Weaksauce Weakness

Dihydrogen monoxide claims yet another victim.

Metro Man: Copper... drains... my powers!
Megamind: Your weakness is copper? You're kidding, right?

— Megamind

Being a Super Hero ain't easy. Most of the original Flying Bricks have the good Achilles heels covered, and the pharmacy is even out of Psycho Serum to give you a cheap Backstory gimmick to explain your powers.

What's left for the modern hero and villain to do? Make do with a Weaksauce Weakness. It's great for comedic effect, but just as often it ends up being an Achilles' Heel that makes your average Mundane Solution seem perfectly reasonable by comparison.

The weakness isn't a common household cleaning agent like Mundane Solution, but something so incredibly, stupidly embarrassing you'd think the Super Hero would never use his power out of shame in the off chance someone found out about it, or because it shows up regularly in the course of their super heroing. The "weakness" might come in the form of the fuel for the super power, a humiliating Transformation Sequence or activation phrase, an Embarrassing but Empowering Outfit, or just a set of restrictions on the powers that really are begging to get laughed at. Therefore, this is one of the most popular ways to Bless your hero With Suck.

If the weakness is a Logical Weakness, it can be pulled off. If not, it can seriously stress the Willing Suspension of Disbelief, unless it's Played for Laughs.

Especially cruel writers will have clever villains make it a Weaponized Weakness. However, a Kryptonite-Proof Suit can even the odds.

This is also commonly exploited in an Easily Thwarted Alien Invasion, where Bizarre Alien Biology is probably to blame.

A Super-Trope to:

• Cannot Cross Running Water
• Can't Use Stairs
• Cold Iron (depending on the definition of "cold")
• Kill It with Water
• Salt Solution
• Super Drowning Skills
• Vampires Hate Garlic
• Verbal Weakness
• Weakened by the Light

Related to Why Did It Have to Be Snakes? See also Kryptonite Factor, which is a weaksauce weakness for superheroes. If played for laughs, the one so harmed may Fight Off the Kryptonite. In extreme cases, the character will defend themselves from the weakness with a Cross-Melting Aura. For the inversion, of being at risk from a lack of something, see Phlebotinum Dependence.

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Example subpages:

• Anime & Manga
• Comic Books
• Film
• Literature
• Live-Action TV
• Video Games
• Western Animation

Other examples:

Advertising

• A Cartoon Network bumper featured the Superfriends. Zan of the Wonder Twins laments his power to turn into water as being weak.
  "I can be defeated by a sponge. It doesn't even have to be an evil sponge!"

Comedy

• One of ventriloquist Jeff Dunham's puppets is a goofy superhero wannabe named Melvin, who has no realistic powers to speak of, but is enthusiastic about it. He also has not one, but two weaknesses: cupcakes and porn — though not both at the same time, however, because he needs a free hand.

Fan Works

• All Assorted Animorphs AUs: In "What if they had a chance to do it all over?", the Animorphs realize that Yeerks really are just slugs, so they can be killed with salt. They dump a massive amount of salt into the Yeerk Pool, and kill over one hundred thousand Yeerks.
• Black Flames Dance in the Wind: Rise of Naruto : Naruto and anyone else with a darkness affinity is weak against sunlight. Naruto's clones can't use their darkness affinity properly in sunlight for example. At night or indoors, they can change their forms on a whim but outside in the sun, they're just more durable Shadow Clones.
• Christian Humber Reloaded: Vash, a God-Mode Sue with countless superpowers, multiple super modes, and an arsenal of high-tech and legendary weapons, who can take on entire armies and the main villains of several works of fiction without breaking a sweat, is vulnerable to Paralysis, a Useless Useful Spell in RPGs that rarely affects anything stronger than a common enemy.
• Comes a Crossover: Future Trunks is taken out by Principle Kuno with a shot from a Super Soaker filled with Pineapple. Turns out Trunks is allergic to Pineapples and never knew it, partly because he thinks that they are no longer around in his future. As a result he has a violent allergic reaction and needs to be rushed to a hospital because there are no epipens nearby.
• Dance with the Demons: Catwoman gets shot with a poisoned dart, and Green Lantern's Power Ring can't extract the poison out of her body. Hal Jordan glumly reckons some of its components must be yellow.^note The Green Lanterns' greatest weakness is the color yellow and, by extension, the Yellow Lanterns. One of them, Alan, was also weak to wood, but in that case it was forced on him for being drunk with power.
  The man in the green, black, and white costume focused the energy of his power ring on Selina Kyle's body. As before, he knew it would be enough to sustain life, but not to cure.
  Hal Jordan, the Green Lantern, knew that there had to be some yellow material in the poison that ravaged the former Catwoman. Even the ring had limits. It always would.
  Sometimes, those limits cost lives.
• A Dead World: Downplayed. Alex, being a virus, does not do well when exposed to alcohol, which kills viruses on contact. He also is not a fan of water, because even though it doesn't cause lasting harm, it apparently hurts. A lot. He also takes a great deal more pain from the Cloud than a human, Super Mutant, or ghoul would due to the fact that he doesn't technically have skin.
• Eiga Sentai Scanranger might have not only the lamest but most exploitable example on this list. The blue-clad team member, who's empowered by comedy movies, is rendered powerless by swear words and toilet humor until his suit is specially modified so that reality becomes like a movie censored for TV for him. This evidently goes as far as to include imitations of the Tasmanian Devil, even!
