Showing Off Your Powers

Do you wanna build a snowman?

A character putting on a bit of a show to demonstrate their powers to others around them. Depending on the intention, this may be a playful spectacle meant to impress, or an implied sort of intimidation or taunt.

When done enthusiastically, it generally characterizes the person as having a streak of showmanship to themselves. Stage Magicians and Circus Ringmasters for instance may exclusively use their powers for spectacle — and all stage performances openly involving superpowers implicitly rely on this trope. For related reasons, the most bombastic examples of this tend to happen through a full-on diegetic musical number (Reality Warpers are particularly fond of this variation due to Personality Powers).

Showing off your powers can also happen during combat, and many Smug Supers are defined by this as an illustrative fighting style unto itself. Younger superheroes especially like to show off to spectators while they fight, and it can even motivate Explaining Your Power to the Enemy / Just Toying with Them.

On the more mundane side, "showing off" can also function as a quick no-frills demonstration meant to prove you have superpowers to those who are skeptical, such as a new teammate or a Secret-Keeper. It can even be done for the sake of a child, as a very advanced form of jingling your car keys in front of their face.

Overlaps with Mundane Utility where trying to impress people is the utility. May function as an Establishing Character Moment. How Do I Shot Web? and Power Incontinence can get in the way of showing off.

Contrast Fake Wizardry, for when they don't actually have powers beyond showmanship.

Barehanded Bar Bending is often done to show off Super-Strength. Spoon Bending is the equivalent for psychics. For shapeshifters, see Shapeshifter Showoff Session.

Inverse trope to Subtle Superpowering.

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Examples:

Animation

• BoBoiBoy: When the titular character tells his friends about his adventure the previous day that ended up with him acquiring Elemental Powers, his friends laugh it off, so he tries to prove it by demonstrating them. He does manage to summon a big gust of wind in their faces, but Gopal remains unimpressed. BoBoiBoy then prepares to summon his lightning sword, but is interrupted by Adu Du, who proceeds to attack them. It is only when he's fighting Adu Du that his friends see his powers and truly believe that he's a superhero.

Anime & Manga

• Assassination Classroom: Koro-Sensei's introduction is marked by him demonstrating to his students how impossibly powerful he is: which includes showing his super regeneration, super speed, and combat tentacles.
• Fullmetal Alchemist: The Homunculi are big fans of this.
  • When Al is skeptical of Greed's claims of being a near-immortal Homunculus, Greed has one of his henchmen smash half of his head off with a hammer just so he can demonstrate his power to resurrect himself from fatal injuries. Not much later, he shows off the full extent of his Ultimate Shield when Ed assumes it can only cover his hands, revealing it can cover the totality of his body.
  • Upon finally obtaining the power of Truth, Father creates a miniature sun in his hand to show his status as essentially a god, and later gives an even bigger display by shamelessly breaking the laws of alchemy to resurrect and kill the citizens of Xerxes, horrifying everyone.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Stone Ocean: In his introduction, Weather Report uses his Stand to briefly play a nearby piano.
  • The JoJoLands: Usagi demonstrates the use of his Matte Kudasai to the group by performing a Camera Spoofing.
• Jujutsu Kaisen: When Satoru Gojo fights Jogo, he flaunts his powers several times. This includes pausing to show Jogo that it is metaphysically impossible for him to lay a hand on him.
• My Hero Academia: Bakugo is especially prone to this since he is very proud of his explosive quirk. In an early flashback, Bakugo shows the class his quirk by expelling small fireworks from his hands, impressing everyone.
• Overlord (2012): Played for Drama. Emperor Jircniv asks Ainz to cast his most powerful spell in the battle against the kingdom of E-Rantel. This is ostensibly to prove how powerful his new ally is, but he also hopes to convince other nations to band together against Ainz upon seeing it. Ainz dutifully casts his flashiest spell — which immediately eliminates half the opposing army — and then uses those souls to summon half a dozen Eldritch Abominations that proceed to stomp most of the remaining soldiers to death. Jircniv is left horrified by the realization that there is no magic in the world that can compare to Ainz. As per usual, Ainz is completely oblivious to all this: his only plan in casting the spell was in the hopes of attracting potential incarnated players like himself.

Audio Plays

• Big Finish Doctor Who: In "The Holy Terror," when the Child is finally released from his captivity under the castle, Childeric allows him to show off his divine powers by using them on Livilla. The Child proceeds to regress Livilla to infancy over the next few agonizing seconds, then begins playing with her like a doll — before abruptly breaking her neck.

