Characters who have trouble judging and controlling their own strength in Literature.
By Creator:
- Used in Richard Scarry's books. Hilda, an anthropomorphic hippo child, accidentally rips a door off its hinges when she is told to open the door so the students can go out to play. Later, when the door is fixed, she rips out the door along with part of the wall when she attempts the same thing.
By Title:
- In Alien in a Small Town, the hulking alien Paul knows how frail Indira will become as she ages, and he's terrified of accidentally hurting her.He had imagined her in this state years before, when he feared that if his massive hand even touched her in this condition, she would break like a hollow eggshell.
- Carrie: Believe it or not, the titular character didn't initially intend to kill anybody, but when she accidentally did, she snapped and decided everyone deserved the same fate.
- Cradle Series: Lindon spent his entire life as a cripple weaker than everyone he knows. By the fourth book, he's only barely reached a level that his allies would consider "strong enough not to embarrass us," and he spends most of his time fighting people much stronger than he is. So when a random idiot picks a fight with him, he's still trying to form a battle plan when he wins in a single blow.
- In Cyborg by Martin Caidin, the novel that inspired The Six Million Dollar Man, Steve Austin accidentally broke a man's wrist with his new bionic hand. Ironically, it was right after that man figured out that Austin's bionic hand had developed feedback that would allow him to judge how much pressure he was exerting — once he got used to it.
- Derek Souza in Darkest Powers is a werewolf with an incredible protective streak over the people he cares about, which leads him to do such things as throwing another boy into a wall and breaking his back, nearly tossing Chloe across a room while merely trying to keep her from stomping off, and breaking Liam's neck, killing him - and all of this completely by accident.
- Granted, nearly all of the main characters with the exception of Simon could probably fit under this trope, as their DNA has been tweaked, thus making their individual abilities much, much, much stronger than usual and leading to random outbursts of power. Most notably Chloe's accidentally raising the dead in her sleep, Derek's already mentioned feats, and Liz's telekinetic tantrum right before she is taken away and murdered because she cannot control her powers.
- Subverted in Dragon Bones: Gentle Giant Ward is Obfuscating Stupidity, so when a man attacks him in his own house, he throws the man into the next wall, and says "Yay, a wrestling match! I win!". However, Ward is well aware that the man didn't want to wrestle, but just wanted to hit the "harmless idiot", and he is also aware how much force he applied. However, his uncle (who believes him to be stupid) explains his behaviour with this trope, and warns the visitor that Ward is very well behaved as long as "no one lays a hand on him". Ward also likes to give a Bear Hug to anyone who does him a favour, as part of his pretending to be stupid. (One of his cousins mentions that he doesn't want to be nice to Ward, for fear of being rewarded with a Bear Hug.) As he's only pretending, Ward never actually hurts someone, he just applies enough strength to make people think that he has no idea how strong he is. His Cute Mute younger sister Ciarra is shown to enjoy his hugs, apparently he's more careful with her than with older males ... and of course he doesn't have to deceive her, she's mute.
- Deconstructed in Ender's Game: Ender uses all his strength (including intelligence, reflexes, the environment, his own weight, his enemy's mistakes) to fight bullies, because he believes himself to be inept compared to the bullies around him, especially Peter. Then it turns out that he used too much strength and accidentally killed two people, without realizing that they weren't just unconscious. The government hushed it up until Ender won the war; he didn't take the 'trial' well.
- Perhaps the Trope Maker is the protagonist from Philip Wylie's Gladiator, the character credited with inspiring the Superman mythos. His superpower is basically superstrength, and it does him no good at all in this world. He accidentally kills a man playing football, gets fired from a manual labour job because he's making everyone else look bad, gets fired from a bank job because he saves someone from suffocating in the vault, and they want to know how he opened it... The entire novel is about what, realistically, it would be like to live with superstrength. A very modern look at a superhero before there were superheroes.
- Halo: The Fall of Reach explains that John (the future Master Chief) experienced this following his augmentation surgery, leading him to wonder if the artificial gravity in the gym where he was exercising had been reduced. Shortly afterwards he was forced into a spar against four veteran Helljumpers, with John accidentally killing two as a result of this trope (it's pretty much stated that the fight was deliberately set up to test the effectiveness of his augmentations; since then, there's been bad blood between the ODSTs and the Spartans).
- Hagrid from the Harry Potter series, being a half-giant, has superhuman strength. Unfortunately, he seems to forget this during physical displays of affection; his Bear Hugs almost always cause someone's bones to bruise, while a friendly pat on the back has the power to make someone fall down.
