History Main / AwesomenessByAnalysis

* Richard B. Riddick's badassitude stems not only from his fighting skill but also from his deductive reasoning. In ''Film/TheChroniclesOfRiddick'' it is hinted that the entire series of events that transpired at the Crematoria prison was a GambitRoulette masterminded by Riddick. The Crematoria prison escape begins with Riddick giving a detailed description of what the guys currently escaping the prison are doing, and concludes by saying it's a good plan. When a mercenary who didn't get out asks him how he knows their plan, he replies, "It was mine."

* Sal's superpower in ''Webcomic/DubiousCompany''. As she explains ''[[http://dubiouscompany.com/comics/2008/04/20 here]]''. She later uses it to ''[[DistressedDamsel get captured]]'' ''[[YouJustHadToSayIt by a dragon]]'' and prevent Mary and Sue's ZanyScheme.

** Temperature, humidity, wind direction, lead time...it's not just the physicality that makes sniper training some of the toughest in the military. There's a very good reason why dropout rates for potential sniper students tend to be appallingly high; if you don't possess any of these required attributes then you might as well consider finding a more appropriate position for your field.

** Hall of Famer Greg Maddux was an exceptional control pitcher who had once gone through as many as seventeen seasons with at least fifteen wins. He possessed an immensely good command of his pitches, sported excellent discipline, and knew where to find the strike zone consistently that he rarely gave up walks on opposing hitters.[[note]] Maddux is one of just ''four'' pitchers in MLB history to strike out more than 3,000 batters ''and'' have less than 1,000 walks in his career; the 3 others are Ferguson Jenkins, Pedro Martinez, and Curt Schilling.[[/note]] But what really puts him here was his uncanny ability to read players just by studying their body language and their mental capacities to figure out what they were about to do. There's a good reason why one of Maddux's nicknames is "The Professor".

** Hall of fame baseball player Cal Ripken Jr. was able to be a very good defensive shortstop in his prime, despite his lack of physical speed, because he studied both opposing batters, and his team's own pitchers, to make sure he was always in the optimal position to make the needed play.
** Greg Maddux was an exceptional control pitcher who had once gone through as many as seventeen seasons with at least fifteen wins. He possessed an immensely good command of his pitches, sported excellent discipline, and knew where to find the strike zone consistently that he rarely gave up walks on opposing hitters. But what really puts him here was his uncanny ability to read players just by studying their body language and their mental capacities to figure out what they were about to do. There's a good reason why one of Maddux's nicknames is "The Professor".
* Many teachers -even at university level- use the same exam questions for years, sometimes even use the exact same sheet multiple times, even in the same semester. If this exam goes [[KeepCirculatingTheTapes into circulation]], it allows students to pass difficult subjects with only a few hours of studying/memorizing answers.
* [[https://soranews24.com/2019/10/12/idol-stalker-figures-out-where-his-target-lives-from-the-reflection-in-her-eyes-in-social-media-photo/ A stalker of a Japanese idol singer tracked down his victim's residence by observing reflections in her eyes, then used photographs showing the position of windows and the angle of incoming sunlight to determine which apartment was hers.]]

* ''LetsPlay/{{Pwnage}}'': From [[CloudCuckooLander Damian]] of all people. During their 2nd VideoGame/TheImpossibleGame playthrough he is able to study Kyle’s movements and do what took Kyle 22 attempts on his first try. Considering the [[NintendoHard difficulty of the game]], that’s rather impressive [[note]][[DownplayedTrope downplayed]] because Damian got the game on his phone and practiced before hand[[/note]]

** The "Insightful Reflexes" feat replaces the Dexterity bonus to Reflex saves with the Intelligence bonus, thus avoiding damage from widespread such as {{Fireballs}} and {{Breath Weapon}}s not through agility but instant calculations.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}}'': the Investigator and Slayer classes are largely built around this concept, focusing on a single enemy to gain bonuses against them by picking out their weaknesses.

* In ''WebComic/DarthsAndDroids'', R2 [[https://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/1195.html reveals]] that he obtained the [[spoiler: Lost Orb of Phanastacoria]] by calculating its trajectory from the [[spoiler: explosion of the Peace Moon]] and tweaking Luke's ship's flight trajectory a week later to catch it unnoticed.

** V does it again [[http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0935.html later]]. They figure out that the psionic they're fighting is low on energy thanks to "a combination of observations, calculations, and superior intelligence[[note]]that's ''tactical'' intelligence, i.e. being informed of her capabilities by a disgruntled former ally[[/note]]" and uses this information to intimidate her into [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere leaving the fight]].

* WebAnimation/RedVsBlue Recreation has Sarge deduce the problems back at base from a single phone call, begining with [[ProfessionalButtKisser Simmons]] answering casually intead of following protocol. As shown in the video clip bellow.

Need to make a million-to-one shot to stop the Doomsday Device from exploding the world, but have never even fired a gun? Just run off some mental calculations about your gun's firing speed, friction, gravity, and the slightly-off-kilter scope (how exactly the analyzer knows all those variables is {{handwave}}d), and it's a done deal. Need to defeat a jujitsu master? Logically anticipate where his next strike will come from and remain one step ahead. Need to deduce the SecretIdentity without peeking behind the mask? Simply go through all the people with the correct body type, who live in the right area, and who might have the right means and motive to do what they do, and hey presto, it might as well have been an OpenSecret all along.

* Machinima/RedVsBlue Recreation has Sarge deduce the problems back at base from a single phone call, begining with [[ProfessionalButtKisser Simmons]] answering casually intead of following protocol. As shown in the video clip bellow.

* This is the whole premise of the Thai martial arts film ''Film/{{Chocolate}}'', in which an autistic girl is able to become a face-kicking machine by memorizing techniques she sees when watching Creator/BruceLee movies and observing lessons at a nearby Muay Thai school.

* ''Film/Prey2022'': This is Naru's greatest strength as a huntress. While she may be small and have nowhere near the strength as the male hunters of her tribe, she is incredibly observant. This is what gives her an edge over her counterparts when a super strong and technologically advanced alien hunter makes the entire strength and size difference moot, as she uses her observational skills to learn something new about it in every encounter, [[FinalExamBoss all of which are used by her in the final confrontation]].

* ''Film/Prey2022'': This is Naru's greatest strength as a huntress. While she may be small and have nowhere near the strength as the male hunters of her tribe, she is incredibly observant. This is what gives her an edge when a super strong and technologically advanced alien hunter makes the strength and size difference moot, as she learns something new about it in every encounter, [[FinalExamBoss all of which are used by her in the final confrontation]].

* Science. Through systematic investigation of the nature of the universe, this enterprise has made possible achievements which would be unimaginable in earlier ages, from the miracles of modern medicine to space exploration to Wiki/TVTropes.

* Victor Creed, a clawed and beast-like creature with abilities similar to {{Wolverine}} in ''Film/XMenOriginsWolverine'' faces John Wraith, a man who can instantly teleport. Creed [[spoiler:uses his brain, not his mutant power, to predict the exact location of John Wraith's next teleport destination. Creed catches Wraith's spine mid-teleport, and comments on how Wraith's weakness was his predictability]].