Comic Books

• X-Men: Jubilee, upon being orphaned, used the Galleria Mall as a living space, hiding in ducts and storage rooms. She would slip out of hiding from time to time to wow local children with her plasmoid fireworks, then hightail it back to her hiding places when security showed up to evict her.

Fan Works

• In My Little Fonzie a fanfic that crosses Happy Days with My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Fonzie has become an Alicorn. He uses this to one-up Rainbow Dash by making a "sonic coolboom" (breaking the sound barrier flying and thus creating cool visual effects in the sky).

Film — Animation

• Aladdin:
  • The Genie puts on a musical number "Friend Like Me" through which he demonstrates the diverse array of ways he can use his wish-granting powers. The number ends with him awaiting applause with a joke neon sign.
  • Immediately afterwards, Aladdin cleverly invokes the trope too. He claims Genie's song-and-dance number was all smoke and mirrors and doubts that he could even so much as get them out of the cave they're currently trapped in. Genie proceeds to prove that he can, thus unwittingly granting Aladdin a free wish.
• Frozen: Elsa playfully shows off her Ice powers to entertain Anna as a kid. As an adult, she falls back into this by creating an ice palace during her song "Let It Go" (although this is only showing off to herself).
• Rise of the Guardians: Jack Frost uses his abilities to make frost appear on Jamie's window, animating the frost into a rabbit to hop around the room, in order to prevent Jamie from losing his belief in the Guardians. The fact that this causes Jamie to finally believe in and see Jack is an added bonus.
• Shrek 2: The Fairy Godmother introduces herself to Fiona with a display of falling bubbles and an over-the-top song animating all of the furniture in her room, making fancy items like cars and puppy dogs appear. Fiona is more overwhelmed than impressed, saying she doesn't need all this stuff.

Film — Live-Action

• Cinderella (2015): The Fairy Godmother reveals herself to Cinderella with a flashy transformation, throwing her glowing staff up in the air before catching it, changing her from an old woman into her fairy form.
• Matilda: Matilda proves her abilities to Miss Honey by not only making her pitcher float but also by helping her rearrange her classroom.

Literature

• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: On the Muggle Prime Minister's first evening in office, he is visited by Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge, who explains to him the existence of the wizarding world, and that he'll only visit if some crisis is going on with the wizards that is also likely to affect the Muggle world. The Muggle Prime Minister is so shocked he thinks it's a hoax, so Fudge demonstrates that he really is a wizard by transforming the Minister's cup into a gerbil.
• The Last Binding: Edwin reveals the existence of magic to Robin by conjuring a large, intricate snowflake between his hands. Unknown to Robin at the time, Edwin is a desperately weak mage who invented the spell as a technical exercise, so he's surprised when Robin sincerely calls his magic beautiful.
• The Legends of Ethshar: In "The Unwelcome Warlock", one warlock tries to impress his customers by adding an unnecessary supernatural glow when casting a healing spell.
• The Wheel of Time: When Rand al'Thor fully embraces his role as The Chosen One and Hope Bringer, he single-handedly rescues a besieged city with an awe-inspiring display of the One Power that annihilates the Shadowspawn attackers. He then slips away from the astounded defenders to sleep off the near-Heroic RRoD.
• The Wise Man's Fear: When Chronicler disagrees with the Fae Prince Bast on a sensitive matter regarding the Fae, Bast fixes him with a Death Glare, performs a rapid-fire display of Wrong Context Magic before his eyes, and coldly rebukes him for his presumption.
  Bast: Everything you know about the Fae could fit inside a thimble. How dare you doubt me?

