Characters who have trouble judging and controlling their own strength in Western Animation.
- This problem can sometimes happen with Benders in Avatar: The Last Airbender especially inexperienced ones.
- Katara breaks an iceberg by unconsciously Water Bending while fuming and giving "The Reason You Suck" Speech to her brother Sokka, she also freezes Sokka by accident later.
- Aang having more training with his airbending has less trouble, though he still goes flying several stories into the air by sneezing, more hijinks occur when Aang unintentionally defeating foes and causing damage his powers. Though this is not Played for Laughs when he first uses Firebending and burns Katara when he can't control it.
- In a similar vein Zuko accidentally burns Toph when she startles Zuko by waking him up.
- In the sequel series the titular heroine Korra sometimes forgets her Super-Strength as when she gives a heartwarming (but overly vigorous) bear hug to Tenzin and kids and later lifts a man along with the chair he was tied to unconsciously
◊. Not to be outdone, Bolin a Boisterous Bruiser lifted an Asami off the ground in one big hug and another time lifted Korra, Asami and his older brother Mako◊ in an even bigger hug.
- In Batman: The Brave and the Bold in "The Super-Batman of Planet X" when Green Arrow arrives on Zur-En-Arrh to retrieve Batman, he unknowingly becomes a Flying Brick in the alien atmosphere. Ollie is very surprised when he indents the rocket with his hand, then quickly becomes gleeful as he starts flying around, then Batman ever the killjoy comes in and removes Green Arrow's superpowers much to the latter’s disappointment.
- In Ben 10, Ben has a rarely-unlocked form called Way Big. He's a nod to the heroes of the Ultra Series and is cosmically-powered, so his strength is not simply what his size implies if you ignore the Square-Cube Law. The race's native environment is inside cosmic storms and they really aren't born to live in a world with anyone or anything that's breakable. A great deal of real estate can be obliterated with little effort if Ben doesn't keep himself in check, as witnessed once in a story taking place in the future: A villain made the grave error of hurting Ben's son. When Ben flattened him with one punch, a decent chunk of the city got flattened as well.
- Nanny of Count Duckula suffered from this, causing many instances of There Was a Door and We Have the Keys.
- Ed, Edd n Eddy has several characters such as Ed, Sarah and Rolf showing feats of superstrength, and sometimes (mostly Ed) causing collateral damage because of it. In "Eds-aggerate", Rolf even hangs a lampshade when he pulls some of the kids out of a pipe, they get sent flying and land on a wheelbarrow full of dirt, catapulting the contents right onto himself.Rolf: Rolf is too strong for his own good.
- In the Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes episode "Bait And Switch," Reed experiences this as a result of having switched powers with Ben.
- The infant Bamm-Bamm on The Flintstones. Later spinoffs (that feature Bamm-Bamm as a child, teenager or adult) usually show him as fully aware of/in control of his strength. "He's the strongest toddler in the whole land, tear your arm off it he shakes your hand..."
- Hercules: The Animated Series focuses on Herc's teen years and has this as a running gag. in the opening intro, he is opening a door for a lady and takes it off its hinges.
- George Jetson becomes this in The Jetsons when he gains super strength from a thinking device which breaks down causing him to be stuck in this form. He breaks everything at the slightest touch.
- The Justice League episode "Only a Dream" referenced this trope. When Dr. Destiny traps Superman in his worst nightmare, said nightmare involves Superman losing control of his strength and accidentally crushing Jimmy Olsen to death when he tries to hug him. Of course, Superman's "No More Holding Back" Speech in the grand finale mentions that he's constantly holding himself back, for fear of hurting those around him.
- Kaeloo:
- Bad Kaeloo has Super-Strength, but sometimes forgets about it. In one episode, she hugs her friends and their heads explode.
- In one episode, Eugly gives Stumpy a high-five which sends him flying into the air and crashing into a nearby tree.
- Kim Possible had a few of these moments when she briefly ended up with the Super-Strength of Hego, a Superman Substitute. For most of those moments, though, she hadn't yet realized what had happened, making it a literal case of not knowing her own strength.
- On the more realistic side of things, Bill Dauterive in King of the Hill has a surprisingly high amount of strength despite what his age and body-type would imply. Back in his football days, he was known as the "Billdozer" for his uncanny ability to just keep pushing through an opposing team's entire defensive line to make a goal. Even at his current age, he's able to pull off similar feats if the situation is dire enough, and the reason he rarely does is because he has so little self-confidence that he never really tries.