[[folder:Comic Books]]
* ''Franchise/TheDCU'':
** ''ComicBook/TheAuthority'':
*** The Midnighter starts every battle by first running the whole thing through the supercomputer in his head a few million times, analyzing every possible outcome, so he'll know precisely how the battle will go, and what he'll have to do. He's particularly fond of telling people that he's already beaten them a few million times, so doing it once more will be simple. He even put this on a business card once in an effort to save time. This failed, as the card ended up in his forehead.
*** This was [[InvertedTrope rather effectively inverted]] in ''ComicBook/CaptainAtom: Armageddon''. The Midnighter saw Captain Atom as just another target for a NoHoldsBarredBeatdown. Instead, Captain Atom treated the Midnighter (and his boyfriend/husband Apollo) to a total CurbStompBattle, showing that sometimes Awesomeness by Analysis is no match for raw, unadulterated, world-shaking power, especially when the wielder of that power also out-thinks you.
*** And it fails when a supervillain summons [[Characters/BatmanTheJoker the Joker]], who despite being human is so psychotic and unpredictable that ''the only thing'' Midnighter can do is [[LogicBomb stand there staring at him]].
*** Another failure comes about in the miniseries ''Human on the Inside'', in which Midnighter's opponent thwarts him by declining to make the first move, reasoning that Midnighter can only derive the possibilities for the fight once his opponent makes an opening move. Fans seem divided over whether that's really how the power was supposed to work.
** ''ComicBook/{{Batman}}'':
*** The titular Batman is said to have a second major in this, as he is very very much a detective and criminologist when his preplanning everything didn't succeed immediately. An example of this trope in action comes in ''ComicBook/BatmanYearOne'' when Bruce Wayne first encounters street hooker [[Comicbook/{{Catwoman}} Selina Kyle]] and quickly realizes "She knows Karate... only Karate."
*** The same goes for Batman's EvilCounterpart Prometheus, who has created technology that analyzes an opponent's fighting style, allowing him to simulate it perfectly.
*** The Batman villain [[Characters/BatmanBane Bane]] became a master of several martial arts and sciences simply by reading every book he could get his hands on. After Bane holds his own against world-class swordsman [[Characters/BatmanRasAlGhul Ra's al Ghul]], Ra's criticizes his lack of flair and implies that Bane learned sword fighting entirely from reading books on the subject.
*** [[ComicBook/{{Batgirl}} Cassandra Cain]] and [[Characters/BatmanLadyShiva her mother]] both possess an ability to "read" body language, allowing them to perfectly predict every move made by their opponents. Cassandra has gained this ability by undergoing TrainingFromHell that left her with severe disabilities as a consequence, while Shiva has it from [[CharlesAtlasSuperpower simply being that good at martial arts]].
*** The ClockKing is known for his LudicrousPrecision, to the point that he fought Batman to a standstill because he'd analyzed all of his moves.
*** Bruce Wayne (out of costume and with no gadgets) was able to hold off several Talon assassins by simply figuring out that their techniques, while accumulated through years of experience through technical immortality, were outdated. Once he figures out that were pretty much undead, meaning he wouldn't ''really'' be killing them, they stand no chance. [[spoiler:However, one of them, the great-grandfather of [[Characters/NightwingDickGrayson Dick Grayson]], was a bit more of a challenge the first time around.]]
*** In ''ComicBook/BatmanCurseOfTheWhiteKnight'', the moment the Joker sees that Harley was pregnant, he correctly guesses that she is having twins.
** Early on in ''ComicBook/BlackestNight'', [[ComicBook/{{Aquaman}} Mera]] deduces on her own that the Black Lanterns are drawn towards strongly emanating emotions (in the same manner that sharks are drawn towards blood), before any actual Lanterns from the Corps drop in [[BigDamnHeroes to save the day]] [[MrExposition and go into actual detail about the undead Lanterns]].
** In ''ComicBook/LegionOfSuperHeroes'', ComicBook/KarateKid prides himself on learning every martial art in existence. Since he is male, he's not allowed to learn Amazonian martial arts. He was nonetheless able to figure it out by watching other people using it.
** ''ComicBook/{{Superman}}'':
*** In ''ComicBook/WarWorld'', Superman and ComicBook/{{Supergirl}} deduce the way to beat super-villain Mongul by observing a mass graveyard located at the titular weapon-satellite.
---->'''Superman:''' Do you remember that mountain of graves we noticed on Warworld? That's what gave me the answer! The Warzoons weren't buried in a mass grave as there'd be if the race was destroyed by some great illness!\\
'''Supergirl:''' You're right! The Warzoons must've died one by one! They buried each other -- except for the last one buried by the peace-loving Largas!\\
'''Superman:''' Precisely! And there's only one thing on that entire satellite capable of killing the Warzoon one at a time -- the control helmet in the command console!\\
'''Supergirl:''' The massive energy-drain must've proven too much for their minds to endure!
*** ''ComicBook/SuperboyNew52'': [[ComicBook/{{Superboy}} Kon]] taught himself to talk and communicate by watching others do it.
* American Pi in Troy Hickman's series ''ComicBook/CommonGrounds'' has this as her superpower.
* Destiny Ajaye in the upcoming Top Cow series ''ComicBook/{{Genius}}'' has this ability which she uses to coordinate gang warfare on a national scale.
* This is supposedly how Helix sees the world in ''ComicBook/GIJoeIDW''. It is the explanation for her kickass combat abilities that make her a match for Snake-Eyes.
* ''Franchise/MarvelUniverse'':
** Finesse from ''ComicBook/AvengersAcademy'' has a similar ability to the Taskmaster's: the ability to master any physical skill she sees performed. So much so that she actually wonders if she might be Taskmaster's daughter. [[spoiler:She also has his memory problems.]]
** The Beast defeated ComicBook/{{Hawkeye}} at billiards in ''ComicBook/TheAvengers'' through calculation of angles.
** Like Karnak, Mantis from ''ComicBook/TheAvengers'' and ''ComicBook/GuardiansOfTheGalaxy'' can instinctively sense weak points in her opponents. In one of her first appearances, she took down flippin' ''[[ComicBook/TheMightyThor Thor]]'' by locating (and then punching) [[PressurePoint sensitive nerve clusters]] in his neck.
** ''ComicBook/FantasticFour'':
*** Mr. Fantastic lives on this trope. Being a RubberMan who's ImmuneToBullets is a pretty impressive superpower by itself, but Reed benefits heavily from his massive intellect, which allows him to apply his powers with tremendous creativity and swiftly identify the weaknesses of any opponent that he faces.
*** When he's not busy [[RobotMaster building robots,]] this is the Mad Thinker's shtick (combining it with XanatosGambit). He's an [[MadMathematician evil super-mathematician]]. During ''ComicBook/CivilWar'', when Reed Richards admits to having basically invented [[Franchise/{{Foundation}} psycho-history]] and wants someone to check his figures, he realizes that the Mad Thinker is the only qualified person around. The Thinker is bowled over by the scope of Reed's calculations.
** ''ComicBook/TheIncredibleHulk'':
*** Bruce Banner has this when he isn't the Hulk, to the point that [[Characters/MarvelComicsNormanOsborn Norman Osborn]] considers Banner a bigger threat than the Hulk.
*** Amadeus Cho claims that the Hulk actually does this subconsciously, since he still has access to all of Banner's smarts, and that that's why in all the seemingly random destruction he causes, innocent people usually escape unscathed. ''ComicBook/ImmortalHulk'' brings this concept up, with several characters [[LampshadeHanging noting that this is ridiculous]]... but then again... when asked about it, the Hulk states that it makes sense. [[AntiHero For the nicer Hulk]], which he is decidedly ''not''.
** Amadeus Cho from ''ComicBook/TheIncredibleHercules'' has this as his superpower. He can stop a charging rhino with a grape seed.
** Karnak of ''ComicBook/TheInhumans'' has the ability to find the one weak spot in any material or object, allowing him to [[ShatterpointTap shatter it with a (non-superpowered) karate chop]]. He's been shown to damage ''[[Characters/MarvelComicsUltron Ultron]]'' with a well-placed strike. And pushing the awesomeness even further: this is not a "superpower." He was never exposed to the Terrigen Mists, like other Inhumans, so his abilities are [[CharlesAtlasSuperpower the result of training and discipline]]. Later stories show him to be [[SemanticSuperpower able to detect the flaws in more abstract things]], such as plans and concepts. And after he was DrivenToSuicide in ''ComicBook/{{Inhumanity}}'', he [[BackFromTheDead came back]] after finding the weak spot in ''death''.
** ''ComicBook/MsMarvel2014'': While Kamala Khan has quite the impressive shapeshifter powerset, being a nerdy and intelligent teenage girl, she pretty much specializes in using the laws of physics to her advantage as part of her superheroing style.
** ''ComicBook/SpiderMan'': In a prelude to ''ComicBook/SpiderIsland'', when ComicBook/ShangChi [[BoxingLessonsForSuperman teaches Spider-Man martial arts]], Spider-Man attempts to take this approach, although Shang-Chi disagrees, believing that Spidey is MeasuringTheMarigolds:
--->'''Spider-Man:''' Think I got this. It's mass, acceleration, leverage and a knowledge of human biology. That's science, [[ScienceHero and I'm great at science]].\\
'''Shang-Chi:''' No, Spider-Man, it is so much more. This is no mere application of brute force. It is an art, and an expression of the self.\\
'''Spider-Man:''' What if most of myself ''is'' science?
** [[Characters/MarvelComicsTaskmaster Taskmaster]] can do this with any physical skill he has seen at least once and is physically capable of duplicating (and some that he shouldn't be). However, what makes this Awesomeness by Analysis is that [[CutLexLuthorACheck he's founded a thriving business]] ''[[AcademyOfEvil teaching other supervillains]]'' (his latest job is training the recruits/draftees of [[ComicBook/AvengersTheInitiative the Initiative]] and latter Osborn's Camp HAMMER) something he couldn't do if he didn't gain a deep insight into the skills he picked up. In fact, he's so good at it that governments have been shown to hire him to train law-enforcement to take down supervillains. This power, however, requires the subject to act sanely and in a recognizable pattern. ComicBook/{{Daredevil}} once defeated him by acting at random (eventually tricking Taskmaster into stepping into traffic), and he is powerless against ComicBook/{{Deadpool}}'s ConfusionFu.
** ''ComicBook/XMen'':
*** [[Characters/MarvelComicsCyclops Cyclops]] is very good at pool, seeing as he's had to memorize complex trigonometric techniques to make sure his optic blasts go wherever he wants. It's implied/stated to be part of his powers.
*** This is Sage's whole shtick. Well, this and PsychicPowers, but mostly she's the resident AwesomenessByAnalysis queen.
*** In the crossover event ''Necrosha'', a resurrected, BrainwashedAndCrazy Doug Ramsey easily beats up the ''ComicBook/NewMutants'' by using his {{Omniglot}} power to "translate" the nonverbal language of their AttackPatternAlpha, predicting their every move. He loses the upper hand when Karma mind-controls the whole team, causing them to [[ConfusionFu move erratically]].
*** ComicBook/{{X 23}} walks through a doorway. By then, Laura has [[SherlockScan already assessed the threat level of everyone present]] and calculated the best plan for ''killing everyone inside the room''. [[CursedWithAwesome She can't turn it off, either]].
* ''ComicBook/TopTen'''s Detective King Peacock has the ability find a weakness in any object, although his justification is he apparently talks to Satan.
* ''Franchise/{{Transformers}}'':
** ''ComicBook/TheTransformersMarvel'': Shockwave was able to calculate probabilities of situational outcomes to exact percentages. It didn't hurt that he was an actual computer.
** ''ComicBook/TheTransformersMegaseries'': IDW Shockwave is no slouch at this either, and not just for calculating probabilities or discovering weakness, either. During a fight with the Dinobots, he is astonished by the irrationality of their attack and deducts that it's driven by anger, an emotion that he finds irrational and normally pointless. However, once he sees how it seems to drive up their ability to fight, he patches together a "rage" emulator into his mind and goes absolutely berserk, singlehandedly dominating the Dinobots, and then puts this so-called "anger" on the back-burner for later analysis.
** ''ComicBook/TransformersMoreThanMeetsTheEye'': Skids has the ability to learn and master new skills quickly. He has used this to analyze an opponent's fighting styles and overcome numerous, powerful enemies. However, there is a drawback: Because he learns skills so quickly, he gets bored once he learns everything he can about a subject.
* In ''ComicBook/{{Watchmen}}'', two such characters exist. One is Ozymandias, the other the God-like Doctor Manhattan. The latter is BlessedWithSuck when he can analyze everything, even the future he will take, and finds everything to be meaningless on a grand scale.
* Paris of ''ComicBook/StormwatchPHD'' developed his talent for precision violence via [[TheGift innate instinct]], TrainingFromHell and [[AbusiveParents a]] ''[[AbusiveParents really]]'' [[AbusiveParents bad childhood]]. Wanda Durst, his teammate, has a similar origin that resulted in ''her'' particular [[TheProfiler skill set]].