Live-Action TV

• Charmed (1998): In "12 Angry Zen", Paige reveals she's a witch to her boyfriend Henry by summoning lights above them during an intimate rooftop dinner.
• The Flash (2014):
  • In the pilot, Barry arranges a test with S.T.A.R. Labs to prove he has developed powers after his accident by racing down an old airplane strip, wearing devices to measure his vitals and energy output. To say he passes with flying colors would be an understatement.
  • In "Going Rogue", Barry shows off his powers to Felicity when she asks him to demonstrate by asking her to keep her eyes on the roof of a tall skyscraper. He is up on the top of the building and back on the ground within seconds (having taken a picture of her from the roof in the process).
• Shadow and Bone: The protagonist puts on a light show during a high-society ball to show off her light-based powers. This is a sort of an official presentation of her unique powers, which nobody has exhibited in a long time and which are at that point considered somewhat messianic.
• Supergirl (2015):
  • In the Pilot, Kara reveals to Winn she's the mysterious woman who caught the plane by throwing herself off the roof of Catco before flying back to the roof.
  • In "World's Finest", Barry shows off his speedster abilities to Winn and James by running out of the room and bringing them all back ice cream cones.
  • In “Prom Night!” Nia shows off her ability to create force fields to teenage Kara while Kara shows off her flying, bonding over both being aliens on Earth and missing their mothers.
• The Twilight Zone (1959): "Mr. Dingle The Strong" sees aliens imbue a perpetual loser with Superhuman strength, only for him to use it for grandstanding and showboating. Disgusted by his squandering of their gift, the aliens deprive him of his newfound strength.
• Invasion! (2016): In the third Arrowverse crossover, Supergirl is introduced to Team Arrow and the Legends of Tomorrow for the first time, since they are up against aliens and she lives in a separate dimension from them. When asked what makes her so super, she flies up and uses her heat vision to carve her insignia into the ground.
• The Vampire Diaries: In "162 Candles", Bonnie reveals she's a witch to Elena by making feathers fly around her room. Justified, since Elena asked for a distraction from her heartbreak over Stefan.

Puppet Shows

• Fraggle Rock: In one episode, Wembley is jealous of Gobo's talent for exploring and Red's gift for performing the three-rock hand balance (three rocks stacked in the palm of the hand). Later, he frees a trapped spider-fly from a snare blossom. The spider-fly turns out to be an Odd Old Man/Fairy Godmother—who, as a reward, grants Wembley his wish of being able to fly. After being told that he will be able to make only three flights, Wembley tries to show off his powers to his friends by jumping out a window, but they stop him, doubting his powers and fearing that he'll get hurt... or killed.

Video Games

• ANNO: Mutationem: After a rather unexpected Surprise Santa Encounter, Sigrid explains that it happened because of her "magic" when she wished for it, and then proceeds to use her ability to make a flower fully grow from an empty pot.
• Black & White: You convert villages to your religion by making them believe in you over all other gods, so flashy public Miracles speed the process along. Depending on your skills and morality, there are practical options like Miracle Food, pure spectacles like Summon Magic, or a firmly worded Bolt of Divine Retribution.
• In the Capcom vs. titles he shows up as a non-assist character, the Juggernaut will show off his Super-Strength before a fight by twisting a massive steel girder into a horseshoe.
• Kid Icarus: Uprising: Once Pandora is defeated, much to everyone's shock, Dark Pit dives into the goddess' remains and absorbs them into his wings, granting him independent and limitless flight capabilities which he proceeds to flaunt in front of the flightless Pit before taking off for good.
• In Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, some characters may show off their powers for their victory animations and/or Taunts, like Mario and Zelda can display their fire powers for a victory pose, or Bowser Jr. can breathe fire for one of his Taunts.

Web Originals

• Unsounded: Duane answers Quigley's disrespect by conjuring up a Difficult, but Awesome display of magical pyrotechnics with a Badass Boast, feigning an attack, and turning it all into confetti. To add insult to injury, Quigley's own son loves it.