• Fallout: Equestria: Littlepip finds evidence of one of the megaspells Twilight Sparkle created during the war, an epic defensive spell that could protect against any attack. The problem? It only works when it's sunny. Even in a world where the weather is created by ponies, that's a glaring flaw; the enemy (zebras or otherwise) could just wait until the ponies brought some rain clouds in and attack then, or until the sun sets. By the time of the story, the Pegasus Enclave keeps the Wasteland constantly covered in clouds, meaning it's never an option at all even if a unicorn finds the megaspell.
• A Force of Four, set in the Golden Age DC universe: The Amazons keep their initial weaknesses: they lose their powers if chained by a man and they are vulnerable at a spot on the backs of their heads. The villainous foursome exploits said weaknesses wantonly.
• Gankona, Unnachgiebig, Unità: Italy: super fast, great with swords, and able to accelerate and decelerate almost instantly without dying instantly or even being remotely harmed. It's his kindness that prevents him from fighting back against people who assault or make fun of him let alone conquer other countries. Not that Germany and Japan see this as a weakness.
• Group of Weirdos: The Iron Knuckles are completely invincible, unless tag-teamed and attacked repeatedly by Link, the hero of time, and Ganondorf, a dark wizard with great power. Or you can just slash them a few times with a Deku Stick.
• Hellsister Trilogy: Knowing Daxamites are fatally hyper-allergic to lead, Satan Girl plans to exterminate their race by scattering lead fragments all across the surface of Daxam.
• Hope for the Heartless: Water causes the Horned King severe burns. Snow causes that also if it melts on him. Diluted water (such as tea) burns him as easily as pure water, though not as severely. However, he seems to be able to digest wine.
• Kara of Rokyn: In the second-to-last story arc, Nasthalthia Luthor narrates the history of the feud between Superboy and her uncle Lex Luthor. Unsurprisingly, Lex devised every imaginable Kryptonite-based weapon in order to destroy Kal-El, including Kryptonite living beings.
• The Last Daughter: Intentionally averted. Word of God stated he was avoiding stuff like Kryptonite, or red sunlight to hurt the main character.
• Mendacity: The Fae are vulnerable to "the most common metal in the world" and to "randomly chosen plants, creatures, and objects". According to the Bugul Noz, Discord created them this way as a cruel joke.
• A Minor Variation: Rarity dismisses Tirek as a minimal threat due to him being apparently afraid of rainbows.
• My Brave Pony: Starfleet Magic: Because he is a Living Shadow, Mysterious gets hurt by standing in any form of light.
• My Immortal: Vampires are vulnerable to steak. Early in the fic, the protagonist, herself a vampire, contemplates committing suicide with one she hides in her bedroom. Also, vampires are not only vulnerable to crosses, they apparently can't even write the word "cross." Of course, the story sometimes forgets all that and depicts vampires wearing cross earrings.
• A New Jedi in an Old Republic:
  • The armies of the CIS are droids. Implacable, able to operate in vacuum, tireless... too bad that Kyle has a directed EMP gun that he just turned over to the Republic for reverse-engineering.
  • The Jedi's empathic abilities are a great strength... except that in battle against the droid armies, the only thing they'll be able to feel in the Force is the deaths of their friends and allies.
• Origins: The "hibridium"-based cloaking devices aboard Trans-Galactic Republic and Republic Intelligence Service ships fail to conceal the ship's magnetic properties, meaning if one drops a strong enough magnet near the ship its presence will be revealed as said magnet is pulled toward the physically-invisible target. Aria T'Loak, never one for games, exploits this to blackmail RISE. It starts off okay but ultimately doesn't end well...
• Pink Five Strikes Back, a Star Wars fan film: The rebel pilot Stacy realizes that since the walkers attacking Hoth only had forward-facing guns, the Rebels could've just shot at them from behind. While being chased by a scout walker in The Return of Pink Five, Stacy remembers this train of thought in the nick of time — and causes the walker to lose its balance and crash by running in between its legs.
• Queen of All Oni: Jade gains the weakness to onions Oni have in canon after eating an Oni mask.
• Shinobi of the High Seas: Kizaru has been beaten twice by using a mirror to reflect him away.
• Superman of 2499: The Great Confrontation: Several generations before the beginning, the sorceress Lady Hecate put a hex on the descendants of Superman and Supergirl so exposure to saltwater would kill them.
• This Bites!: Justified with Soundbite's weakness to salt; he is, after all, a snail. Also to a lesser degree, flour, as it clogs up his throat and renders him temporarily mute.
• The Unfantastic Adventures of Bizarro No. 1: Bizarro-Martian Manhunter's weakness is human salive, as befitting the opposite duplicate of the pyrophobic Martian Manhunter.
• The Vampire of Steel: Zol-Am is a Kryptonian vampire, so normal vampire weaknesses don't apply, forcing Buffy and the gang to obtain a piece of Kryptonite. Zol-Am is still vulnerable to stakes, though, provided that the stake is carved from a Kryptonian species of tree.
• You Got HaruhiRolled!: How do you defeat your own author? Well, here, just show him a disgusting Doujinshi. He'll be so Squicked out that he will be unable to resist you forcing him back through the dimensional portal whence he came.