[[folder:Fan Works]]
* ''Fanfic/AdviceAndTrust'':
** In chapter 5 Rei notices that Shinji and Asuka smell of chlorine, ammonia, dust and each other. Quickly she deduces that: they just had sex; they are together; they are keeping it a secret, and the reasons for the secrecy. And she guesses all that just by sniffing their scent!
** Later Shinji and Asuka realize their mothers are stuck inside their giant robots just by talking about their pasts and their experiences piloting Eva and comparing notes.
* In ''[[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8532906/1/iFightCrimeWithVictorious iFight Crime With Victorious]]'':
** Freddie Benson has this as his main power, and it doubles as healing and triples as an AdaptiveAbility. He uses this to diagnose the functions of his own ability and the abilities of his friends.
** Neville Papperman performs a similar task with his "fear-sense", but he does this by figuring out the person's vulnerabilities and concerns over their power and working out how it functions. He analyses their fear, which typically relates to their new-found power.
* In a ''Fanfic/HarryPotterAndTheMethodsOfRationality'' [[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/64/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality omake]] about what it would look like if it was about ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'', Frodo implied that even if [[EvilCannotComprehendGood Evil Could Not Comprehend Good]] intuitively, that won't keep Sauron from figuring it out this way.
* In the Journeyverse story ''When Titans Clash'', Jarod shows this as he is able to quickly determine the nature of his opponents as millennia-old immortals while defending himself from the same.
* ''Fanfic/ChildOfTheStorm'':
** Chapter 70 of the first book has Albus Dumbledore casually analyse the casting styles of four HYDRA assassin wizards sent to kill him, defeat them with a couple of spells, then destroy their wands with another, without even giving them more than half his attention.
** The Winter Soldier's inner monologue is depicted as a computer-like piece of tactical analysis, interspersed with rare moments of humanity, which he uses to systematically discern and target his enemies' weaknesses, usually to lethal effect.
** This is part of the core of Strange's ''modus operandi'' - he figures out exactly what makes people tick, aided by his powers as a {{Seer|s}}, and then proceeds to use both sources of knowledge [[BatmanGambit to play]] ''[[BatmanGambit everyone]]'' [[BatmanGambit like a harp]] (which, since he was a literally legendary bard as a ''hobby'' when he was known as [[spoiler: Taliesin]], means he's ''really'' good at it).
* In the ''Fanfic/ChildrenOfTime'' rewrite of "The Shakespeare Code," Creator/WilliamShakespeare is more awesome than ever, able to deduce quite a lot about [[Literature/SherlockHolmes Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson]].
* ''Fanfic/EquestriaGirlsFriendshipSouls'' happens quite often, but the most prominent examples:
** Rarity, who [[spoiler:defeats Blueblood, a Captain of the Gotei 13,]] not through brute force but by carefully observing his movements and the workings of his Shikai in order to eventually neutralize him before he can activate his Bankai.
** Twilight naturally is able to do this thanks to her incredible intelligence working with the battle adrenaline allowing her to analyze and predict the most likely course of action they'll take.
* In ''Fanfic/AHistoryOfMagic'', Queen Himiko studied other Puella Magi to learn their skills and abilities.
* In ''By Royal Command'', Trixie turns out to be an excellent profiler and personality reader, as part of her chosen occupation. When she receives an incredibly indecent letter without readable signature and the claim of being written by a princess, Celestia asks her what she could determine about the author--Trixie determines that the writer is female, extremely educated, was socially undeveloped for most her life and only lately started to develop interpersonal relationships outside of her immediate family, and has no sexual experience whatsoever. It doesn't take much work for Celestia to figure out who that is.
* In ''Fanfic/ImaginarySeas'', both Chirons are capable of this. Lostbelt Chiron smugly points out the delay between Percy's swing the lasers coming down from the sky, alternating his rate of fire to in an attempt to overcome Percy's defenses. Pan-Human Chiron runs the same calculations to counter Lostbelt Chiron's arrows and runs a BatmanGambit based on what he knows about himself and the gods of the Lostbelt to keep Artemis from simply nuking the island.
* In ''Fanfic/RubyAndNora'', Pyrrha manages to figure out Mercury’s legs are prosthetics before she even uses her semblance on them.
* In ''Fanfic/MassEffectHumanRevolution'', Adam has a Sherlock-like ability to read an opponent's fighting style and plan an elaborate counter. And just like Downey's rendition of Holmes, it falters when he can't read the foe or isn't given the time and space to plan.
* In ''Fanfic/AGreatEndeavor'', Twilight ends up as an adviser to the Allied forces at Bastogne, initially treating the strategy "as a big logic puzzle".
* Reggie in ''Fanfic/{{Pokeumans}}'' delivers a beatdown to the MSN Gang while analyzing their (appalling) tactics as he went and giving a TheReasonYouSuckSpeech. Levels in badass were taken.
* In ''Fanfic/KitsuneNoKenFistOfTheFox'', Shikamaru (who already has this going for him in the canon ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'' series), ably demonstrates this during his fight with Tenten in Sasuke's tournament; specifically, he deconstructs her constant pattern of attacking without defending [[spoiler:while he takes every opportunity to grope her in order to prove his point]].
* Pretty much the Omega's main advantage in ''Fanfic/LeftBeyond'': the distributed AI are capable of generating excellent, although not perfect, probability spreads for the sysadmins' plans. Somewhat subverted in that the Omega are fighting God in-universe... and the dice out-of-universe, in that God keeps getting ridiculously good rolls.
* ''Fanfic/LulusBizarreRebellion'': As in Jojo canon, Anubis has the power to memorize and counter any attack after it's used against him once. As Anubis Requiem, this also applies to any plan or technique known by anyone in the radius of Mao's mind reading geass.
* ''Fanfic/AMoonAndWorldApart'': In chapter 24, Twilight and Shining Armor teleport out of her apartment and into one of the other domes together. Seconds later, Sunset Shimmer teleports after them, having traced the initial teleport and followed it; when she explains this, Twilight is quite impressed.
* In the ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'' Self Insert story ''Fanfic/{{Vapors}}'', most people think of Aiko as a FragileSpeedster with WhipItGood ninjutsu. But while she doesn't often flaunt it, Aiko is very good at this, as evidenced by her ability to [[spoiler: recreate and improve the Hiraishin on her own,]] successfully plan to take out most of the Akatsuki, learn how to [[spoiler: seal a biju]] in under a month, and direct Danzo's Root seal until she can remove it and reapply it with ease.
* In the ''Literature/{{Worm}}'' fanfic, ''Fanfic/{{Intrepid}}'', Taylor triggered with this ability during combat situations. She can analyze and process information enough to predict where bullets will strike, how to block or deflect them, and just be a plain badass.
* [[LightNovel/TheFamiliarOfZero Saito]], due to his work as a military spy in ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9421918/1/Soldier-of-Zero Soldier of Zero]]'' is quite adept at figuring out both people and powers, though he sometimes makes mistakes due to differences between his world and Halkagenia. For example, in his world making a golem is one of the most difficult pieces of magic there is, but in Halkagenia it's fairly basic. On the other hand, he figures out Tabitha's life story from a minor story about her dueling Kirche once and looking at her habits. Such as Tabitha having to go with little to no food at times from the fact she's sixteen but short enough to be confused for a preteen (a sign of malnourishment).
* Akane and Shampoo show this in a later chapter of ''Fanfic/DesperatelySeekingRanma''. It results in Akane screwing over some crooks before they can even start their heist.
* ''Fanfic/TheTotallyAmazingSpiderMan'': Sam is able to pick up on Spider-Man's spider-sense by noticing how he was able to shoot his web- or from her perspective, "fire his cable", without even looking where he was firing.
* ''Fanfic/WonderfulMazinja'': [[AntiVillain Lisa]] has the ability to find out information about people or things. She only needed to observe a house-sized tank to discover its strong and weak points.
* Jedi Master Sinube in ''Fanfic/TheHavocSideOfTheForce'' shows he was sent to speak with Literature/HarryPotter for exactly this reason. From a brief conversation, along with comments by others, he figures out pretty much the entirety of Harry's life story (at least on a general level) including that he's from the distant future and was himself a child of prophecy.
* ''Fanfic/ThisBites'':
** Scratchman Apoo figured out Soundbite's transponder number by a slight noise he makes [[spoiler:during SBS broadcasts]] which told him what model the transponder is, then calling shops in Loguetown to find out who sold it. During the Enies Lobby arc he was able to figure out that [[spoiler:Foxy is allied with Cross]] and then coordinate an attack with both them and the Kung Fu Pirates on 'Task Force Cerberus' before they can join the forces on Enies Lobby.
** Law determines Luffy isn't dead yet while fighting [[spoiler:Lily Carnation]] because he can tell where each attack hit purely by sound and none are instantly fatal.
* Tsukune in ''Fanfic/HereInMyArms'' demonstrates this trope to defeat [[spoiler: Inner Moka]].
* [[Anime/{{Pokemon}} Ash]] in ''Fanfic/CommonSense'' since he was TaughtByExperience from his battles with [[BunnyEarsLawyer Team]] [[NotSoHarmlessVillain Rocket]]. And after Pikachu demonstrated a knack for it too, he started training all of his Pokémon to do so when commanded to "analyze". This led to him [[spoiler:beating Lt. Surge on his first try with Pikachu]].
* Lucius Malfoy in ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11574569/1/Dodging-Prison-and-Stealing-Witches-Revenge-is-Best-Served-Raw Dodging Prison and Stealing Witches]]'' is a retired duelist who can learn a great deal about someone from their casting and dueling techniques. After seeing Lord Slytherin duel once, he realizes the man fights ''exactly'' the same way Voldemort does. After the dueling tournament, he notes the same of Harry Potter, causing him to believe both are people who were taken over by one of Voldemort's horcruxes. [[EntertaininglyWrong He's wrong]] but literally the only other person to figure either out was Voldemort after spending months observing Harry.
* Hinata's new technique in ''Fanfic/ADropOfPoison'' relies heavily on trigonometry to calculate how her chakrams will ricochet around an area, eventually building in dozens of the blades flying through the air as she catches and flings them around. While it has a bit of build-up time, once she gets going, it's near impossible to approach her due to all the razor-sharp metal flying around.
* Avis in ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12386775/1/Code-Geass-Ashikabi-of-the-Amour-Oneshot Code Geass: Ashikabi of the Amour]]'' determines humanity's evolutionary history by feeling Lelouch's bone structure, even able to tell that Earth's creatures have an unusually high amount of calcium in their bones.
* In ''Fanfic/QuirkSequencer'', Nezu quickly figures out Izuku's lying about his Quirk by analyzing his CombinationAttack and figuring out all the discrepancies between his previous uses of PlasmaCannon. This is all before he spots footage of Izuku creating a raven from the ink on his back. On a lesser scale, Izuku's classmates notice how odd it is that his PlasmaCannon usually has no noticeable recoil but other times he uses it to get a RecoilBoost. Izuku has to quickly make up an explanation to hide his other Quirks.
* Izuku Midoriya in ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13355126/2/For-Great-Justice For Great Justice]]'' manages to figure out the secret identities of ''everyone'' in the Justice League by the time he meets them along with the rough location of the batcave. Batman suspects the boy's probably calculated the locations of Themyscira and the Fortress of Solitude.
* A common sight in the ''Fanfic/ForTheWantOfANailSeries'':
** The premise of ''Fanfic/MastermindStrategistForHire'' involves Izuku putting his analytical skills to use making plans for other Villains, which leads to him rapidly becoming one of the most respected and feared Villains in Japan.
*** During the USJ attack, Izuku rapidly works out Shinsou has some form of brainwashing that is likely triggered by talking to him.
*** Later on, whilst the League of Villains are planning an attack on a UA training camp, Izuku works out Dabi's true identity [[spoiler:as Touya Todoroki, Shouto's brother]], from his teal eyes, [[PlayingWithFire his Quirk]] and his hatred of Heroes, ''particularly'' Endeavor, to Dabi's shock.
** In ''Fanfic/DekuIThinkHesSomePro'', Izuku's skills at analysing Heroes and Villains initially get him [[MistakenForBadass mistaken for a retired Pro Hero with an intelligence/analysis Quirk]] by several underground Heroes. Their shock at them finding out he's a Quirkless teenager ends up growing when they learn he was using only the evidence they had sent him for analysis (meaning, among other things, he had provided a sufficiently in-depth analysis to catch a serial killer with only 15 seconds of video to work with)
*** A later chapter has Izuku working out One For All's existence - by researching other Quirks that suddenly mutated to include SuperStrength, Izuku discovers [[MasterApprenticeChain a number of heroes who each suddenly gained super strength, and had either a mentor or apprentice who did likewise.]]
** ''Fanfic/CheatCodeSupportStrategist'' has Izuku attending UA's Support course, choosing the Intelligence and Analytics Track, with the intent of putting his analysis abilities to use helping other Heroes.
*** Early on, Izuku passes the written portion of the Entrance Exam with flying colours, with Power Loader describing his portfolio as impressive.
** Iuzku showcases his investigative prowess early on in ''Fanfic/ShadowsTheHorrorMovieHeroes'' - driven by his curiosity regarding Shinsou's brainwashing, he manages to find out which school he went to and track down where he lives less than a day after meeting him.
* ''Fanfic/HeroClassCivilWarfare'': Izuku, assigned to be the leader of the Villain Team in the game, turns in an entire booklet to their teacher before the exercise that, to their teacher's astonishment, describes everything that is about to happen in the game, every tactic Izuku suspects the other side may use, [[CrazyPrepared every backup plan for his backup plans]], who each of his teammates should fight or flee from based on their abilities, fighting style, and psychology, and an ''intensive'' analysis of every single player in the game, along with their strengths, habits, and weaknesses. The booklet is titled [[AllAccordingToPlan "Stage Directions."]] [[spoiler:Armed with this knowledge, Izuku proceeds to become the first InvincibleVillain the exercise has ever had.]]
* ''Fanfic/HeroesNeverDie'': Izuku is even better than in canon, since he's been trapped in timeloops on a regular basis for his entire life and had to find ways to escape.
-->'''Ashido:''' ''[thinking]'' He wrote out ''five'' different play-by-play scenarios in the time it took us to walk here? I'm glad he's on my side.
* ''Webcomic/FateGamersOnly'': One of Rikku's greatest strengths is her ability to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the enemy Servants. She credits it to [[GamerChick playing lots of video games]]. It subsequently turns out her analytical skills are boosted by her [[MagicEnhancement magical enhancement]].
* ''Fanfic/LockedInDigital'': Canon!Izuku is already shown to be a very skilled analyst, being able to quickly deduce strengths and weaknesses of quirks and fighting styles. Here, this skill has been further honed by his simulation run, to the point he can find minute details and come to accurate or near-accurate conclusions. For example, he immediately figured out that All Might has a GameBreakingInjury on his torso that was received between 2 to 8 years ago, and pinpointed Yaoyorozou's self-esteem issues, both based on their body language.
