History Main / ShatterpointTap

* Detective Dee from the eponymous [[DetectiveDee wuxia movie]] could do this with his very sword-like Dragon Taming Mace.

* Ryoga Hibiki of ''RanmaOneHalf'' does it with his Bakusai Tenketsu technique. While going through the training for the technique both he and Ranma ''thought'' that it worked on everything, including human flesh, but it turned out to only work on rocks. However, surviving the TrainingFromHell required to learn the technique did have the benefit of rendering Ryoga SuperTough.

* One Daemon Engine in the new [[{{Warhammer40000}} Chaos Space Marines]] Codex is described as "tapping along fortress walls, listening intently", and when it finds what it's looking for, hits the wall once, causing it to collapse.

* Karnak of Marvel's ''TheInhumans'' developed this as a CharlesAtlasSuperpower.

* Karate Kid of DC's ''Comicbook/{{Legion of Super-Heroes}}'' learned how to do this as part of his martial arts training. He's so skilled at it that he's been able to shatter objects even guys like Superboy and Mon-el couldn't dent, and has found weak points in everything from superstrong metals to godlike cosmic beings.

* Like his comic book counterpart, the Karate Kid of ''[[JLAAdventuresTrappedInTime JLA Adventures: Trapped In Time]]'' has this ability. His misuse of it accidentally starts the plot of the film going, and later he uses this skill to [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3Lr_-4Rb4k punch a glacier out of existence]].

* Parodied in an episode of ''ChipNDaleRescueRangers'', where Gadget is seen tapping lightly on a pane of glass, claiming that she's trying to find its "harmonic weakness." Once she apparently finds it, she smashes the glass with a hammer.

Not to be confused with PressurePoint, which is essentially this for human bodies, or with WaferThinMint, which is the proverbial straw-and-the-camel's-back rendered literal. Compare with GlassShatteringSound.

* The MythBusters examined breaking safety glass by poking it. It didn't work.

* An accidental version occurs on ''{{Life}}''. The opening of the season 2 episode "The Business of Miracles." Dan Auerbach was killed because someone swapped his oxygen tank with pure liquid nitrogen... he was frozen solid. While Crews and Reese are looking at the scene and conversing with the guy who owns the lab. Crews leans forward and gently pokes the corpse with a pen... and the corpse shatters into a thousand tiny frozen pieces! Which Reese follows by asking, "Do you have to touch everything?"

* Detective Dee from the [[DetectiveDee wuxia movie]] could do this with his very sword-like Dragon Taming Mace.

* Faultline from ''Literature/{{Worm}}'' has this power.

* In ''MageTheAscension'', this is the first power of entropy (magic dedicated to fate and decay of things). A wizard can use it to see weak spots in everything, from people and objects (which allows him to hit them ForMassiveDamage) to finding an entry to a guarded building by spotting the flaw in security procedures.

** Worth noting for being eventually removed in the course of an edition change for being a potential GameBreaker -- while trying to find a target's weakness took time and failure would prevent a retry, the effect of multiple ''successful'' attempts could be cumulative and would then apply to ''all'' eligible attacks (as defined when taking the talent) against that target for the entire rest of the fight, all for relatively few points especially by superhero campaign standards.

* Ryoga Hibiki of ''RanmaOneHalf'' does it with his Bakusai Tenketsu technique. While going through the training for the technique both he and Ranma ''thought'' that it worked on everything, including human flesh, but it turned out to only work on rocks. However, surviving the TrainingFromHell required to learn the technique did have the benefit of rendering Ryoga MadeOfIron.

** Temugin, son of supervillain The Mandarin, has this as part of a larger suite of [[KiAttacks superpowered martial arts abilties]].

* Ryoga Hibiki of ''RanmaOneHalf'' does it with his Bakusai Tenketsu technique.

** Temujin, son of supervillain The Mandarin, has this as part of a larger suite of [[KiAttacks superpowered martial arts abilties]].

This is where a character can destroy solid objects by detecting or otherwise targeting their "weak point" or "breaking point" or "flaw point" and striking ihe object with a comparatively light blow.

[[redirect:TappingTheShatterpoint]]