Gamebooks

• The Darklords of the Lone Wolf gamebooks are (were, as of Book 12) crippled by clean air and can only unleash their full strength in toxic habitats. Half the reason they waged a centuries-long campaign ruining Magnamund (the other half being that they are Always Chaotic Evil embodiments of evil) is (was) to make the world a paradise for themselves. Even in their weakened state they can still put up a good fight with their mastery of Black Magic and immunity to conventional weapons. In one story arc, the Darklords develop a magical engine that allow them to retain their full strength outside their realm. About a dozen of them are on the frontlines of their war when the protagonist smashes the engine, singlehandedly ending their reign of terror.

Myths & Religion

• The Bible:
  • The great Samson got his Super-Strength from Nazirite rituals (not cutting your hair, taking alcohol, or touching the dead), and breaking them was his big weakness. He attempted to mask this by making up a bunch of equally weaksauce fake weaknesses, only to kill anyone who actually tried them. He was still stupid enough to tell his true weakness to Delilah, despite her being the only one who knew of his "weaknesses" and therefore the only one who could have told them to his enemies. By the time she cut his hair in his sleep, he'd already violated other parts of the Nazirite rituals, such as drinking alcohol, and handling dead bodies. Cutting his hair was the last straw, so to speak.
  • Considering that Samson continued consorting with Delilah long after she'd made it ridiculously obvious that she was committed to selling him out to the Philistines, and even told her his real weakness, it could be argued that his worst Weaksauce Weakness was pretty women.
  • Some scholars believe Samson is in fact an Expy of an earlier Hebrew Sun God, and that his long blond hair was symbolic of the sun's rays/corona. Hence, cutting it off took away his powers.
• Norse Mythology: When Baldr/Balder/Baldur, the son of Odin, was born, his mother Frigg made all living things vow not to be able to hurt him. The only living thing that didn't make this promise was mistletoe, as she felt it was too young to be bound to such a promise, and so it alone would be fatal to him. The gods made a game of it, throwing random items at Baldr and amusing themselves by watching the projectiles deliberately avoid striking him. Loki, the trickster god, deceived her so that she would reveal this weakness. He acquired some mistletoe and brought it to the blind god Hodr/Hoder/Hodur, telling him that he should also get to participate in the gods' fun little game; of course, when the mistletoe struck Baldur, it killed him. Baldur's death was the start of the chain of events that led to Ragnarok.
• Vampires:
  • The badass creatures of the night who always want to suck your blood, tend to have a lot of weaknesses. Popular tradition holds that you're fine as long as you stay in the sunlight, have some garlic, stay inside your house and refuse to let them in, or even wield a simple cross. Then there's the older, more obscure, and even more restrictive weaknesses such as inability to cross running water or the inability to stand constant bell ringing (related to church bells). One of the worst is a compulsion to count small objects, enabling anyone to stop them with a handful of grain. Pretty much the only traditional weakness of vampires that's not weaksauce is the whole wooden stake bit, since getting stabbed through the heart with a pointy stick kills most things.
  • The multitude of fiction involving vampires, though, has led to a multitude of differing weaknesses — including varying degrees of effectiveness. In some settings, vampires are weak to silver, and other religious symbols affect them as much as Christian ones. One that has appeared in modern media is what the now-defunct Gamer Jargon website called the "cheesecloth ribcage", where a vampire can be killed with any half-hearted stab at the chest with a wooden object. The site cited Buffy the Vampire Slayer and From Dusk Till Dawn as the worst offenders. On the inverse, many of the works that tend toward "non-standard" portrayals of vampires also go at length to mock the traditional weaknesses.
• The Fair Folk are terror-inducing beings of legend and myth, often full-on Reality Warpers... and yet, they can be beaten by a stick of iron, a horseshoe, a length of rowan wood, clothes worn inside-out, or a stick of bread. A popular explanation for the weakness comes from Victorian Era archaeologists, who held that this is all just symbolism for the bronze and stone-working cultures being conquered by iron-working ones. Later academics (like Dr. Diane Purkiss) have shown there's no archaeological or historical evidence for this.
  • This is an especially big problem for the Nuckelavee of Orcadian folklore. Widely considered the most malevolent elf in all of Scotland, the Nuckelavee is an eldritch horror that resembles a man on horseback, if the man was fused to the horse and both had all their skin flayed off. It rides through the countryside destroying crops, killing travelers, causing floods and plagues and generally being a harbinger for all things bad. How do you defeat this monstrosity? Fresh water, and burning seaweed. The Nucklavee fears freshwater, so much so that it cannot cross a stream, and hides in its oceanic lair during the winter storms. Likewise, it finds the smell of burning seaweed intolerably offensive. However, don't provoke the Nucklavee, especially with taunting or burning seaweed, as whenever the Nucklavee is offended, it tries to kill all of the horses in the Orkneys with a hideous disease called "Mortasheen".
  • The Irish/Celtic Dullahan, a fearsome headless fairy that rides at night (either alone or accompanied by banshees) to splash buckets of blood into people's faces — to announce the recipient of a face-full will soon die. They're also a mean shot with a whip, and sometimes drive horse-drawn carriages decorated with human skulls and femurs. There's no known way to actually kill a Dullahan, and the only way to ward one off is to exploit its intense fear of... gold. That's right; the Dullahan, possibly one of the most pants-wettingly scary portents of imminent death, can easily be warded off by one of the metals most commonly used to make jewelry.
• Werewolves have their share of weaknesses, too; earlier legends provide ones such as having an iron bar thrown over their head — although hitting somebody with an iron bar is pretty incapacitating for most creatures — drawing three drops of blood, or having their name announced one to three times. The popular weakness to silver weapons is a relatively new invention. It often comes with an immunity to anything not made of silver. Most werewolves that don't have the silver weakness can be killed by any type of weapon, including silver. There is even at least one myth were a werewolf can be forced to return to their human form simply by scolding them.
• Basilisks. Okay, they can kill you if you look directly at them, or hear their voice, or if you touch them, or it breaths on you, but guess what? They can be killed instantly by the crowing of a rooster, and their powers don't work on weasels.^note The vulnerability to weasels likely evolved from the real-life weakness cobras against the mongoose. In some legends, Basilisks are also weak to themselves. There are stories of men killing a basilisk by wearing mirrors sewn into clothing.
• Trolls. Yeah, they can rip you limb from limb with their bare hands, but a little sunlight turns 'em into inanimate rocks. One good way to trick a troll into watching the sunrise is to challenge them to a game of riddles: no troll can resist such a challenge. But beware: according to the legends trolls are extremely good at riddles, and if you decide to give up before dawn then they celebrate their victory by eating the loser.
• Many of the oldest portrayals of Satan, the ostensible antagonist to God, has him easily outwitted by peasants and driven away by holy symbols (such as a scapular).
• Greek Mythology:
  • Achilles was the greatest of the Greek Heroes. When he was born, his mother dipped his body in the river Styx (or into a fire, depending on which version of the story it is) so that he would be invincible. The only part of him that wasn't affected was his heel, which was where she held him. Given that the trope Achilles' Heel is named after him, you can guess what happened to him eventually. However, he was shot with arrows poisoned with scorpion venom, which deflects the weaksauce bit.
  • Empousae, beautiful demons that were essentially flesh-eating succubi, were dangerous creatures with incredible powers of deception and magic, but for all their power they could be defeated by hurling vicious insults at them. That's right, their greatest weakness was hurting their feelings.
• In folk tradition, salt is often used to repel evil. It was said a circle of salt could protect one from witches, that salt over your doorstep would ward off ghosts and evil spirit. Salt was often seen as a symbol of purity, especially in its uses: Salt is a conservation agent after all, and salt-cured meats don't spoil. Salt as a purifier appears in Shinto (where it is used as a ritual purifier and small mounds of salt can be used to repel evil spirits) and Christianity (where it is used before mass and to consecrate a church).
• In Arabic legend, a ghoul could be killed with a single kick. However, there's a flip side: kick the ghoul again and it immediately springs back to life.
• Japanese Mythology:
  • Kappa are river goblins ranging from mischievous to outright malicious who are said to kidnap children to drown them or tear out their souls and livers. They have a dent in their skulls in which they store water, allowing them to walk on land. Despite their violence, kappa are extremely well-mannered and cannot resist answering a polite bow with an even deeper one. This will cause the water to spill from their heads, forcing them to retreat. Additionally, they love cucumbers even more than children and can easily be distracted with them.
  • The Omukade, a giant venomous centipede, has an extremely weaksauce weakness, human spit.

Pinball

• In Monster Bash, you can collect items (bombs) that can be used during each monster, such as garlic for Dracula or a Silver Bullet for the Wolf Man. The Bride of Frankenstein's weakness is a hair dryer.

Podcasts

• Mission to Zyxx has the K'hekk, an insect race dreaded for their militaristic expansion and gruesome reproduction by laying eggs in living hosts. They flee because Dar is running a fever that day.

Sports

• The MLB has starting pitcher Jon Lester. He's a three-time World Series winner, four-time All-Star, and a perennial Cy Young candidate. Only he has some trouble throwing to first base. Other players have had this problem at some point in their careers, such as pitchers Matt Young and Matt Garza, and second basemen Steve Sax and Chuck Knoblauch; catcher Mackey Sasser uniquely developed trouble throwing the ball back to the pitcher accurately. The term used for this in baseball is "The Yips."
• Also in baseball, we have knuckleball pitchers. Knuckleballs take relatively little force to throw and put little stress on a pitcher's joints. So, once mastered, knuckleball pitchers are virtually guaranteed long careers. The catch? The pitch is almost totally dependent on the pitcher's fingernails for control. So a broken nail or hangnail a standard pitcher might not even notice (or could handle with a simple bandage) can wreck a knuckleballer.