* In ''Fanfic/OrdinaryGirl'', with nothing but stray documents to go on, Jesse was able to figure out that ''Unless You'' -- a novel being passed around amongst Bureau staff -- is actually [[ArtifactOfDoom an Altered Item that is killing its readers]] and manages to get it away from Emily before it could take effect.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Film -- Animated]]
* Basil has a very pronounced moment of awesomeness near the end of ''WesternAnimation/TheGreatMouseDetective''. He prattles on about some sort of forces and equilibrium and defeats Ratigan's fiendish Rube Goldberg death machine by setting it off at precisely the right instant, setting off a seemingly unpredictable chain reaction that frees him, his partner, and the little girl. And then, just to rub it in Ratigan's face, he grabs Dawson and Olivia, cheerfully cries, "Smile everyone!" and poses with the two of them with a massive shit-eating grin on his face, in front of the camera that would have photographed the moment of the final blow. Dawson deserves some of the credit; Basil's wrapped up in self-pity before Dawson finally snaps him out of it by frustratedly yelling that if all Basil's going to do is lie in the trap feeling sorry for himself, they might as well set it off now.
--->'''Basil:''' ''[bitter]'' Heh, set it off now... ''[realizing]'' [[EurekaMoment Set it... off... now]]?
* ''WesternAnimation/HowToTrainYourDragon'':
** Hiccup is able to observe how dragons behave close up and with that in-depth observation, he is able to do things with dragons that his village thought were impossible.
** Fishlegs also demonstrates this trait, having read all available dragon-fighting manuals and making detailed observations about newly discovered dragon species. In the final battle with the Green Death, Hiccup tells Fishlegs, "Break it down," and Fishlegs immediately spells out the giant dragon's strengths and possible weaknesses.
* This is how Mikey catches the scare pig in ''WesternAnimation/MonstersUniversity'': calculating the right moment to throw a football to knock over a row of bikes to catapult a garbage bin into the path of the pig.
* The Omnidroid in ''WesternAnimation/TheIncredibles'' is the embodiment of this trope. In addition to being horribly strong and tough, it analyzes its surroundings and enemy moves to become a ruthlessly efficient CombatPragmatist. When Syndrome attacks the final version as part of his EngineeredHeroics scheme, we see that it quickly analyzes Syndrome's attack and realizes that Syndrome's remote control was giving him the advantage. The robot quickly negates the problem by blasting the remote off of Syndrome's arm.
* In ''WesternAnimation/KungFuPanda'', Po is able to learn advanced martial-arts techniques like the Wuxi Finger Hold by seeing them performed and just a small amount of practice.
* ''WesternAnimation/KungFuPanda2'':
** Po only sees Shifu demonstrate the technique of "inner peace" to him once. Even though Shifu said it took him years to master, within weeks, Po is able to utilize the technique to deflect cannonballs fired at him.
** In the DVD short ''Secrets Of The Masters'', Master Storming Ox is revealed to defeat his opponents by spotting their weak spots.
* The Huns in ''WesternAnimation/{{Mulan}}'' prove their tracking prowess when [[BigBad Shan Yu]] tosses them a doll his falcon retrieved and asked them "what do you see?" Black pine from the high mountains, a white horse hair from an Imperial stallion, and the scent of sulfur from cannons mean the doll came from a village in the Tung Shao Pass, where an imperial army is waiting to ambush them. Thus it is established at least Shan Yu's elites are not DumbMuscle, but thoroughly professional and highly dangerous soldiers.
** Mulan also shows herself as a tactical genius, by figuring out the means to reach the arrow, as well as defeating the majority of the Hun army with just one rocket, by using it to cause an avalanche.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Literature]]
* ''Literature/AllForTheGame'' has Kevin, a world-class [[FictionalSport Exy]] player who makes careful use of angles on the court.
* ''Literature/ArtemisFowl'':
** In ''The Arctic Incident'', Artemis performs an acrobatic slide across the ice-slick roof of a moving train by calculating momentum, angles, and friction.
** In ''The Lost Colony'', he [[spoiler:saves Holly's life after she's killed in the middle of a glitchy time-spell breakup (which tears the island they're on apart) by calculating exactly when and where the next time-glitch is going to occur and firing a gun at the precise moment needed for the bullet to travel into the past and hit Holly's killer before he kills her]].
* Kiriyama of ''Literature/BattleRoyale'' might be the ultimate example of this, as he possesses a prodigious intelligence that is able to master virtually any field of knowledge from biology to martial arts and combine them to incredibly deadly effect. Oh, and he's also a completely amoral and emotionless sociopath, which makes tangling with him ''loads'' of fun.
* Literature/ColinFischer becomes a basketball prodigy by calculating the trajectory of the ball.
* ''Literature/TheDemonDevice'', by Robert Saffron, has Albert Einstein using this method in a game of pool against Arthur Conan Doyle. Although Einstein has never played pool before he scores well, though it's not clear if he wins the game.
* ''Lord Loss'', the first book of Darren Shan's ''Literature/TheDemonata'' series, features a subversion. The main character is playing chess against a Demon Lord in order to [[spoiler:save the life of his brother]]. However, every move he makes is repelled and countered until he realizes that the only way to win is to [[spoiler:stop thinking and simply play randomly, taking risks and not showing fear or sorrow, which is what the demon master craves. In this way he denies the demon master what he wants, and beats him]], although in doing so [[spoiler:he makes himself a life-long enemy of the demon master]]. Uh-oh.
* ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'':
** In ''Literature/{{Jingo}}'', Lord Vetinari pulls off a juggling act despite never having attempted it before. His excuse for this is that he's spent decades juggling different parts of his city's political and murderous groups. The fact that he's a trained assassin with excellent reflexes probably helps.
** Lord Hong of ''Literature/InterestingTimes'', who is capable of learning and doing ''everything'' perfectly. No one else seems to ''focus''.
* One of the many things that makes [[PintSizedPowerhouse the Archive]] so dangerous in ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'' is her ability to rapidly analyze available data, being the living repository of all human knowledge. At one point, Luccio notes that the prevalence of [[MadOracle mad female oracles]] throughout history was simply the result of previous Archives making highly-accurate conclusions based on analysis of the knowledge they possessed instead of predicting the future.
* ''Franchise/{{Dune}}'':
** The Mentats may be the most fundamentally realistic example of this trope in literature, though their feats of deduction and analysis are labeled as necessarily superhuman even within the context of the books. Miles Teg's [[spoiler:T-probe induced, calorie-intensive "faster than the eye can see" mode]] could be described as [[spoiler:exceedingly advanced prana-bindu training coupled with a version of this ability above and beyond even other Mentats]], especially considering Herbert specifically describes [[spoiler:"Mentat mode" computation as being calorie-intensive to a lesser degree]].
** In a prequel novel, the first Mentat Gilbertus Albans is forced to aid the fanatic Butlerian movement by its leader Manford Torondo, who has been given 200 mothballed ''Ballista''-class battleships from the days of Butlerian Jihad. On the other side, unbeknownst to Albans, is his top student Draigo Roget, working for Josef Venport, the owner of Venport Holdings. Venport wants to use the abandoned Thinking Machines shipyard to build more ships, but Torondo is determined to destroy any trace of the Machines in the galaxy. As a result, a SpaceBattle ensues with the two Mentats squaring off against one another, commanding the fleets. Ultimately, Albans proves to be the superior strategist. This mirrors their virtual match earlier when both of them are commanding fleets of hundreds of ships in a video game of sorts throughout the whole system, using gestures to give orders.
* In ''Literature/EastOfEden'', Charles, Cal, Abra, and especially Cathy are gifted at this, reading and manipulating the people around them to frightening effect.
* In [[KJParker K. J. Parker's]] ''Literature/EngineerTrilogy'', Ziani Vaatzes, the titular engineer, is excellent at this. Although a terrible fighter, one of the first things the reader sees him do is kill two guards attempting to behead him by calculating exactly how long an unseen overhead chop will take, allowing him to twist at just the right moment that the guard holding him loses a hand instead. Later, he manages to kill an assassin in a pitch-black room by deducing his logical exact location, throwing a lump of coal so the sound will make the assassin's head twist at just the right angle, then slashing where he expects the man's jugular to be with his one-inch penknife. He's right.
* ''Literature/ErrorOfJudgment'': Dr. Stiehl caught onto Prince and exposed him not due to personal exposure to a patient, but simply by studying his records and noticing that he had a significantly higher number of uterus removals than other doctors, with less cancer warning signs for many of them than women with actual ovarian cancer had.
* ''Literature/TheGam3'': Alan's AI Eve is dedicated to this, constantly scanning everything in the surrounding environment for threats and guiding Alan during combat. She typically expresses her observations to Alan as probabilities of different events. In many cases is effectively PrescienceByAnalysis.
* Professor Derek in ''Literature/TheGoneAwayWorld'' by Nick Harkaway, who claims to be so incredibly smart that, despite being an enormous nerd, he's able to emulate normal human behavior patterns through pure analysis.
* Biddy from ''Literature/GreatExpectations'' spends so much time watching Pip at his work that he pronounces her "in theory...as good a blacksmith as [Pip] was".
* ''Literature/HoratioHornblower'' uses this as his primary method of gambling, seamanship, and war. In one book, he makes an accurate judgment of a French captain's intellect and likely behavior by observing how he handles his ship and uses it to BatmanGambit the Frenchie into putting his own ship in irons. This is also what makes Hornblower an excellent whist player.
* Literary (and to some extent, historical) example: In ''Claudius the God'' (the second part of ''Series/IClaudius'', though it is downplayed in the TV adaptation), Claudius--who was frail and had spent years [[ObfuscatingStupidity playing the fool]] before being forced to take the throne--leads the Roman forces to victory against the Britons through his extensive knowledge of historical tactics and his heavy use of intelligence about the enemy's social structure and favored tactics.
* In "Improbable" by Adam Fawer, David Caine is already so good at calculating probabilities in his head that his graduate professor nicknames him "Film/RainMan". When Caine undergoes a last-resort experimental procedure to treat his epilepsy, his brain becomes able to access the collective unconscious. This lets him reach information on everything everywhere at any time, and (once he figures out what's happening to him) he can choose from among all the possible causes and effects to find the action most likely to make things go the way he wants.
* In ''Literature/InheritanceCycle'', Roran is a BadassNormal and TheDeterminator to be sure, but if he didn't have brains, he'd be a dead a thousand times with everything he faces. One of the big reasons why he lasts so long and why he gets to promoted to captain is precisely because he's this, even if it does occasionally cause him trouble because he won't obey the orders of some of the rockheads around him. During one otherwise ill-fated battle, he manages to save the majority of his troops from his commander's awful strategy and later accomplishes the siege of an entire town in just days that Galbatorix's Empire had been flummoxing the Varden with for months. He is noted for being bold and willing to take risks but has an uncanny knack of just how to analyze and unbalance the enemy.
* This is the secret weapon of Literature/InspectorSpector: he sold his soul to Satan to be the world's greatest detective.
* In Laura Ingalls Wilder's ''[[Literature/LittleHouseOnThePrairie The Long Winter]]'', the Ingalls family is running out of food. Pa realizes that Almanzo Wilder is still hanging onto his seed grain by hiding it behind a false wall with a plug in the knothole. When Almanzo and his brother ask him how he knew, Pa, an experienced carpenter, answers that the dimensions of their room don't match the dimensions of its building and that there isn't anything else they could keep in such a small space ''and'' need to plug in the knothole.
* The title character of the ''Literature/MediochreQSethSeries'' has the ability to "see" probabilities ever since a magical accident in his past. Therefore, to work out the most likely scenario in any given situation, he just needs to learn enough variables.
* Vin does this to defeat Zane in ''Literature/{{Mistborn}}''. [[spoiler:Having already run out of atium, a metal that gives the person using it the ability to see and react a few seconds into the future, Vin counters Zane's attack by clearing her mind and reacting solely on instinct. She then watches his movements as he prepares to block her attack and strikes from the complete opposite side]].
* In ''Literature/{{Noob}}'', Fantöm can beat bosses meant for a full PlayerParty due to figuring out their behavior patterns and planning for them no matter how complex they have been made.
* ''Literature/PleaseDontTellMyParentsImASupervillain'' gives us the Audit, Penny's mother. She's Sherlock Holmes-style analysis to the extreme. Despite having no actual powers, she's perfectly capable of dodging bullets by being where they aren't, analyzing enemy weaknesses at a glance, and can break lesser criminals by giving them a speech about how precisely each crime they commit reduces their chances at a happy future.
* In ''Literature/RedStormRising'', US Naval intelligence analyst Bob Toland is able to piece together several seemingly-unrelated trends in the Soviet Union, namely:
** A massive shortage of car and truck batteries in the Soviet Union, despite their largest battery factory operating 24 hours a day [[note]]since military vehicles from submarines to tanks to aircraft starter carts use them, the military having a sudden increased need for fresh batteries is probably the cause of the shortage[[/note]]
** Several colonels are shot for falsifying readiness reports, and several conscripts are similarly shot for insubordination or disobedience [[note]]indicating that the Soviet Army wants to rapidly improve the discipline and quality of its soldiers[[/note]]
** A number of formerly collectivized farms are having the amounts of farmland given to individual farmers doubled [[note]]freeing up a number of mostly military-aged agricultural workers from collective farms for military service and having more agricultural production being done by older farmers who are past military age[[/note]]
...and from these trends is able to conclude that the Soviet Union is gearing up for war.
* Madame Ahnzhelyk Phonda of ''Literature/{{Safehold}}'', later known as Aivah Pahrsahn, is able to deduce that Ahbraim Zhevons, a man she met in the fourth book, and Merlin Athrawes, who she meets two books later, are the same person through a combination of eidetic memory, careful examination of {{Character Tic}}s, and making note of the times Merlin is absent compared to when she knows other members of his "''seijin'' network" appear in the flesh elsewhere. The only true error in her analysis is attributing Merlin's ability to assume different identities to his status as a ''seijin,'' a type of holy man said to possess supernatural powers. Even that is EntertaininglyWrong, since Merlin uses exactly that idea to explain the abilities he has due to being a RidiculouslyHumanRobot, which no Safeholdian could even conceive of on their own due to Safehold's being in a near-millennium long MedievalStasis.
* Daylen in ''Literature/ShadowOfTheConqueror,'' while [[HowDoIShotWeb inexperienced in using his powers]], is able to figure out new uses for them by observing Lyrah using them, using his HyperAwareness and PhotographicMemory to make it easier for him.
* Literature/SherlockHolmes is this trope's Patron Saint. At least once in every single story Sir Creator/ArthurConanDoyle wrote and every other story after that. [[FollowTheLeader Also, every copycat and fanfic with a halfway-decent mystery at least tries]]. Because he wouldn't be {{Sherlock|Scan}} Holmes without it.