- Shujaa the gorilla in The Lion Guard keeps causing damage because of this. Scar gets his minions to pick fights with the guard to get Shujaa to cause more damage. Beshte, the hippo who’s the guard’s strongest, teaches him how to slow down and think before he acts. Interestingly, Beshte himself has this happen at the Tree of Life when he is trying to meet new animals. They think he’s attacking and have to be re introduced to see he’s not a bad guy.
- Mr. Strong on The Mr. Men Show. His Catchphrase always comes up after an incident involving his strength: "Aw, I barely touched it."
- Clark Kent struggled with this heavily in the start of My Adventures with Superman, to the point that simply opening doors or putting on shoes without destroying them was a struggle for him. When he first starts working at the Daily Planet he worries he might accidentally crush his boss' hand trying to shake it.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
- In "Luna Eclipsed", Princess Luna renders Fluttershy unconscious by hugging her. She also makes cracks in the ground with her footsteps a few times.
- Derpy Hooves. She's also The Klutz. Needless to say, it's a recipe for disaster.
- In "A Canterlot Wedding," Queen Chrysalis is shocked to find that consuming the love between Princess Cadance and Shining Armor has given her enough power to defeat Princess Celestia in a one-on-one Wizard Duel.
- In "Twilight's Kingdom Part 2", Twilight has trouble performing even the most basic magic after the power transfer, blowing up the door to the Golden Oaks Library simply by trying to open it and briefly teleporting to random spots all across Equestria. It isn't until Tirek comes after her that she gets a handle on her power, if only because she's no longer trying to hold it back.
- In "A Rockhoof and a Hard Place", Rockhoof starts a new job as a teacher at the School of Friendship, and immediately starts breaking things due to being careless with his raw strength. (presumably, Equestria 1000 years ago didn't have as many breakable things)
- Baby ponies are shown to have this issue, with the Cakes being warned their newborn twins Pound and Pumpkin will have this issue by Twilight, Rarity, and Rainbow Dash. They're right, and Pinkie Pie finds this out the hard way. Princess Flurry Heart is a baby Alicorn and a large part of the damage she causes is because she has no idea how powerful she actually is.
- Robot Chicken has a parody of Man of Steel in which Pa Kent suffers a heart attack. Clark attempts to provide CPR, but his super breath inflates and deflates Pa like a balloon until his hands and feet pop off. Then he tries chest compressions and collapses Pa's chest while sending his head flying.
- Really Really Big Man, the resident superhero of Rocko's Modern Life, suffers from this problem, especially in his day job as a mild-mannered (female) reporter, as he cheerfully walks into the office, ripping off doors and smashing holes in the floorboards with each step. Even as his heroic self, he seems somewhat unaware of just how potentially destructive he can be, as those lovable little Poots find out to their cost...
- Rocky and Bullwinkle: Bullwinkle invokes the line on himself in a bumper of his show after pulling a wild animal out of his hat instead of his intended rabbit.
- Teen Titans (2003)'s Starfire is an alien from a planet where everybody has superstrength, resulting, when she comes to Earth, in a world-of-cardboard effect as Superman described it (not the trope). Particularly unfortunate as she fond of hugging her friends.
- The Tick had a tendency to leave crumbling footprints embedded in the roofs of buildings whenever he went Roof Hopping. The Tick has done the door thing, too. And generally causes massive amounts of collateral damage. It isn't that he is unused to his strength so much as that he's clumsy, insane and not very bright. And Nigh Invulnerable, so he doesn't necessarily notice if he bangs his head on a doorframe hard enough to put a hole in the wall.
- Bulkhead of Transformers: Animated has this problem fairly often, in no small part to being the biggest Autobot and in a world much too small for him. In an online short, he's shown causing gale-force winds to blow away a park full of people just by applauding.
- In Transformers: Prime, Bulkhead says that the Autobots know both when to use force and how much to use... and breaks some of Ratchet's equipment by way of demonstration.note Unlike Animated Bulkhead, this version isn't clumsy but it's implied that he still heavily restrains himself because even among Cybertronians he is an abnormally big and powerful bot. Part of his relationship with Miko is her encouraging him to unleash his strength when necessary.
- In one episode of X-Men: The Animated Series, a nebbish archaelogist discovers how to transfer the power of The Juggernaut from Cain Marko to himself. Immediately after becoming Juggernaut he accidentally tears off the door from his fridge.
- Zeke's Pad: In "Art is Bigger Than Life", Zeke's drawing accidentally turns him into an eight-foot-tall massive muscle bound freak. Not knowing his own strength, Zeke breaks things, rips off doors, and is generally misunderstood.