Tabletop Games

• Atlantean Trilogy has Nemean lions being immune to non-magical weapons (with one exception) and even magical weapons only do half damage against their Nigh-Invulnerable hide. However, their skin doesn't protect against attacks from bone. So bone weapons, improvised and otherwise, will cut right through them. After killing one, armor can be made from its hide though it's protection isn't quite so good (it still stops non-magical weapons, but offers no protection against magical weapons).
• Blackbirds RPG: All of the Outsiders that Theurges can summon to perform feats of magic have some kind of weakness that prevents them from using their powers. Some of these make sense — such as an Outsider who manifests in reflections needing a nearby reflective surface in order to appear — but others are very random. Examples include Tabernacle, who is banished if doused in egg yolk; Asisaxasias, who refuses to manifest in the presence of cats and whose powers do not affect felines; and Father Longlegs, who will hide in a corner until sundown if he witnesses a sincere act of physical affection.
• In Heavy Gear the advanced Black Mamba Gear — one of the more powerful designs in either of the two superpowers' armies — had exceptionally weak rear armour. The result is that Black Mambas could be (and routinely were in gameplay) easily defeated by lightweight Cheetah scout Gears. While the fluff text initially ignored this, the game's designers eventually acknowledged and lampshaded this weakness by having Mamba pilots clamoring for a solution to the "glassback" problem.
• Hero System; Most of the monsters in Lucha Libre Hero take extra damage from lucha combat maneuvers. And since the PCs are by default technico luchadors, there's a lot of these showing up in the fight scenes. But then, the sourcebook was inspired by Mexican lucha films, and "every problem can be solved with a good wrestling hold" was standard in those films.
• In GURPS, the disadvantage Supersensitive makes having any other sort of sentient creature with 20 meters a serious weakness. With Combat Paralysis your greatest weakness is being put in any sort of danger. Naturally such disadvantages are not recommended for Player Characters.
• d20 Modern has a table of random weaknesses... including some really stupid ones, such as: Clowns, the number 8, math, and books written by William Blake.
• In The Dresden Files RPG, all creatures who take some sort of supernatural toughness, regeneration, or physical immunity must take something called "The Catch", which, when used against them, will bypass their ability to shrug off damage. The more common/easily accessible and known the material(s) needed to fulfill "The Catch" is, the more points you can rebate. So, fairly unique Catches like "Swords Of The Cross", "Wizards Born Under Special Circumstances", "Soulfire", and "Nuclear Detonations" won't reduce the point costs for the power(s), while more common and known substances (like iron vs Fey, holy items vs Black Court Vampires, or physical attacks like a brick loaded sock against a magically immune creature) will give you back more points to potentially work with.
• In Deadlands, there are some creatures and villains who are immune to anything except one weakness. For example, a Hangin' Judge is vulnerable to a weapon held by a legitimate lawman on duty, a Tummy Twister to hot chili peppers, and Jasper Stone to suicide. That last one is technically correct, but it's so much more. The conditions are actually "Stone can only be killed by a gun fired by his own stone-cold hands", so suicide counts... but so would redirecting his shot before it hit its target. So would having Young Stone and Old Stone shoot each other.
  • One of the most absurd such vulnerabilities is that possessed by the Boogieman, a vicious, sadistic little monster that revels in tormenting children thanks to it being largely invisible and inaudible to adults, as well as having a psychic aura that compels children to cover up for it if adults question them. The Boogieman's weakness? Children. If a child can overcome their terror and actually strike the Boogieman, that one touch will kill it stone dead.
• Changeling: The Lost has the concept of "frailties", little weaknesses that certain fae (and overly-powerful changelings) are prey to. Some of them are the classic faerie weaknesses, others can be as odd as "must drink alcohol instead of water" or "cannot cross lines of ants". The only universal weakness is iron, which isn't as dangerous as you think because pure iron is rare... and steel does nothing. These weaknesses differ from subject to subject; the fiction for one book has a Genre Savvy mortal invoking every bane she knows from the old tales in an attempt to scare off one of the Gentry. None of them work.
• In Rifts, vampires have all the "classic" weaknesses found in folklore; crosses, garlic, wooden stakes, sunlight, as well as a couple usually attributed to other monsters (wolfsbane, silver). One weakness that's rather unique to Rifts, and the most weaksauce of all, is running water, in any form. Which means a vampire that can shrug off nuclear detonations and hails of rail gun bullets can be taken down by a squirt gun. Do bear in mind, however, that this is After the End, so getting that squirt gun is not nearly as easy as visiting a toy store.
• It's possible to give a character in Champions such a weakness via the Susceptibility Disadvantage. Water, for example, could be worth quite a few points depending on how many dice the character takes from it since it's one of the most common substances in practically any game world. This would make it impossible for your character to do such simple things as bathe or shower, and any kid armed with a Super-Soaker and/or a bucket of water balloons would become a credible threat.
• In Magic: The Gathering, the reason that most large creatures ultimately fall under Awesome, but Impractical is because they can easily be dealt with using simple, cheap, and ubiquitous removal spells. A great specific example is Marit Lage, an ancient Eldritch Abomination summoned from Dark Depths who, at 20/20, is capable of killing a planeswalker in a single hit, requires 30 mana to summon under normal circumstances, and cannot be destroyed by anything, can be undone with a single one-mana Unsummon (being a token instead of a card, returning it to its owner's hand instead causes it to cease to exist). For this reason, a lot of powerful creatures come with abilities to get around this, such as hexproof (cannot be targeted by opponent) and the inferior shroud (cannot be targeted by anyone, not even its controller) and ward (opponent needs to pay an extra cost, usually more mana, to target the creature).
• Anything in Bleak World with the water weakness is going to be this, as such vampires can go out in neither sunlight or rain. Don't even get us started on the GM who decides to put the MacGuffin at the bottom of a lake.
• In Munchkin, a Limburger Sandwich is a +3 item that also gives an instant victory against the Floating Nose.
• In Pathfinder, the plant creatures called Ghorans were originally created as a food species. As such they take an extra 5 damage each time someone or something bites them. Additionally if anything is big enough to clamp on a Ghoran with their jaws, they take a -2 difficulty penalty in trying to escape.
• Exalted: Lands of Creation describes the Adamant Oriole Sanctuary, a country filled with many species of songbird. If all the birds ever go silent, the Primordial that sleeps beneath the land will wake up and destroy it.
• The various "Van Richten's Guide to..." books from the Ravenloft setting show that finding and exploiting these is Van Richten's favored strategy. Considering how dangerous Ravenloft monsters tend to be, it's generally good advice.
• Spirits in Mage: The Awakening and Werewolf: The Forsaken have either "Bans", which are essentially geases, "Banes", which are vulnerabilities to specific things, or both. Whilst Bans can be used to destroy spirits in some circumstances, Banes more accurately conflate to this trope. Each spirit's Bane is unique, and whilst spirits of shared backstory often do have similar Banes, every individual spirit is different, so what hurts one spirit might do nothing to a second. For example, if you have two disease spirits, one may be harmed by boiling water, whilst the other may be harmed by medical disinfectant.

