special order at a restaurant: "Hold the X" means "This dish normally includes X, but I would like it without X." This is a pun because "hero" is also a kind of sandwich, so it's like you're ordering a Hero sandwich, but without theWeaksauce Weakness.

A Sub-Trope of Conditional Powers. Can easily lead to a Mary Sue.

Examples of One Hero, Hold the Weaksauce include:

Anime and Manga

• Edward Elric of Fullmetal Alchemist is unlike most other Alchemists able to do alchemy without using a circle. This, of course, came with its own problems. Several other alchemists can also do this, though they paid their price as well.
  • It should be noted that this weakness is only as big as it needs to be. The more Genre Savvy alchemists have circles on their clothing or tatooed on their body, making it even easier for them to use their powers than for Edward who still needs to clap his hands together.
  • But one small scratch on those circle then those alchemist will lose their alchemy ability until they find a back up circle or repair it , where you need to destroy Ed's hand to stop him from using alchemy ,good luck on that one unless you are Scar
• Darker than Black's Hei doesn't appear to have a Remuneration. It's explained some Contractors can lose their Renumeration but retain their powers, specifically if they lose their original bodies (such as the case with Mao). This turns out to be the reason for Hei's lack of renumeration as well -- since they're technically his sister's powers obtained via Fusion Dance, he's not obliged to fulfill the renumeration.
• In Medaka Box, the protagonist is the only Abnormal who isn't psychopathic by default.
• As revealed in the recent chapters, Clare in Claymore seems to be completely unable to Awaken, even when deliberately trying to.
  • This is because Jean sacrificed her life to bring her back, which caused her to have a trauma of transforming. Or because Clare is only quarter-yoma, take your pick.
• In addition to physical deformities, the other Borners in the anime Canaan have to take regular shots of medication to avoid death from their virus-originated superpowers. The eponymous protagonist has neither of these problems (though her hair did go white because of them).
  • There is another character who received an internal and therefore invisible physical mutation. She however didn't seem to get any powers.
    • To clarify, the character in question had two appendixes as her mutation. Not exactly super-powered synthesia. It does bring up the question of if she'd still have to take the medication if she got them removed, too...
• Shakugan no Shana's Yuji Sakai isn't doomed to vanish from existence like other Torches thanks to a special artifact that periodically replenishes his energy.
• Rosario Plus Vampire: After a series of near-death instances, Tsukune gains vampire powers from various blood transfusions. Unlike the female lead Moka, this comes without the Weaksauce Weakness. He effectively has no weaknesses (well, other than the potential to go berserk and Crucifixes), which gives him an advantage.
• Heroes summoned as the The Berserker in the Holy Grail War normally lose their skills in exchange for raw power, but Berserker of Fate/Zero aka Lancelot, has an ability called eternal arms mastership that allows him to retain his combat abilities even in the grip of madness. It makes him incredibly overpowered.

Comic Books

• Depending on the year/dimension/day-of-the-week: Power Girl is a kryptonian who is immune/resistant to kryptonite because she's really an alternate universe kryptonian.
  • To be clear, Kryptonians are only susceptible to kryptonite from their own universe. It varies with Power Girl because she was kind of sort of folded into the current universe but isn't from Krypton.
  • Superman of Earth-22 is not only immune to New Earth kryptonite but also his own due to a lifetime spent soaking up sunlight. All-Star Superman develops this immunity for basically the same reason but it leaves him with a progressive fatal condition. During the Bronze Age even the mainstream Superman got in on the act for a little while.
  • While most Kryptonians are susceptible to magic, Superboy-Prime ended up being altered just enough that being slugged by a lightning-infused Black Adam did zilch to him.

Film

• Blade (the "Daywalker") is a half-vampire with "all of their strengths, and none of their weaknesses."
  • Blade still has a craving for Blood though. He manages.
    • The tagline is inaccurate since he didn't quite get all the strengths; he still ages at a normal rate.
  • Many vampire hunter series with a half-breed protagonist, like Vampire Hunter D, have a similar theme.

Literature

• Sonja Blue is the heroine of a daywalker vampire hunter series.
• Bella doesn't suffer from the typical uncontrollable vampire hunger in Breaking Dawn.
• The intentional creation of one of these by eugenic planning is the goal of the Bene Gesserit order in Dune: the Kwisatz Haderach, a man possessing the normally Gender Restricted Abilities of a Bene Gesserit sister, while also capable of accessing parts of the mind a woman could not.
• Most of the human population in the Codex Alera can use one or two types of elemental fury, which invariably leaves them vulnerable to other types. The exception are powerful noble families, particularly the High Lords, which generally have access to all six types of furies, making them incredibly powerful and without obvious weaknesses.

Video Games

• The main characters of Persona 3 and 4 are both special cases who can have multiple Personas, avoiding the set weaknesses of every other Persona user. In 4, while everyone else has to own up to their own darker thoughts, the main character doesn't have a hidden dark side to face.
  • Notably, this doesn't apply to the first two games, where the characters gain their Personae in different fashion.
• In the Fable series, the main character's bloodline is unique in that it results in heroes that can access all three disciplines (Strength, Skill, and Will), while most heroes are only able to access one.
• In The World Ends With You, Neku is one of the few players who has access to multiple powers/pins (most of his partners just have one ability that they make use of, e.g. Shiki's ability to animate her stuffed animal).

Western Animation

• Generator Rex: In a world where every living thing is infected with Nanomachines, Rex is one of the few people able to control them.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender has the Avatar, who can learn to use all four elements.
  • To elaborate, benders (people who can potentially manipulate fire, wind, water, or earth) are born with not just the ability to be a bender, but with what element they can learn to control. An earthbender can never learn waterbending or any other type of bending (though, as Iroh demonstrated, the styles of other benders^[1] can be employed for variations, if used correctly).

Real Life

• Things like breeding, genetic engineering, medicine, and eventually Transhumanism are about stripping the Weaksauce from either ourselves or other living things we interact with.
• Evolution is nature's way of countering or mitigating the weaknesses of lifeforms. However, it is undirected and settles for adequacy. It's also REALLY slow for us multicellular organisms.

1. ↑ since each element is bent using different martial art stances and disciplines