Western Animation

• Avatar:
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender: Aang demonstrates his Airbending as proof of being the Avatar several times throughout the series, including a comical moment where he does it by spinning marbles in his palm.
  • The Legend of Korra:
    • Zaheer demonstrates his airbending to the Air Acolytes by creating a small tornado in his palm.
    • Exaggerated with the airbending show Bolin puts together to help the team recruit new airbenders. Tenzin, Korra, Jinora, and Bumi all show off their abilities to a crowd with tricks like creating tornadoes and air scooters, even fake-apprehending an "escaped criminal" (played by Mako).
• Ben 10: In "Kevin 11", Kevin shows off his energy powers to Ben by making arcade machines malfunction and shoot out coins.
• The Dragon Prince: An annoyed Callum shows off his sky arcanum powers to Ibis when he doesn't believe he can use magic.
• Hazbin Hotel is a diegetic musical world with multiple reality warpers in the cast who take the opportunity to show off during their songs.
  • Pilot:
    • "Inside of Every Demon is a Rainbow": Charlie zips from the TV studio all over Pentagram City, pointing out various Sinners as she sings, and returns descending on a fluffy cloud trailing rainbows.
    • For Alastor's Dark Reprise of the previous song he changes everyone's outfits into 1930s formal wear and turns the hotel lobby sepia-toned.
  • "Overture": During "Hell is Forever" Adam does a literal Summon Backup Dancers that gets lampshaded by Charlie.
  • "Radio Killed the Video Star": At the start of "Stayed Gone" Vox uses his powers to effect several rapid scene and costume changes, even interviewing a duplicate of himself. But then Alastor starts broadcasting and gets him angry enough to cause a city-wide blackout, and while gloating starts changing into his giant creepy form.
  • "Dad Beat Dad":
    • "Hell's Greatest Dad" starts with Lucifer showing off what he can do for Charlie's hotel, only to quickly devolve into Alastor and Lucifer sniping at each other while conjuring up cartoonish visual gags. Including Alastor dropping a piano on the Devil only for him to appear behind him playing the accordion.
    • After Lucifer and Charlie reconcile in "More Than Anything" Lucifer opens a portal to a bright golden sky and takes his daughter on a six-winged flight.
• Invincible:
  • In Episode 7, Mark decides to unveil his powers to Amber to have her understand why he's been missing their dates. It fails because Amber already knew he's been Invincible for months and wanted him to tell her personally and believe he could trust her.
  • In the "Atom Eve" prequel, after Samantha gains proper control over her powers, she decides to show it off to her schoolmate. This backfired quickly as the latter became frightened by Samantha and immediately cuts ties with her.
• Lilo & Stitch: The Series: When Angel goes around meeting the other experiments, several of them demonstrate their power to show off to her, with Stitch responding in kind. It's also foreshadowing that they are being turned evil, as their actions are rather destructive.
• In Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur (2023), Moon Girl puts on a demonstration of her various gadgets to entertain the crowd at Casey's bat mitzvah.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • Discussed as part of An Aesop in "Boast Busters". Twilight demonstrates her magical talents to Spike at the top of the episode as part of her practicing, counting 25 different tricks (including making a mustache appear on Spike). When the Great and Powerful Trixie shows off her flashy stage magic to the crowd and boasts her abilities are greater than any other pony's, Rarity, Apple Jack, and Rainbow Dash all disapprove of her in front of Twilight. This makes Twilight worry that her friends won't like her if she shows off her own magical talents. But when Trixie is unable to defeat an "Ursa Major" that Snips and Snails lured to Ponyville, as she had previously boasted, Twilight is forced to use all of the tricks at her disposal to lure it back out of town safely. Her friends tell her how impressed they are at her abilities and assure her their disapproval had nothing to do with Trixie's magic — just that Trixie was a loudmouth with no real substance to her claims. Twilight learns there are times when it's appropriate to show off, and ends the episode showing off the mustache trick to Snips and Snails.
  • Played with in "Magic Duel". Trixie, driven mad with power by the Alicorn Amulet, returns to Ponyville and intimidates the Mane 6 with her new magic, challenging Twilig ht to a magic duel to prove who is the better magician. While Twilight initially loses and is banished, she returns with an amulet of her own and challenges Trixie to a rematch, showing Trixie her amulet is better with even more impressive tricks. Subverted when it turns out Twilight's tricks weren't all magic — her friends helped her trick Trixie into thinking Twilight's amulet was more powerful so she would take off the Alicorn Amulet.
• Steven Universe: During the movie, Sapphire shows off her future vision to impress Ruby by accurately predicting things moments before they happen. this takes a dark turn, when she predicts Ruby getting shattered.
• Teen Titans (2003):
  • After Raven learns Dark Magic in "Spellbound" she shows off her new abilities by playfully shapeshifting BeastBoy against his will.
  • Mumbo Jumbo does this several times in the episode "Bunny Raven", sucking the Titans into a pocket dimension where he can conjure up anything he wants as part of his magic-based showmanship. As is typical for reality warpers, he does it through a bombastic musical number.
• What's Opera, Doc?: Elmer Fudd shows off to Bugs after he asks how he plans to "kiww da wabbit". He boasts he will do it with his spear and magic helmet, and to give Bugs "a sample" of his helmet's power by running to the top of a mountain and using the helmet to summon a thundercloud and shoot lightning down at a tree right next to Bugs, incinerating it. Bugs promptly decides Screw This, I'm Out of Here! and runs for it, at which point Elmer finally realizes he's been talking to the rabbit he was planning on hunting, and immediately sets off in pursuit.

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