Theatre

• In Gian-Carlo Menotti's opera Help, Help, the Globolinks, the invading Globolinks are repelled by music.

Web Animation

• Eddsworld: In one of the early Christmas specials Edd is saved form death when he finds the Grim Reaper's one weakness: Gravy.
• ASDF Movie: "Kitten Fight!" "No wait, I'm allergic to adorableness!"
• Tonin: After being made indestructible, Vilano-san is told to avoid dairy. He doesn't understand the full implications behind the warning until the hero hits him with a hunk of cheese during Season 1's climax. During Season 4, one of his sons tries to obtain that same power in spite of knowing that weakness comes with the package.
• In the second season of XIN, Dimir seems to be an unstoppable combatant. When the eponymous hero realizes he has weak stamina and restricts his movements to conserve it, he's beaten like a red-headed stepchild.
• DSBT InsaniT: Not only does Stephanie's Mind-Control Music only work on males, but if anyone gets a hold of her mic, her songs can be used against her.
• Sock Series: How to keep an eldritch demon's powers in check? A plastic hamster cage, as its powers cannot affect plastic, no matter how powerful they are.
• Murder Drones: How do you disable the abilities of the incredibly-powerful Disassembly Drones (aka the titular Murder Drones) or Worker Drones who have been designated users of the series' Digital Abomination, the Absolute Solver, and thus can harness its Reality Warper powers? Simply apply a magnet to their heads. Though if the Absolute Solver possesses one of its users, no amount of magnets will stop them.

Webcomics

• Cheshire Crossing (by the creators of Casey and Andy) delves into the weakness from The Wizard of Oz: The Wicked Witch of the West explains that all witches are vulnerable to water (while in Oz, at least)—she was keeping the water on hand should Glinda the Good Witch launch a surprise attack. (In a later scene, the bucket is labeled "In case of Glinda".) She just never expected her enemy to bully a little girl into doing the deed.
• Another spoof of The Wizard of Oz comes from Magicians & Munchkins; the Wicked Witch simply took this disadvantage to get a few additional levels in magic.
• It's more of a tribute than a spoof, but in Namesake, the Wicked Warlock of the West has the exact same weakness as his predecessor.
• Toothgnip the goat in Goats gets his Kavorka Man powers from "The Panties of Potency". This had nothing to do with the artist having trouble drawing Toothgnip standing on all fours, honest!
• Parodied in this strip of The Order of the Stick, where, since Haley always has her sandwiches without pickles, Crystal thinks they're toxic to her. They're not.
• In one Bob the Angry Flower strip, Bob thinks that a superhero has the Weaksauce Weakness of bacon. He turns out to be wrong, but we never find out what the weakness actually is.
  • Another one has Bob running a hot peanuts stand, recognizing a customer and his friends as a band of supervillains, and instantly and correctly deducing that they are actually buying ammunition for an attack on Anaphylactic Man's fortress. (He sells it to them anyway.)
  • Yet another has Bob defeating an evil skeleton with the obscure knowledge that skeletons have a fatal weakness to raisins. Yeah, it's that kind of comic.
• This episode of Dinosaur Comics claims to have been inspired by this trope. More specifically, it's about the dangers of peanut allergies, orange juice, and the water that takes up 70% of the earth's surface.
• Tales of the Questor subverts this with the fey. General belief is that they are vulnerable to "Cold iron" but this proves to be false. Research into why the iron did not work reveals that the ancient documents that the information was obtained from were actually misprinted versions found in an ancient garbage dump and that the symbol for cold and the symbol for north are very similar. Turns out the weakness is not cold iron but "north seeking iron" (lodestone), they are vulnerable to strong magnetic fields. Unfortunately only the weakest fey have this vulnerability, the strong ones can shrug it off (though with immense pain).
• Bob and George: Tomahawk Man is lethally allergic to Plant Shield, something Mega Man considers to be the crummiest power in the series. However, what really takes the cake is Ran Mark II, a monstrosity so intimidating it makes Bob virtually shit his pants. However, he is vulnerable to one of the most common substances in the Bob and George setting: Ran Mk I corpses. Bob, a demigod of fire, is flat fucking terrified of Pokémon.
• In Goblins: Life Through Their Eyes, Klik, a sentient metallic being able to fly, morph into anything, and absorb genetic information from flesh-based life-forms, is corroded when coming into contact with blood.
  • The website explains later that every Klik has a plus, a substance that heals them, and a minus, which is something that harms them, which are different for each Klik.
• In Sequential Art, the Denizens (little black shadow creatures) are dependent on their leader when they try to conquer the Earth. When he is killed, they just mill around the house, helping out or watching soap operas. And this leader can brandish a chainsaw, but just like the rest of them was small enough to be placed in a drinking glass and thrown out a window. Also, apparently Kat's evil former teacher's life is somehow linked to the ruler she waves at her students while yelling at them. When Kat breaks it in a fit of anger, the teacher has a heart attack and dies. And There Was Much Rejoicing.
• This trope and the classic superhero Twinkie advertisements are brilliantly parodied in this Super Stupor comic.
• Sluggy Freelance:
  • At one point, the bad guys have robotic water-coolers that short circuit on contact with water. Yeah, someone really didn't think that one through.
  • There is an alien race that is nigh-invulnerable to anything except nerf guns, which to them are a dangerous weapon. With Santa being a toy manufacturer, they mistake him for a weapons provider and move against him as their first strike for an alien invasion.
  • The Evil, a litter of kittens made invincible, bloodthirsty fiends by Satan still suffer the psychological limitations of being kittens: give them milk, balls of string, or some toy mice, and they'll be too distracted and contented to murder you.
  • The demons of the Dimension of Pain can't stand the smell of flowers. This means that they can't enter the sewers in the Dimension of Lame, that place being a real Sugar Bowl.
  • It turns out that, in addition to some normal vampire weaknesses, Vrykolakas vampires turn to ash when exposed to too much stupidity. That only comes up after Sam becomes their king, though.
• In A Girl and Her Fed, the agents with the Pocket President chip installed get incapacitating migraines when exposed to really bright light. It's why they all wear the Cool Shades.
• Charby the Vampirate: "Classic" vampires have all the classic weaknesses of the vampires, while "elites" possess none of the weaknesses, save one... Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. If they come across a pile of identical objects (a pile of rice, beans, the beads from a woman's dress that had accidentally come apart), they have to count it, regardless of the circumstances. For classic vampires, this can cause them to count until the sun comes up, and they die. For elites, trying to use this on them just ends up pissing them off, since the sun has no effect on them.
  • And Elites can still go around that with mathematics: Charby is seen weighting both a small sample and the whole heap on pocket scales, and deducing the total number from the sample size.
• Liz's beast-man of a boss in Dead Winter whom fought in Vietnam, yet is still able to take on Monday pretty effectively due to his sheer giganticness and indestructibility. Monday stabs him in the shoulder, kicks him in a certain area, etc. but never really fazes him; the heroes end up smashing him in the head with a metal pole attached to a fast-moving car, but this only stuns him temporarily. His weakness? Germs—the imaginary kind. He's such a hypochondriac that slapping him in the face with a dirty mop will give him a panic attack. He gets over his fear of zombie infection pretty quickly, though...
• Axe Cop's weakness is being surprised. He melts. And his second weakness is cherry rainbow.
• Sydney in Grrl Power has seven orbs that grant her powers. But she has to hold an orb in her hand to use it, so she can only run two powers at a time. When asked what her weakness is, she said:
  Sydney: So yeah. Mittens are my kryptonite.
• The robots in Gunnerkrigg Court have the strength and speed of a machine, and some are safe even against Kat's electro-disruptor. But they have a big red button on top of their heads. Yep, they have a large, highly visible, easy-to-reach off switch.
• In Rusty and Co.
  • The male vampire was killed by a pizza — not because of the garlic, but because of his gluten intolerance.
  • Cube's weakness is synthetic fabric.
  • And gnolls are vulnerable to dog whistles!
• In Eldritch (2009), while most Eldritch wolves are allergic to silver, any bullet in the heart or head would do them in just as easily.
• In Nodwick, the Evil Sorcerer Ildomir went to a school for wizards called the Heractium Dark Arts Academy, where teachers punished students with a song called "I Write the Spells" (a Song Parody of the pop classic I Write the Songs) which also made them more evil. Unfortunately, this punishment was too much for Ildomir, and ever since, simply hearing the song would drive him to the brink of madness.
• In El Goonish Shive, the fire-summon mooks have a weakness to water, despite not actually being on fire. Trying to make flaming creatures with a summon spell that can't allow it (the creatures would incinerate themselves) causes the effect.
• In DNA, Species X can have their powers disabled by getting them wet, especially on the hands, so they can easily be disarmed with squirt guns or sprinklers, although just getting a little mud on their hands doesn't seem to affect them.
• In L's Empire, The SLIPs turn out to be weak to powdered milk, which also doubled as a three year long Brick Joke.
• Stand Still, Stay Silent: The Plague Zombie monsters that seem to have wiped out most of humanity and their ghost counterparts are weak to sunlight. Some of them also get groggy from the cold. The problem is that the crew's mission makes them go inside buildings a lot and the bad winter weather means that those that are weak to light but not cold have some leeway.
• Awful Hospital: The Double Doors are a malevolent entity of uncertain motivations that was determined to make Fern eat a sloppy joe made from her own ground-up flesh. It was even capable of overriding commands from the readers with its own intent. The weakness that allows Fern to defeat it? An out-of-order sign, which caused it to explode, ejecting all Hospital patients and staff from the cafeteria.
• PvP parodied the Wicked Witch of the West melting from water weakness here here.
• In The Walkyverse, it was revealed that all Abductees have a mental block that leaves them unable to break free from duct tape (A few can apparently resist). Head Alien (the one who created the block) found himself falling victim, even though he was inhabiting someone else's body.
• DICE: The Cube That Changes Everything: Water neutralizes the Cloaking ability.