* In the {{Literature/Slingshot}} novels, one character does this several times. Toshi usually goes into a research frenzy and then later just collapses after staying awake for twenty hours and forgetting to eat or drink. Even Allie is in awe of his abilities in finding needles in galaxy-sized haystacks, ''and she's an AI.''
* Franchise/StarWarsLegends: Multiple:
** Grand Admiral Thrawn, from ''Literature/TheThrawnTrilogy'', with the ability to find a species's weakness just by looking at their artwork. And, for that matter, figure out their general biological traits (dominantly left- or right-handed, number of fingers or limbs used, perceptual or biorhythmic flaws) as well as traits of those who created or even just favor a particular piece. Notably, another character who was supposed to have his tactical insight couldn't do a number of things Thrawn could, and never so much as looked at a painting.
** Thrawn also had one "failure", where the inferences he'd made after looking at the art proved utterly wrong. In a dialogue with Pellaeon, Thrawn specifically says that his failure to understand a species's art led to him being forced to eradicate said race. Years later, he thinks he's finally starting to grasp their psyche. Such a pity.
** ''Literature/OutboundFlight'':
*** There's a scene where Thrawn and three Corellian captives/guests come to look at a very beat-up nonmilitary spaceship that came into his territory, attacked, and was disabled in such a way that all those aboard died. Thrawn asks the Corellians what they think, and one doesn't care, one thinks he killed poor people and/or refugees, and the third looks at the height of the dead aliens, looks at the wall and a point where sealant patterns change texture, and concludes that the people who repaired/maintained the ship were much shorter than the current owners. A bit of information later and he speculates that this was a slaver's ship. Thrawn is pleased.
*** A few pages later, Thrawn says he knows of this ship and these people only by reputation, and that, "The crew complement is smaller than one would expect for a vessel this size. That indicates that they weren't expecting trouble, but instead intended to go straight home. [Thrawn knew while fighting them that they were undercrewed, because...] I deduced it from the fact that their defense was sluggish and mostly ineffectual. They did little but launch missiles. A fully crewed vessel would have had laser gunners in place and would have shifted the defense pattern of their missiles. Clearly, they were expecting their escort to do any fighting that became necessary."
** Thrawn retains this ability in the [[{{Literature/Thrawn}} new canon]], but his reliance on artwork is downplayed in favor of tactical genius and an ability to read people's body language, right down to perspiration and [[RedEyesTakeWarning temperature fluctuations]].
** Thrawn's TheWatson, Gilad Pellaeon, [[LegacyCharacter graduates to this]] in ''Literature/HandOfThrawn''. While not a match for Thrawn's ability, he successfully deduces that a fleet of attackers supposedly led by Garm Bel Iblis cannot be, by ''using one of Bel Iblis's own tactics'' to defeat it.
** Thrawn's ''new'' Watson, Eli Vanto, is being groomed towards this along the book, bulding up from his understanding of trade, accounting and supply lines.
** Sort of used and subverted in ''Literature/StarWarsAllegiance'', where the pirate leader called the Commodore floats in a pool with his eyes covered, the better to focus on the voice of his guest. He believes that doing this, damping down all of his senses but hearing, makes him more able to [[LivingLieDetector tell if he's being lied to]] and pick out hidden things about the speaker. But he's trying to gauge Mara Jade, who is able to subtly stir the air and water to interfere with his senses without his knowing, and so he misses the fact that she's an Imperial agent sent to find connections between these pirates and corrupt officials.
** Mace Windu does this all the time. His main Force power is to detect "shatterpoints"; where to hit things, including situations or people's minds, so they break. On several occasions, he has been without a visible shatterpoint and still managed to come out on top. Just before the climax of his feature novel ([[Literature/{{Shatterpoint}} guess the name!]]), there's a scene of him "looking" at the shatterpoints for himself, the people around him, the mountain he's on, the war the planet is in, and possibly the entire Clone Wars. It's Creator/MattStover's way of saying "[[SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome Hold onto yer butts]]."\\\
Windu also notes that during the [[Film/AttackoftheClones Battle of Geonosis]], he sensed that for a brief moment the shatterpoint of the whole war was Count Dooku. Had he jumped up to the balcony quickly enough, he could've killed Dooku and stopped the war before it even began--but would've died in the process because Jango Fett would've shot him in the back. But by the time Windu had worked all this out, it was already too late and Dooku escaped. And afterward, killing Dooku was no longer the shatterpoint. Of course, [[PlotArmor Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Padmé would've died along with Mace]].
** Wraith Squadron pilot [[GeniusBruiser Voort "Piggy" saBinring]], from the Literature/XWingSeries. A mentally enhanced [[PigMan Gamorrean]] who happens to be GoodWithNumbers. During dogfights, ''while in the middle of a fight'', he is able to keep track of his squadmates and enemies, often calling out recommendations. And they ''work'', too.
* ''Literature/{{Steelheart}}'' has David, an average nerd who has made it his mission to kill [[DifferentlyPoweredIndividual Epics]] like the one that killed his father. To that end, he obsessively collects and collates data on them, trying to discover the weaknesses unique to each and every one of them. He's shockingly good at it. [[spoiler: He even overturns weakness theories and comes up with new, correct ones in the middle of battle several times in the series]].
* ''Literature/SzamankaOdUmarlakow'': This is Kwiatuszek's job description in WON. Her only magical gift is enhanced analytical skill, and she made herself a BadassBureaucrat with it, pretty much becoming ManBehindTheMan in the huge organization of wizards who throw fireballs and combat demons on a regular basis.
* In ''Literature/TheThinkingMachine'', Van Dusen acquired his nickname when he defeated a Russian grandmaster despite never having played a game of chess just by reading the rules and then applying pure logic.
* ''Literature/VorkosiganSaga'':
** Miles Vorkosigan seems to have the ability to almost unerringly analyze and predict ''people''. He's also had military training and excels at pure tactics (although he finds them boring because they're so predictable), but his greatest victories throughout the series have always been as a result of his ability to understand, persuade, inspire and predict the actions of other people.
** While Miles tends to compare himself obsessively to his father and grandfather, this ability may well have been inherited from his ''mother''. Cordelia Naismith, in her introductory book, successfully defused a MexicanStandoff hostage crisis by spotting the weak link in both the hostage takers (a man with conflicted loyalties) and Barrayarran psychology (they didn't think a woman could be a military threat) and exploiting them both brilliantly. She also managed, with only a few brief glimpses, to realize that the quantity and arrangement of supplies in the Barrayarran base could only mean that they were secretly preparing to launch an invasion... something even senior Barrayarran officers hadn't realized.
** Miles's clone brother Mark assumes he also inherited this talent for military analysis and is proven disastrously wrong. Later, however, he discovers his own genius level aptitude for economics. It appears that their shared analytical skill is genetic but the field of application is influenced by their upbringing (Miles on the warlike Barrayar, Mark on the mercenary Jackson's Whole). Mark also shows an impressive eye for detail and an ability to make deductions from situational evidence... as long as he has time to stop and analyze. The implication is that that he has all of Miles's analytical skills but not his adrenaline addiction... meaning that high-stress situations interfere with Mark's ability whereas they enhance Miles's.
* Qibli from ''Literature/WingsOfFire'' is very observant and analytic of other dragons...but only on the inside, as Moonwatcher sees in ''Moon Rising''.
* Literature/{{Worm}}: this is literally Tattletale's power; once she has just a little information, she can extract amazing amounts of data. It is so good that at one point she [[spoiler: succesfully pretended to be able to read minds]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Video Games]]
* Any RPG with LeakedExperience implies that the characters that don't participate in the battle still become stronger by merely watching the fights.
* Several times through ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedOrigins'', Bayek manages to take in details around the scene and reconstruct events from there.
* ''VideoGame/BatmanArkhamSeries'': Batman, again. More observable in the first two Arkham games, as he figures things out in his own thoughts without any visual aide, besides the use of Detective Vision to analyze evidence, like when he figures out how to isolate Deadshot based solely on the specific type of paint used in the boxes where he hid his gear. Whereas in the prequel, his cowl can recreate crime scenes based on evidence, be it a shooting scene or a helicopter that was sniped by a ricocheting bullet.
* In ''VideoGame/CivilizationBeyondEarth'', [[{{Cyborg}} Supremacy]] units have the stated ability to autonomously share information and processing power to predict the enemy's actions on the battlefield and quickly decide the most effective response. This is represented in the game by Supremacy units getting a combat strength bonus if they are adjacent to a friendly Supremacy unit, and the effect is cumulative -- Supremacy units are often an unsuitable match for [[HumanityIsSuperior Purity]] or [[HalfHumanHybrid Harmony]] units if isolated and alone, but can be very powerful if used in a ZergRush.
* This is part of ''VideoGame/DarkChronicle'''s Invention process. Max, a FirstPersonSnapshooter, can take pictures of ordinary (and not-so-ordinary) items, which give him ideas for creating new inventions. Some of them are [[PermanentlyMissableContent easily missable]], so you have to work quickly and think fast in order to get them all.
* Minor original character Fracture from the second ''VideoGame/DCUniverseOnline'' trailer has this as a power. It briefly shows his vision, analyzing statistics, probability, and structural weak points to overcome a Brainiac drone in single combat. [[spoiler: Apparently, it only works on threats he's aware of, since purported ally Luthor [[ChronicBackstabbingDisorder stabs him in the back moments later]] ]]
* In ''[[{{VideoGame/Freespace}} Descent: Freespace]]'', this is what allows the Terrans and Vasudans to survive against the Shivans: reverse-engineering their shield technology, developing weapons that can penetrate it, and learning how to track their ships into subspace.
* In ''VideoGame/DiscoElysium'', this is tied to the Visual Calculus skill, which governs [[PlayerCharacter the Detective]]'s ability at being GoodWithNumbers and combining it with a knowledge of physics and then applying it to various situations, most notably forensic recreation. When used successfully, the Detective can study a shattered window, and simply from a glance be able to make very qualified guesses as to the size, weight, and velocity of the object that smashed the glass.
* In ''Franchise/TheElderScrolls'' series, this is a trait of Jyggalag, the [[OurGodsAreDifferent Daedric Prince]] of [[ControlFreak Order]]. The Library of Jyggalag contained a precise and exact record of ''everything'' that ''any'' entity in Nirn or Oblivion would ever do, which Jyggalag compiled through nothing but simple but extremely thorough deductive reasoning and logic. This was one of the big reasons why the other Daedric Princes turned on him and [[SealedInsideAPersonShapedCan sealed him]] as [[BecameTheirOwnAntithesis his own antithesis]], the MadGod Sheogorath (who promptly had the library destroyed).
* ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'':
** The in-universe explanation for how the Vault-tec Assisted Targeting System (V.A.T.S.) operates in ''VideoGame/Fallout3''. It creates a real-time tactical overlay that scans the threat, assesses various weak points and comes up with the statistical probability of whether the operator will successfully land any hits.
** ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'':
*** The appropriately named "Math Wrath" perk improves the efficiency of V.A.T.S. if the player's Science skill is high enough.
*** The Luck stat is explained to be this: the preternatural ability to predict probabilities. It translates to fine-tuning of one's aim to hit particularly vulnerable spots (IE: [[CriticalHit critical hits]]), or what amounts to card-counting, nuanced senses of the roulette wheel or tumblers at casinos. It's not entirely this though, as there are a few "dumb luck" moments, like miraculously performing surgery on [[spoiler:Caesar's brain tumor]] without sufficient medical knowledge, [[ThePasswordIsAlwaysSwordfish randomly guessing the right password]] to call off a robot accosting you, or the inexplicable chances of finding extra ammo or money in containers via two luck-unlocked perks. Mr. House has 10 luck, the maximum possible, which enabled him to predict when the inevitable [[WorldWarIII Great War]] would happen and was only off by a ''single day''.
* ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'':
** The Scan spell (also known as Libra). Its effectiveness varies from game to game, but it's generally very useful to know your opponent's current hit points, immunities, and [[ElementalRockPaperScissors elemental weaknesses]].
** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'' has Scan as a common weapon ability. There's even an optional dungeon full of monsters immune to scanning.
** In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV'', a late-game goblin enemy will actually scan itself, revealing its weakness to lightning. Needless to say [[SchmuckBait using lightning attacks on it is a bad idea]]. It's not ''lying'' - lightning ''does'' do extra damage to it - but hitting it with a lightning attack triggers its significantly more deadly AI script.
** Characters with the Blue Magic ability can learn enemy magic by simply observing the ability in action or surviving getting hit by an attack.
** Some games have opponents that will scan your own characters, but due to the way the [=AI=] is programmed, it really just ends up being a wasted turn because whatever boost it can get from this isn't enough to compensate for the fact that it's a turn in which it didn't get to do damage and meanwhile you get another chance to attack it.
** The Web-based Flash Animation ''Final Fantasy A+'' spoofs Scan in this regard by renaming it "Study Guide".
** Libra makes its return in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXV'' as an ability available to Noctis, allowing him to analyze enemy weaknesses and resistances to elements and weaponry. It even comes with a (timed) TimeStandsStill option. Upgraded sufficiently, it can instantly scan all enemies on the battlefield like a SherlockScan. [[TheSmartGuy Ignis]] also has this ability, and he uses it much more creatively and liberally (i.e. planning battle strategies and exploiting enemies' weaknesses as well as turning enemies' own strengths against them) than [[LeeroyJenkins Noctis]], whose strategy amounts to [[AttackAttackAttack hitting the enemy with his weapons until they die]]. Ignis' analytical abilities don't just extend to combat: he can recreate dishes from a single taste as well.
* ''Franchise/FireEmblem'':
** In ''Videogame/FireEmblemTheSacredStones'', the Dancer Tethys is extremely perceptive and good at catching details (Though this doesn't show in-story since she's a non-combatant.) In an example, as a teenager, she learned how to dance solely via mentally replaying a famous dancer's moves and practicing them from memory. She also deduces that her friend Marisa only pretends to be a southpaw, when in reality [[IamnotLeftHanded she isn't]]; Marisa is very surprised, meaning that ''no one else'' had managed to see through her.
** ''VideoGame/FireEmblemAwakening'' gives us the player character, Robin, whose skill as a tactician translates into being able to see the statistics and hit percentages and so on of yours and your enemy's units. Basically, it's their knowledge that gives the player all the useful information in the user interface.
* On two separate occasions, Jin from ''VideoGame/GhostOfTsushima'' learns how to use an extremely powerful sword technique by watching his opponent use it on him.