- The Haunting of Drearcliff Grange School: Gillian Little is a Gentle Giant, eleven years old and already over six feet tall and a foot wide at the shoulders. She's been known to get trapped in rooms after accidentally pulling the doorknob off.
- The Wagner family in The Last Superhero are prone to this. It forced Orville to give up superheroing due to also being The Klutz, and his son, John Jr., casually mentions in the narrative that he's broken the limbs and ribs of his classmates occasionally by accident.
- Moongobble and Me: As demonstrated in book 5, the Oggledy Nork seems to have this problem, which causes him to accidentally break things.
- Lennie from Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck is a tragic Deconstruction of this trope, breaking the neck of a doggy by petting it too hard.
- That's hardly the worst thing he (unintentionally) does. He also accidentally breaks Curley's wife's neck, leading to his Mercy Kill at the hands of George and one hell of a Downer Ending.
- Curley picks a fight with Lennie; it doesn't end well for Curley. Lennie's scared to fight back, but once he does, all Lennie needs to do to stop Curley is squeeze his hand so hard that Lennie breaks his bones.
- Schooled in Magic: A magical variation. Those with powerful magical talent (such as Emily) often have difficulty learning alchemy, because using magic to control alchemical reactions requires a light touch.
- In Shadow of the Conqueror, shortly after Daylen gets his powers, he gives "a good thump" to a local villager who accosts him, and ends up shattering most of his ribs. Thankfully, Ahrek is at hand to both heal the man before he dies and to give Daylen a well-deserved tongue-lashing. After this, Daylen admits how reckless he was and is a lot more careful about using his strength against people who don't have his kind of powers.
- The trope is present in Soon I Will Be Invincible as one of many background details. Doctor Impossible breaks the handle of a toilet, the cyborg Fatale's weight makes hardwood floors creak and cracks tiles, and she can't use normal furniture.
- Spy School: Everyone views Ben as a Non-Action Guy for the first ten and a half books, even Ben himself, but Spy School Goes North reveals that he only looks weak compared to all of the other spies in training, and he handily beats up a few Mooks.
- A bit of a Running Gag in the Star Trek Novel 'Verse whenever a character has to have a missing limb replaced with a "biosynthetic" prosthetic. One engineer manages to crush his communicator in his new hand, and remarks that at the moment he can punch a hole in a wall for a power coupling but holding an egg or shaking hands would be problematic.
- This happens a lot to Mary Beth Layton in the book Superpowers. She first discovers her super strength by breaking a door knob. And a door. And the refrigerator door handle. And a pitcher. And the phone. And the toilet, the TV remote, a broom and most of her plates and bowls. She also slips up and breaks her boyfriend's ribs during sex, and beats a man to death by accident.
- Even at only a few weeks old, Wiggle and his littermates from Survivor Dogs were showing signs of the strength they'd have as adults. During a play-fight, he bit Lucky (a grown dog) too hard because his adult fangs were growing in. When tussling, Lucky notes that it won't be long before Wiggle is the one who needs to hold back. This strength made others like Alpha and Sweet, who are dislike Fierce Dogs, wary of the triplets.
- The magic version is used in the Tortall Universe. Most wizards can put out a candle by magic; if Numair tried it, he'd just cause an explosion. This actually informs his philosphy toward using magic as well — sure, he could throw out three of four mind-bogglingly powerful spells... or he could focus and throw out smaller ones all day when most other mages would long have run dry. Similarly, why use magic at all if someone like a charming personality or sleight-of-hand would do the job even more subtly? In other words, because his upper limit is so ridiculous, Numair makes certain to always be aware of his lower limits and how to surpass those as well.
- In The Twilight Saga, Edward mentions something to this effect...Edward: You have no idea how delicate you are. I could reach out, meaning to touch your face, and crush your skull by mistake.
- It's not clear to what extent this is actually true and to what extent it's Edward trying to cover up his crippling intimacy issues, however.
- Bella gets this in the fourth book because brand new vampires are so damn strong. She hugs Edward and actually hurts him, something nearly impossible to do to Twilight vampires. Emmett, widely regarded as by far the strongest Cullen, is completely overpowered in the weeks immediately after Bella's transformation.
- Scarlet of the The Ultra Violets, mostly thanks to her powers being superhuman dancing skills before the super-strength kicked in.
- In The Underland Chronicles, the Bane claims this:Bane: I didn't think it would kill Razor.Ripred: For you to knock him off a cliff? Well, that's the usual result.Bane: I didn't think he'd go over the cliff. I didn't hit him that hard.
- In What Fire Cannot Burn by John Ridley, Mutants with Super-Strength do their best to avert this, but they must concentrate to avoid applying a little too much force. "Your sweaty nightmare — 'Hey, do you want to hold the baby?'"