Web Original

• In The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids, the Salamandyrs are deathly afraid of lavender, even trace amounts of which cause them to turn from humanoid Frog Men back into normal, harmless, tiny salamanders.
• SCP Foundation:
  • SCP-723-D was a nigh-invulnerable man who kept escaping Foundation custody. Finally, two SCP workers took him to a bar, where SCP-723-D died of a peanut allergy from ingesting too many bar nuts. Just to be safe, though, they put SCP-723-D's corpse inside a block of concrete.
  • SCP-1160 was a massive 85-meter bird that attacked and killed humans, and was extremely hard to kill because of a Healing Factor and 360-degree vision. However, it had a rather odd weakness — it grew weaker and smaller for each person that knew of its existence. The Foundation thus contain it by turning it into a global cereal mascot alongside subliminal messaging about its nature on the cereal boxes, and it's now 25cm and far weaker than it used to be.
  • SCP-2256 was a species of gentle, kilometer-tall sauropod-like creatures that gradually "corroded" any information about themselves, and had a Perception Filter that made them effectively invisible to those not under mnestic effects. Shortly after the Foundation began to study them via mnestics, the SCP-2256 instances started suffering from mysterious illness, stillbirths, and infertility. It turns out that SCP-2256 was hurt by being directly observed, and when a device that fully suppressed their anti-memetic ability allowed the Foundation to take a close-up photo of one, it instantly died. As a result of studying SCP-2256, the Foundation inadvertently brought them to eventual extinction.
• In the Whateley Universe, The Fair Folk (and mutants who are turning into Fae) are vulnerable to Cold Iron. Wrought iron benches, cast iron skillets, and so on. But Fey is also vulnerable to synthetic fabrics which give her a burning rash. She could be incapacitated by rayon lingerie! (Or The '70s.)
• Apparently there is a reviewer that can be destroyed by edutainment games.
• The Centaurians in The Pentagon War are cold-blooded. They automatically hibernate whenever it gets too chilly.
• Walking City OCT: The Beast, an extremely powerful, assimilating, infectious Eldritch Abomination is vulnerable to Wi-Fi connection, due to also being part-computer virus. As such, the Robot Buddy manages to suck all of The Beast into his system before blowing himself up to take The Beast down with him.
• JonTron discovers that the Scissorman's weakness is a slice of ham, which causes him to dissolve.
• Heroes Save the World: Austin Smith can control fire, but apparently it slowly raises his body temperature as he's doing it. You can see how this might pose a problem.
• AnneBWalsh's Legendbreakers can move freely through time and dimensions, reshape reality with their minds, possess near-total omniscience and precognition, and are effectively immortal. They are also extremely vulnerable to pretzels.
  • Legendbreakers gain their powers by binding themselves to Outer Time through a series of six ritual actions. They must shed blood and tears, drink water and wine, and eat bread and salt. The problem is that the ritual also works in reverse. If a Legendbreaker performs three or more of the six actions in close enough succession while in Inner Time, they become partially bound to Inner Time once more, weakening their powers and making them vulnerable to their enemies. Since pretzels are made of bread and salt, you only need one more of the six to put them in the danger zone.
• In Dork Souls 3, High Lord Wolnir's weakness is Played for Laughs when Shez shatters his bracelets with a single tap with his sword.
• Rule 221 of the Evil Overlord List Cellblock B discusses invoking a fake weaksauce weakness, both to hide any real weaknesses and to catch the hero offguard when he tries to use it.
  Whatever my one vulnerability is, I will fake a different one. For example, ordering all mirrors removed from the palace, screaming and flinching whenever someone accidentally holds up a mirror, etc. In the climax when the hero whips out a mirror and thrusts it at my face, my reaction will be "Hmm...I think I need a shave."
• The Big Bad of episode 200 of Scott The Woz, the Blue Border Watermark that surrounded all his video gains enough power to surround the entire Earth, gloating that it is now eternal life incarnate. Scott then realises he possesses the one power that can counter eternal life: Virginity. Cue Scott beating the border down with his entire Nintendo Wii games collection.
• Pretending to Be People has The Residue, an amorphous, all-devouring blob that is repelled by water and can be absorbed by fish.