* In ''VideoGame/HorizonZeroDawn'', Aloy's "superpower" is her Focus. No, not superhuman concentration, but a piece of LostTechnology from [[{{Precursors}} the Old Ones]] that allows her to scan objects around her to learn how they function -- including enemies' [[AttackItsWeakPoint weak points]], various secrets in the environment that might not be visible to the naked eye, and other pieces of high technology. Between that and the fact that she's [[spoiler:a clone of a brilliant scientist from TheBeforetimes]], this elevates Aloy from merely a very good hunter to one of the greatest warriors in the land.
* The Copy Copy Ability (no seriously, it's a Copy Ability that copies abilities) from ''VideoGame/KirbySuperStar''. Once Kirby has this ability, he obtains an optical scanner that analyzes an opponent (complete with computer readouts and targeting reticule shown onscreen, no less) and replaces Copy with whatever ability the opponent has. If the enemy you try this on has no ability, [[LethalHarmlessPowers you can analyze them to death.]]
* If you choose the Dark Side Path in ''VideoGame/KnightsOfTheOldRepublicIITheSithLords'', observe your character fight Jedi Masters in a one-on-one battle to the death and learn to perfectly copy the enemy's Lightsaber Fighting Style while taunting them and stomping them into the ground afterward. Probably with their own moves.
* VideoGame/{{Mega Man|Classic}} (as well as VideoGame/MegaManX) can [[PowerCopying copy the weapons of bosses]] after having defeated them.
* Ocelot from the ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid'' series. He's a talented enough shot that he can shoot people from ricocheting bullets within a second of studying and analyzing the angle. Later on Ocelot's able match Snake at CQC, a technique he and The Boss spent years perfecting, simply by watching Snake use the moves and then mimicking them.
* In ''VideoGame/NoMoreHeroes'', Travis Touchdown can learn new wrestling moves just by renting out wrestling tapes and watching them.
* In ''VideoGame/Persona5'', Seijuro says that Futaba's mother, Wakaba, was so smart that she was able to improve his curry recipe just by looking at the ingredients.
* ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'':
** The ability Analytic can give any Pokemon this, giving it a boost to its attack power if it attacks last.
** The abilities Download (ups a stat based on opponent's defenses), Anticipation (shudders depending on the power of its foe's attacks), Trace (copies the foe's ability), Rivalry (raises Attack if the foe is of the same gender), and Impostor (transforms into an opponent in front) all involve reacting to the opponent in some way. Telepathy takes this and applies it to ally Pokemon in Doubles.
** An inversion exists in the ability Unaware, which ''completely ignored'' the foe's stat changes.
** There are several moves that are used by analyzing the opponent. Detect requires the user to avoid the opponent completely by knowing what move they'll use next. Role Play allows you to copy the foe's ability just by pretending to be them. Mind Reader is said to do ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin. Predicting your opponent's moves is also a given for anyone wishing to compete in the higher levels of the metagame.
* Emerl from the game ''VideoGame/SonicBattle'' is a good example of this. He gains ALL powers of an opponent simply by watching them fight or being beaten up by them. In the final battle, [[spoiler: Emerl takes all of Sonic's abilities, powers them up to the point where some of them instantly KO you, and becomes a star killing machine by seeing Eggman's battleship in action.]]
* ''VideoGame/SuperRobotWars'':
** Latooni's whole shtick. Well, that and massive quantities of ShrinkingViolet cuteness.
** Bartolls/Valtols from the OVA and Original Generation Gaiden. Attacks become useless on them after they've been used once since they can dodge any future attempts of that attack pattern.
* Fiona from ''VideoGame/TalesFromTheBorderlands'' has been a ConMan since she was a child along with her sister Sasha, and a life spent using her head to get out of tricky situations has led her to use information from her surroundings, as well as CombatClairvoyance, to defend herself and her team.
* Marisa from ''VideoGame/TouhouProject'' uses a combination of analysis and theft for her PowerCopying. If it comes from a spellbook or an artifact, she'll "borrow" it. If it doesn't, she'll study it in action and invent a spell wholecloth to imitate it. The side series ''The Grimoire of Marisa'' has her notes on every enemy's spellcards, how each works, and other possible applications for them.
* Welkin Gunther from ''VideoGame/ValkyriaChronicles'' achieved this in Operation Cloudburst. He drove his tank through a river, Oregon Trail-style, and all he had to do to make it happen was watch how the grass grew in the shallow parts and ask [[WrenchWench Isara]] to waterproof it. Being a nature lover sure comes in handy, and the surprise attack gave [[TheEmpire the imperial soldiers]] to watch a spooking.
* In the ''VideoGame/{{Yakuza}}'' series, from the third game onward Kazuma and other protagonists can get inspiration for new combat maneuvers by watching other people perform out of the ordinary stunts (i.e. a middle-aged woman flipping on her motor scooter as the basis for a jumping attack, or a girl fending off a drunken pervert to learn how to counter grappling moves).
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Western Animation]]
* In the ''WesternAnimation/ActionMan2000'' computer animated series, Mann's brain runs a ridiculously complicated mathematical equation that sums up the world and calculates it in such a way that he can predict the future in ways beyond just physics. It turns into CursedWithAwesome when his ability turns him into the MacGuffin.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheAmazingWorldOfGumball'':
** Right at the beginning of the episode "The Allergy", there's an AdrenalineTime sequence of analysis performed by Gumball during a pillow fight with his siblings, played out as an homage to the ''Sherlock Holmes'' movies featuring Robert Downey Jr. Gumball predicts Darwin's moves and devises how to counter them, but he fails to account for Anais who suddenly attacks from behind and grounds him, rendering the whole analysis pointless. Their mother, Nicole, then quickly charges to their room to tell them to go to school, but when the school bus stops at their house, she realizes they're running late and performs an analysis of herself as to how to throw the kids out the window to make the bus, only for the boys to simply run straight to the bus normally and to lose her a chance to do a quip--which is done better by her daughter Anais: "You just got schooled".
** In the episode "The Parking", Anais pulls another one, this time more detective-y and with descriptive hi-tech graphics and all.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Arcane}}'': As befitting the [[OriginStory future Sheriff of Piltover]], Caitlyn could effectively investigate a crime scene even as a rookie Enforcer, finding various pieces of evidence and visualizing Jinx's rampage on the airship, as well as locating one of Silco's goons who had been left behind.
* ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'':
** Sokka defeats [[spoiler:Combustion Man]] using trigonometry and a PrecisionGuidedBoomerang.
** Iroh figuring out how to redirect lightning with Waterbending principles applied to Firebending.
* In ''WesternAnimation/TheBatman'', [[AICronym D.A.V.E.]] figures out Batman's secret identity through this. He simply narrows down Gotham's population using publicly-available information to find the one young male with the [[CrimefightingWithCash resources]], [[CharlesAtlasSuperpower fitness]], and [[DarkAndTroubledPast motivation]] to be Batman.
* Ben's transformation Brainstorm, in ''WesternAnimation/Ben10Omniverse'' has this same ability as part of his super intelligence, being able to defeat the Vengers with minimal effort using everything around them when fighting in an alley, even a bitten apple.
* Gadget had more than a few of these moments during ''WesternAnimation/ChipNDaleRescueRangers'', leading to an episode wherein she learned the valuable lesson to stop thinking so much.
* ''WesternAnimation/DannyPhantom'', was able to learn most of his powers/techniques almost instantly just by watching someone else use it (i.e. Ghost shield); some other though, required some practice to master, like duplication or simply [[NewPowersAsThePlotDemands simply appear when needed]]. It doesn't limit to powers only, he was also able to learn the body language of Samson, the purple back gorilla, by just looking at her in the zoo by one night.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheDragonPrince'': This is Callum’s forte. Despite having no magical training or education, he is able to learn new spells simply by seeing them performed once. His ability at observation also extends to more mundane activities; he’s able to perform a dancing ritual ''perfectly'' despite only seeing it one time.
* ''WesternAnimation/EdEddNEddy'':
** Despite being by far the most feeble of the trio, Edd can often perform amazing feats with just a few calculations and some BambooTechnology.
** [[GeniusDitz Ed]], of all people, falls into this in TheMovie when he [[spoiler: defeats Eddy's Brother. Seeing that when he's trying to pull Eddy, who is desperately clinging onto a door, back to his position, the door is being pulled too, Ed simply unhinges one of the bolts on the door so it'll break off; Ed essentially turns the unwilling Eddy into a one-man slingshot, having the broken-off door slam Eddy's Brother in the head and knock him out]].
* Rex Salazar from ''WesternAnimation/GeneratorRex'', was able to complicated trigonometry calculations as easy as breathing; he explained to Noah when he scored an A on his first math pop quiz that it was like aiming his cannon. Of course, coming from a family of scientists is no surprise to see Rex is this intelligent, also able to take all the other high school courses with ease.
* On ''WesternAnimation/JimmyTwoShoes'', Heloise manages to ace skeet shooting thanks to this. After Beezy [[ScrewLearningIHavePhlebotinum becomes smart]], he repeats this process on a much grander scale.
* ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague'':
** The nanotechnological android based on the comic character Amazo takes this ability to its logical extreme--being able to analyze things on the molecular level while being able to at the same time alter its own structure at the molecular level. In short, ''you are so screwed''. So screwed, in fact, that even a nanotech solution doesn't defeat him. Nor does anything else, and in the end the only way to deal with him is to [[TalkingTheMonsterToDeath talk]] him into a HeelFaceTurn. He's so powerful he had to eventually be PutOnABus.
** ''Justice League'' also subverts the trope in the person of ComicBook/TheQuestion. A brilliant reinvention of the older DC hero, Vic Sage is genuinely strange. While sane, he honestly connects things that are completely unrelated, tending to sound like a total conspiracy nut. However, his actual reasoning works rather well when he tracks down actual connections, to the point he is reluctantly given credit for it by the rest of the League. Yes, by Batman as well.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Kaeloo}}'': When Stumpy is [[SuddenIntelligence granted intelligence by a spirit]], he manages to analyze everything around him and ''predict the future''.
* ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'':
** Egghead Jr., a character that Foghorn Leghorn would occasionally be saddled with. A mute chicken lad with a spherical head, beady eyes, and huge glasses, he would quickly jot down some very technical-looking mumbo-jumbo and succeed at whatever he was attempting at the time... like throwing a 90 MPH fastball or winning a game of croquet with ''one swing''. When playing hide and seek, Foghorn took a circuitous route and ended up in a dumpster, claiming "He'll have to use a slide rule to find me". Cut to Egghead using a slide rule. Humorously subverted in that he then turns around and digs a small hole, pulling Foghorn out of it. [[MindScrew Foghorn is understandably confused]] and goes back to the dumpster, but decides against opening it. "I just MIGHT be in there!"
** This was developed into the ability to calculate ''{{Gambit Roulette}}s'' to his own advantage when the character appeared in ''WesternAnimation/DuckDodgers''.
* ''WesternAnimation/MiraculousLadybug'':
** While [[TheHero Marinette/Ladybug]]'s [[ThePowerOfCreation Lucky Charm power]] is able to create whatever she needs to solve the current crisis, it's usually something [[ImprobableWeaponUser improbable]], forcing her to quickly formulate a solution using the object and her surroundings (which the show portrays by highlighting what she intends to use in red with black spots, like her suit). Ladybug's analysis skills don't come from her [[TransformationTrinket Miraculous]], either -- on at least two occasions, she's used them after losing her powers (once due to a [[IKnowWhatYouFear fear-induced]] PowerNullifier, and once in her civilian form while under LaserGuidedAmnesia), showing that Marinette's just that good.
** Pegasus, aka Max Kanté, has a similar sequence when determining what surfaces to [[PinballProjectile bounce]] his [[PrecisionGuidedBoomerang horseshoe boomerang]] off of, highlighting them green with a horseshoe pattern. Given that Max is a bona fide TeenGenius who's GoodWithNumbers, calculating trajectories on the fly is likely also a skill of his own rather than a Miraculous ability.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheOwlHouse'': Glyph magic is confirmed to lend itself to this once Luz starts taking students in the second season, with the resident TeachersPet's careful examination of their properties[=/=]interactions from first principles getting better results faster with less [[StuffBlowingUp incidental property damage]] than her [[SiblingRivalry rival]]'s method of "Slap them together and see what happens."
* ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls1998'': One of Him's riddles to the girls (episode "Him Diddle Riddle") is to pick which of two Ms. Keanes who are suspended over a vat of boiling acid is the real one. Blossom asks which of them would say was the real one, and each giving a different answer. Blossom instantly deduces through analysis which is real Ms. Keane (the one who said "She would say she was the real Ms. Keane," but Blossom actually chose the other. She was so confident and convincing that Him gave it to her anyway.)
* Kinda obvious with ''WesternAnimation/SherlockHolmesInTheTwentySecondCentury''. Interestingly it happens to Sherlock himself, when Wiggins of the Irregulars easily deduces that Holmes is a FishOutOfTemporalWater simply by paying attention to his choice of language and dress.
* The ''WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2003'' incarnation of Master Splinter was not originally Hamato Yoshi the ninjitsu master as most incarnations are, but was Hamato Yoshi's pet rat, who learned ninjitsu just by watching his owner. For a regular, unmutated rat, that's pretty impressive.
* The Robot Foot Soldiers, or simply the Foot-Bots, from the ''WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2012'' also come with function. More specifically, they're programmed with all known traditional Martial Arts/Ninjutsu techniques, meaning they can defeat any ninja, and even better, they're programmed to learn how to read and predict their opponents movements as they fight them, so they eventually learn how to predict the turtles' unique not-so-ninja-like fighting styles after a single fight, and these go from Mikey's crazy unpredictable dance movements, Donnie's highly calculated attacks using their surroundings to bounce shurikens and Raph's so NOT ninja-like aggressive techniques that involve throwing his sai. In other words, the ''ConfusionFu'' card only works once on them. Of course, this brings up the question, how can they defeat in all following chapters? Well, given [[TheGoodGuysAlwaysWin who they are]], is it really a surprise they can beat the foot-bots even when they can predict their attacks?
* Tom of ''WesternAnimation/TomAndJerry'' would occasionally try to out-analyse Jerry's antics, except that either interference from Jerry, or just plain old malignancy and Sod's Law, would cause it to turn on him.
[[/folder]]

* ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls'': One of Him's riddles to the girls (episode "Him Diddle Riddle") is to pick which of two Ms. Keanes who are suspended over a vat of boiling acid is the real one. Blossom asks which of them would say was the real one, and each giving a different answer. Blossom instantly deduces through analysis which is real Ms. Keane (the one who said "She would say she was the real Ms. Keane," but Blossom actually chose the other. She was so confident and convincing that Him gave it to her anyway.)

** Many divination spells temporarily grant the ability to simply pull more information out of simple observation than other people, e.g. Discern Lies allows you to automatically succeed at the Sense Motive skill to know when someone is lying, Commune allows you to derive simple yes/no conclusions entirely from context for a minute or two, and Read Magic allows you to perform the otherwise-arduous task of unraveling a caster's personal codes and languages with Spellcraft instantly.

** The Studied Target class feat also allows a character to mark an opponent to gain various bonuses against them.

** The Ultimate Detective, [[spoiler: Kyoko Kirigiri]] is a milder version. She regularly performs {{Sherlock Scan}}s that lead her to correctly theorizing the identity of each killer, and manages to deduce the Mastermind's psychology, motives, intentions, and several exploitable weak points with no more information than the player is given. She also displays a SpiderSense for when her loved ones are in danger, [[spoiler: with it being explained in ''Danganronpa: Kirigiri'' that this ability stems from her deductive skills. When somebody is in grave danger, Kirigiri naturally turns her SherlockScan UpToEleven and jumps through most of the intermediary steps involved in a typical deduction to arrive at the conclusion almost instantaneously, with even her unsure how she got there. The details she has been passively collecting through her surroundings just raise a red flag and tell her to respond in a specific way.]]

* ''Literature/PleaseDontTellMyParentsImASupervillain'' gives us the Audit, Penny's mother. She's Sherlock Holmes-style analysis UpToEleven. Despite having no actual powers, she's perfectly capable of dodging bullets by being where they aren't, analyzing enemy weaknesses at a glance, and can break lesser criminals by giving them a speech about how precisely each crime they commit reduces their chances at a happy future.

* ''Fanfic/{{Wonderful}}'': [[AntiVillain Lisa]] has the ability to find out information about people or things. She only needed to observe a house-sized tank to discover its strong and weak points.

** Creator/DennisRodman is considered the greatest pound-for-pound rebounder of all time. Despite a slight frame of 6'7", 210 and playing forward -- whereas most rebounding leaders play center push several inches taller tens of pounds more -- Rodman led the league in rebounding for seven straight years. Rodman said he did this by studying the tendencies and angles of missed shots from many shooters and could read the spin of the ball as it was shot to determine mid-flight which way it would bounce, beating much bigger opponents to the right spot.

** Dennis Rodman is considered the greatest pound-for-pound rebounder of all time. Despite a slight frame of 6'7", 210 and playing forward -- whereas most rebounding leaders play center push several inches taller tens of pounds more -- Rodman led the league in rebounding for seven straight years. Rodman said he did this by studying the tendencies and angles of missed shots from many shooters and could read the spin of the ball as it was shot to determine mid-flight which way it would bounce, beating much bigger opponents to the right spot.

* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shane_Battier Shane Battier]] of the Miami Heat is one of the elite defenders of the NBA because of this.

* Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane, according to the film and the book ''Film/{{Moneyball}}'', considered the usual methods of statistical analysis in baseball to be subjective, unreliable, and relics of a 19th century view, preferring to use on-base percentage and slugging percentage, which are cheaper on the open market than the traditional indicators. How successful was it? "Moneyball" is now a slang term in baseball, and Beane is depicted in the movie by Creator/BradPitt.

* Hall of fame baseball player Cal Ripken Jr. was able to be a very good defensive shortstop in his prime, despite his lack of physical speed, because he studied both opposing batters, and his team's own pitchers, to make sure he was always in the optimal position to make the needed play.
* Greg Maddux was an exceptional control pitcher who had once gone through as many as seventeen seasons with at least fifteen wins. He possessed an immensely good command of his pitches, sported excellent discipline, and knew where to find the strike zone consistently that he rarely gave up walks on opposing hitters. But what really puts him here was his uncanny ability to read players just by studying their body language and their mental capacities to figure out what they were about to do. There's a good reason why one of Maddux's nicknames is "The Professor".