Web Videos

• In Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series video "Marik Plays Slender", Marik theorises that The Slender Man has a weakness against bathrooms, since he doesn't show up in the tiled corridor (actually a bug that was fixed in later releases of the game):
  Maybe going to the toilet is like his kryptonite. "I'm going to kill you! Heh heh heh... what's that, you need to go Number 1? Here, I'll just wait outside while you deal with that, OK? Make sure you wash your hands, OK, I don't want it to be gross when I kill you. Well, I do, but not like that."
• In Ultra Fast Pony, Rarity thinks she's allergic to water. Applejack calls her out on the stupidity of this, but Rarity points out that every time she hangs out in the rain for extended periods of time, she gets a cold. Then Rarity develops a nasty rash all over her face. "I told you I was allergic!"

Real Life — Humans and Other Creatures

• Silver is deadly poisonous to most microorganisms. As for why they don't make surgical instruments out of silver: it's too soft and doesn't keep its edge.
• Copper is also antiseptic, which is why in older hospitals, door handles and other high-touch surfaces were made of copper or bronze. The problem is that copper can turn black, then green as it tarnishes, and both copper and bronze can stain skin when they tarnish.
• Despite being touted as the Ultimate Life Form, Cockroaches have a few. Their biggest one is temperature, many species will outright die if they aren't kept within a narrow range of temperatures. The ones that don't die usually can't reproduce in mild hot or cold conditions. The reason they've become such an infamous pest is that temperatures they tolerate happen to be the same range that humans prefer.
• Crocodiles. Easily one of nature's deadliest predators, incredibly hardy and adaptable, can heal from torn off limbs and have remained virtually unchanged since the age of the dinosaurs since their design was perfectly adaptable to weather through several mass extinctions. But a croc's biggest, most pathetic weakness? While their jaw-closing muscles are incredibly strong and capable of ripping a zebra's leg clean off... their jaw-opening muscles are surprisingly weak, able to be held shut by a thick rubber band, a roll of tape, or even by human hands. There's at least one known instance of a regular old crab just pincering a crocodile's jaws shut until it could run off safely. It's almost as if evolution found out crocodiles were too overpowered and decided to give them at least one weakness.
• Elephants Are Scared of Mice. At least in cartoons. The scientific jury is still undecided whether this has a sound real-life basis or whether it is just an Urban Legend. Mythbusters tested it and found it confirmed: elephants will actively avoid mice if at all possible. Though it's not specifically mice so much as it is wariness at something smaller than an elephant's poor eyesight can reliably identify, to them it could be a snake or something else potentially threatening - the Mythbusters test was done by suddenly revealing white domestic mice to wild elephants, who would have only ever experienced a sudden flash of white color low to the ground as the warning signal of a disturbed cobra. They could also simply be aware of their surroundings and give the small quick moving creature a wide berth to avoid stepping on it.
• Giraffes can easily suffer fatal neck and head injuries just from falling over. Don't believe it? Just imagine the whiplash with a neck that long... This is true of most large animals—the bigger you are, the worse falling over is for you. That's why, for example, elephants keep at least 3 legs on the ground when running (rearing up on their hind legs, as is sometimes seen in circuses, is not a natural behavior). Gravity is a bitch.
• Every human is at risk of commotio cordis (agitation of the heart). This requires being hit in the chest over the heart at the right point of a heartbeat. Only a few dozen cases are reported per year, but victims are almost guaranteed to die if it happens (survival rate is 35% ... if the victim is treated in three minutes). Even a gentle blow that doesn't bruise the skin can trigger commotio cordis—which means every time you get hit in the chest, you're playing Russian Roulette. Even worse, it's most common in teenage boys, usually while playing sports... Also, some martial arts like Taekwondo explicitly trains the fighter to go straight for that part of the body to ensure a swift and instant death to the opponent. For a relatively medium sized mammal, humans also have several very easy to hit weakspots that are very exposed due to us standing upright and showing our underbelly when facing something. The wrists, groin, inner thigh, and neck can all bruise very easily due to the high number of nerves and blood vessels under thin skin with no sturdy skull or ribcage to protect them like the heart or brain. An infection or cut in such places can be deadly in minutes even if it's only half an inch deep.
• Allergies, especially if the allergen is relatively common. Nuts, animals, shellfish, bananas... in the case of peanut allergies, some cases are so severe that people could be in serious danger just by being in the same room as peanuts. Some people suffer from Aquagenic Urticaria (water allergy). That's right, there's people who were unfortunate enough to be born allergic to a substance they can't live without. It's technically not an allergy, but that doesn't make it any better. Any moisture build up on their skin aggravates the condition, so they must carry umbrellas with them at all times, avoid heavy clothing/exercise to prevent sweating and prefer to remain indoors in well ventilated surroundings. For all their precautions, though, they still have to wash themselves with water regularly.
• There's a lot of stuff that can incapacitate a human. Tickling is a lot of peoples' weaknesses and a lot of people have a sound that 'goes through them' like the sound of plastic folders being rubbed or nails on a blackboard.
  • Humans with various mental illnesses/neuro-developmental disorders, such as an emotional disorder or autism spectrum disorder, have severe sensitivity to loud noises and the above types of noises, to the point of experiencing anxiety and physical pain when hearing them.
• The right pattern of flashing lights can cause nausea in any human, people with epilepsy simply have a more severe reaction. This has since been weaponized And now you can build your own.
• Some people with PTSD have triggers of the Nightmare Retardant variety that, out of context, seem laughable to those who aren't triggered by them, but remind them in some way of their traumatic experience and can trigger anything from an uncomfortable sensation to a full-blown flashback of the event. To make things worse, people with this kind of trigger will sometimes experience belittlement if they dare to disclose it. Worse is the way Kryptonite Is Everywhere; people could understand if a loud bang causes someone who'd been in a war zone to flash back to a bomb strike, but what if a certain enemy vehicle sounded a lot like a certain civilian one, or someone was holding a cup of McDonald's coffee just before the worst attack they'd lived through? Suddenly a car in need of a tune-up or a cup of coffee on a table is Kryptonite to a Colonel Badass who eats nails for breakfast. One could also easily imagine a person who has suffered abuse needing to, say, not watch Law & Order: Special Victims Unit if they'd been molested. But some could watch it all day, and then the mailman comes by wearing the same brand and color of shoes their abuser preferred.
• Diabetics have sugar. Too much AND too little.
• Albinos have sunlight. A couple of other disorders too, including xeroderma pigmentosum (decreased ability to repair damage to skin from UV light).
• Phobias in general can be like this for those who suffer from them; they cause crippling, irrational panic at the slightest indication of the feared objects. Worse, being irrational after all, the object doesn't even have to be objectively frightening. Most of us can probably understand why people would be afraid of spiders, or snakes, or heights, but imagine having a phobia of flowers, buttons, or peanut butter? (Imagine it too hard and you'll get phobophobia...)
• For a species that's bipedal, humans are actually not that great at doing it for long periods of time. Many people getting spinal and foot problems later in life, and people can pass out by locking their knees for too long. This isn't normally a problem, but people who have to stand still for long periods of time, such as people in the army, marching band, or choir, have to make sure to bend their knees occasionally.
• The skins of land snails and slugs are water permeable, and as such, are extremely vulnerable to fatally drying out. It's also why they're limited to dark, moist environments. Salt kills land snails and slugs by screwing up their osmotic balance, in that the salt speeds up the drying process by pulling the water inside of their cells and internal organs out.
• Bed bugs are incredibly tenacious and infamously hard to get rid of, especially now that they are becoming so highly resistant to commercial and domestic pesticides that this experiment showed only 12% of them were killed by over-the-counter bed bug poison. However, 45°C will kill them in a mere 90 minutes (and cranking it to 48 drops that to only 20 minutes), and diatomaceous earth (a simple, and edible dessicant) killed 90% of them in 10 days (in the same experiment cited above). Turns out simple dehydration is incredibly lethal to the little buggers.