** ''ComicBook/MsMarvel2014'': The titular heroine has a quite impressive shapeshifter powerset, but is also a nerdy teenage girl, so her superheroing style is based around exploiting the laws of physics.

* ''ComicBook/TheAuthority'':
** The Midnighter starts every battle by first running the whole thing through the supercomputer in his head a few million times, analyzing every possible outcome, so he'll know precisely how the battle will go, and what he'll have to do. He's particularly fond of telling people that he's already beaten them a few million times, so doing it once more will be simple. He even put this on a business card once in an effort to save time. This failed, as the card ended up in his forehead.
** This was [[InvertedTrope rather effectively inverted]] in ''ComicBook/CaptainAtom: Armageddon''. The Midnighter saw Captain Atom as just another target for a NoHoldsBarredBeatdown. Instead, Captain Atom treated the Midnighter (and his boyfriend/husband Apollo) to a total CurbStompBattle, showing that sometimes AwesomenessByAnalysis is no match for raw, unadulterated, world-shaking power, especially when the wielder of that power also out-thinks you.
** And it fails when a supervillain summons the Joker. ComicBook/TheJoker, despite being human, is so psychotic and unpredictable that ''the only thing'' Midnighter can do is [[LogicBomb stand there staring at him]].
** Another failure came about in the miniseries ''Human on the Inside'', in which Midnighter's opponent thwarted him by declining to make the first move, reasoning that Midnighter could only derive the possibilities for the fight once his opponent made an opening move. Fans seem divided over whether that's really how the power was supposed to work.
* Finesse from ''ComicBook/AvengersAcademy'' has a similar ability to the Taskmaster's: the ability to master any physical skill she sees performed. So much so that she actually wonders if she might be Taskmaster's daughter. [[spoiler:She also has his memory problems]].
* ''Franchise/{{Batman}}'':
** The titular Batman is said to have a second major in this, as he is very very much a detective and criminologist when his preplanning everything didn't succeed immediately. An example of this trope in action comes in ''ComicBook/BatmanYearOne'' when Bruce Wayne first encounters street hooker [[Comicbook/{{Catwoman}} Selina Kyle]] and quickly realizes "She knows Karate... only Karate."
** Same goes for Batman's evil counterpart Prometheus, who has created technology that analyzes an opponent's fighting style, allowing him to simulate it perfectly.
** Batman villain ComicBook/{{Bane}} became a master of several martial arts and sciences simply by reading every book he could get his hands on. After Bane holds his own against world-class swordsman ComicBook/RasAlGhul, Ra's criticizes his lack of flair and implies that Bane learned sword fighting entirely from reading books on the subject.
** [[ComicBook/{{Batgirl}} Cassandra Cain]] and [[ComicBook/LadyShiva her mother]] both possess an ability to "read" body language, allowing them to perfectly predict every move made by their opponents. Cassandra has gained this ability by undergoing TrainingFromHell that left her with severe disabilities as a consequence, while Shiva has it from [[CharlesAtlasSuperpower simply being that good at martial arts]].
** The ClockKing is known for his LudicrousPrecision, to the point that he fought Batman to a standstill because he'd analyzed all of his moves.
** Bruce Wayne (out of costume and with no gadgets) was able to hold off several Talon assassins by simply figuring out that their techniques, while accumulated through years of experience through technical immortality, were outdated. Once he figures out that were pretty much undead, meaning he wouldn't ''really'' be killing them, they stand no chance. [[spoiler:Although one of them, the great-grandfather of Dick Grayson, was a bit more of a challenge the first time around]].
** In ''ComicBook/BatmanCurseOfTheWhiteKnight'', the moment the Joker sees that Harley was pregnant, he correctly guesses that she is having twins.
* Early on in ''ComicBook/BlackestNight'', ''ComicBook/{{Mera}}'' deduces on her own that the Black Lanterns are drawn towards strongly emanating emotions (in the same manner that sharks are drawn towards blood), before any actual Lanterns from the Corps drop in [[BigDamnHeroes to save the day]] [[MrExposition and go into actual detail about the undead Lanterns]].

* ''ComicBook/FantasticFour'':
** Mr. Fantastic lives on this trope. Being stretchy and somewhat more resistant to bullets than the normal person would not be the most impressive superpower (though still better than no powers at all), but when it's backed up by a brain that can build nearly anything, including a planet-buster-buster, he's a lot more dangerous.
** When he's not busy [[RobotMaster building robots,]] this is the Mad Thinker's shtick (combining it with XanatosGambit). He's an evil super-mathematician. During Marvel ComicBook/CivilWar, when Reed Richards admits to having basically invented [[Franchise/{{Foundation}} psycho-history]] and wants someone to check his figures, he realizes the Mad Thinker is the only qualified person around. The Thinker is bowled over by the scope of Reed's calculations.

* This is supposedly how Helix sees the world in IDW's ''[[ComicBook/GIJoeIDW G.I. Joe]]'' series. It is the explanation for her kickass combat abilities that make her a match for Snake-Eyes.
* Like Karnak, Mantis of ComicBook/TheAvengers and the ComicBook/GuardiansOfTheGalaxy can instinctively sense weak points in her opponents. In one of her first appearances, she took down flippin' ''[[ComicBook/TheMightyThor Thor]]'' by locating (and then punching) sensitive nerve clusters in his neck.
* ''ComicBook/IncredibleHulk'':
** [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amadeus_Cho Amadeus Cho]] from ''ComicBook/TheIncredibleHercules'' has this as his superpower. He can stop a charging rhino with a grape seed.
** Bruce Banner has this too when he isn't the Hulk. To the point that ComicBook/NormanOsborn considers Banner a bigger threat than The Hulk.
** Cho claims that the Hulk actually does this subconsciously, since he still has access to all of Banner's smarts, and that that's why in all the seemingly random destruction he causes, innocent people usually escape unscathed. ''ComicBook/ImmortalHulk'' brings this concept up, with several characters [[LampshadeHanging noting this is ridiculous]]… but then again... when asked about it, the Hulk states that it makes sense. [[AntiHero For the nicer Hulk]], which he is decidedly ''not''.
* Also from the Franchise/MarvelUniverse, ComicBook/{{the Inhuman|s}} Karnak has the ability to find the one weak spot in any material or object, allowing him to shatter it with a (non-superpowered) karate chop. He's been shown to damage ''Ultron'' with a well-placed strike. And pushing the awesomeness even further: this is not a "superpower." He was never exposed to the Terrigen Mists, like other Inhumans, so his abilities are the result of training and discipline. Eat your heart out, Batman. Later stories show him able to detect the flaws in more abstract things, such as plans and concepts. And after he was DrivenToSuicide in ''ComicBook/{{Inhumanity}}'', he came back after finding the weak spot in ''death''.
* In ''ComicBook/LegionOfSuperHeroes'', Karate Kid prides himself on learning every martial art in existence. Since he is male, he's not allowed to learn Amazonian martial arts. He was nonetheless able to figure it out by watching other people using it.
* Franchise/{{Marvel|Universe}}'s Anti-Hero-Villain ComicBook/{{Taskmaster}} can do this with any physical skill he has seen at least once and is physically capable of duplicating (and some that he shouldn't be). However, what makes this AwesomenessByAnalysis is that [[CutLexLuthorACheck he's founded a thriving business]] ''teaching other supervillains'', (his latest job is training the recruits/draftees of The Initiative and latter Osborn's Camp HAMMER) something he couldn't do if he didn't gain a deep insight into the skills he picked up. In fact, he's so good at it that governments have been shown to hire him to train law-enforcement to take down supervillains. This power, however, requires the subject to act sanely and in a recognizable pattern. ComicBook/{{Daredevil}} once defeated him by acting at random (eventually tricking Taskmaster into stepping into traffic), and he is powerless against ComicBook/{{Deadpool}}'s ConfusionFu.
* ''ComicBook/MsMarvel2014'': The titular heroine has a quite impressive shapeshifter powerset, but is also a nerdy teenage girl, so her superheroing style is based around exploiting the laws of physics.
* ''ComicBook/SpiderMan'': In a prelude to ''ComicBook/SpiderIsland'', when ComicBook/ShangChi teaches Spider-Man martial arts, Spider-Man attempts to take this approach, although Shang Chi disagrees:
-->'''Spider-Man''': Think I got this. It's mass, acceleration, leverage and a knowledge of human biology. That's science and I'm great at science.\\
'''Shang Chi''': No, Spider-Man, it is so much more. This is no mere application of brute force. It is an art, and an expression of the self.\\
'''Spider-Man''': What if most of myself ''is'' science?
* ''ComicBook/{{Superman}}'':
** In ''ComicBook/WarWorld'', Superman and ComicBook/{{Supergirl}} deduce the way to beat super-villain Mongul by observing a mass graveyard located at the titular weapon-satellite.
--->'''Superman:''' Do you remember that mountain of graves we noticed on Warworld? That's what gave me the answer! The Warzoons weren't buried in a mass grave as there'd be if the race was destroyed by some great illness!\\
'''Supergirl:''' You're right! The Warzoons must've died one by one! They buried each other — except for the last one buried by the peace-loving Largas!\\
'''Superman:''' Precisely! And there's only one thing on that entire satellite capable of killing the Warzoon one at a time — the control helmet in the command console!\\
'''Supergirl:''' The massive energy-drain must've proven too much for their minds to endure!
** ''ComicBook/SuperboyNew52'': [[ComicBook/{{Superboy}} Kon]] taught himself to talk and communicate by watching others do it.

* Another Creator/{{Wildstorm}} example would be Paris of ''ComicBook/StormwatchPHD'' who developed his talent for precision violence via [[TheGift innate instinct]], TrainingFromHell and [[AbusiveParents a]] ''[[AbusiveParents really]]'' [[AbusiveParents bad childhood]]. Wanda Durst, his teammate, has a similar origin that resulted in ''her'' particular [[TheProfiler skill set]].
* ''Comicbook/XMen'':
** Beast defeated ComicBook/{{Hawkeye}} at billiards in ''ComicBook/TheAvengers'' through calculation of angles.
** ComicBook/{{Cyclops}} is similarly good at pool, seeing as he's had to memorize complex trigonometric techniques to make sure his optic blasts go wherever he wants. It's implied/stated to be part of his powers.
** This is the whole shtick of the {{Heel Face Turn}}er Sage. Well, this and PsychicPowers, but mostly she's the resident AwesomenessByAnalysis queen.
** In the crossover event ''Necrosha'', a resurrected, BrainwashedAndCrazy Doug Ramsey easily beats up the ''ComicBook/NewMutants'' by using his {{Omniglot}} power to "translate" the nonverbal language of their AttackPatternAlpha, predicting their every move. He loses the upper hand when Karma mind controls the whole team, causing them to [[ConfusionFu move erratically]].
** ComicBook/{{X23}} walks through a doorway. By then, Laura has [[SherlockScan already assessed the threat level of everyone present]] and calculated the best plan for ''killing everyone inside the room''. [[CursedWithAwesome She can't turn it off, either.]]

[[folder:FanWorks]]

[[folder:Film — Animated]]

--->'''Basil:''' ''[bitter]'' Heh, set it off now... ''[realizing]'' [[EurekaMoment Set it...off...now]]?

[[folder:Film — Live-Action]]

** This trait of Steve's is implied in one of his most common basic actions: throwing his shield. He would have to be doing advanced math in his head--possibly reflexively and unconsciously, but nevertheless -- to achieve some of the fancy attacks he has shown, and still catch it.

* ''Literature/{{Dune}}'':