Real Life — Objects

• Most electronic devices can be damaged irreparably by contact with water. This happens because water^note Pure (distilled) water does not conduct electricity, as it has no ions and the like dissolved is a great conductor of electricity and causes it to run places it's not supposed to. Contrary to popular belief though it's not always fatal; if the device is off and you dry it, it could be salvaged. In fact, the best way to clean your keyboard if it can take the abuse? Run it through the dishwasher.
• Modern electronics are often powered by Lithium-Ion batteries because of their high charge speed, stable voltage and limited charge decay. Problem is that lithium catches fire in contact with water. A damaged battery must be discarded immediately. This is applicable for electric cars as well - battery fire has destroyed a fair deal of vehicles that way.
• Early stealth aircraft can very easily lose their stealthiness to the most mundane of things.
  • The B-2 Spirit is one of the most advanced stealth bombers in the world. Yet the radar-absorbent coating can be easily damaged by weather effects like rain, which is why they're housed in climate-controlled hangers.
  • The F-117 Nighthawk, the world's first stealth fighter, had a radar-absorbent coating that would be ruined by just leaving fingerprints.
  • More modern stealth aircraft have much more durable coatings, with the F-22's topcoat continually being updated, and the F-35's coating, called FiberMat, actively baked into the skin structure.
• The RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) came up with a brilliant new method for encrypting data on CDs, which works fine on PC computers, but not on Macintoshes. It can be negated by drawing a circle on the CD with permanent marker.
  • Optical discs themselves (especially those which have two shiny sides) have a Weaksauce Weakness - simple tape. If one pastes tape or a label on the front of some discs, then decides to remove the tape or label, the adhesive peels off the data-containing foil layer, rendering the disc unusable. This is because the disc has almost nothing between the foil and the label side of the disc. The fact that the disc is shiny on the label side as well as the data side shows that the disc has no protective label printed onto it, only a thin layer of plastic that is easily removed. In fact, any optical disc is much more likely to be ruined from the label side than the data side because of the thinness of that side, even with a factory-printed label.
• Laser weapons that are starting to be used by the US military can be thwarted by such phenomena as dust, sand, bad weather, clouds, smoke, steam, etc. As Stephen Colbert put it, "it's a good thing they're not planning on using it in regions that have above-mentioned problems, or if Iran develops sand technology".
• Tin foil, silverware, or any conductive material can easily destroy a microwave oven in seconds. This happens because the microwaves generated by by the magnetron cause the electrons on the surface of the metal to, in Layman's Terms, "slosh around". This causes sparks and electrical arcs, which are insanely hot, and can easily destroy dishes and the plastic interior of the microwave.
• The Ferdinand (Elefant) tank destroyer — which was based on the chassis of rejected Porsche-designed Tiger I tanks — was quite impressive on paper with extraordinarily thick frontal armour and a powerful gun capable of punching through any Allied tank fielded during the war. However, because of Ferdinand Porsche's penchant for toying with experimental technology it used a novel petro-electric drive for its transmission, which allowed for more precise steering and high-speed reversing, but was prone to overheating and catching on fire. Compounding the problem was that Elefant was horribly overweight, weighing more than the already overburdened Porsche-designed Tiger I, which itself was heavier than the rather husky Henschel-designed Tiger I. As a result, the Elefant can catch on fire when climbing hills. That's right, a slight incline can start a fire in a tank destroyer.
• Digital terrestrial television offers clear pictures without the expense of cable or satellite service—as long as you're within range of the broadcasting tower with a properly adjusted antenna. An improperly oriented antenna or weak signal will cause a TV picture to break up like a scratched DVD, where in the analog days you would have a snowy picture but still be able to make out the scene. This is known as the "digital cliff effect". This can be especially annoying for people in countries that have discontinued analog terrestrial TV broadcasting.
• Programming/coding. Just one missing or extra symbol is enough to make your program fail. Either it will fail at compile time, in which case most compilers will at least helpfully (or not) point out the mistake... or it compiles, only for it to execute in ways you did not intend, and you look through hundreds, maybe thousands, of lines of code to see what you did wrong, and then plant your palm on your forehead because you had an extra semicolon at line 500.
• The Russian screw tank was a wildly innovative vehicle able to go forward, backward, sideways, spin on its axis, and cross snow, ice, mud, gravel, debris, water, in short any terrain you can imagine. Except a good road: the deep flanges on the cylinders that enabled its astonishing mobility and maneuverability simply could not dig into asphalt or concrete.

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