Basic Trope: A character has bad powers, but is a hero.
- Straight: Eric is a Nice Guy who can shoot Agony Beams and Death Rays from his eyes.
- Exaggerated:
- Anytime Eric is mildly annoyed, anyone and anything he looks at is disintegrated, so he has to always keep his eyes closed. This annoys him, and since he doesn't want to cause massive property damage he can't ever open them.
- Eric is an omnipotent Reality Warper capable of multiversal feats and can warp fate to make sure he wins every fight. He's firmly on the side of good and is the hero's mentor.
- Downplayed:
- Since Eric's Eye Beams are voluntary, and he can lower their intensity, he's really no more dangerous than a well trained and ethical police officer.
- Ned the Necromancer uses the zombies he reanimates for profit but fairly ethically. He takes cheap bodies where he finds them (never stealing and never from murderers) and uses them as expendables for highly dangerous work. He carries a bit of a snarky, jokey, light-hearted attitude for someone who's often perceived to be so grim, but he ultimately keeps more people from dying.
- Jackson is a Good Is Not Nice Knight in Sour Armor who has the ability to Mind Rape anyone to death at will. He only uses this powers against truly heinous villains such as Rapists, Child Molesters, Human Traffickers, Terrorists, Serial Killers, and all manner of depraved individuals who would otherwise be able to menace society without ever being caught or stopped.
- Alice's Aerokinesis appears perfectly standard on the surface, but there are a lot of horrific potential uses for it, such as preventing someone from breathing until they suffocate or creating a hurricane and then using it to completely wipe out a village. However, she's too nice and moral a person to actually to do anything like that.
- Justified:
- Sally the Super-Empowering fairy only gives the really nasty powers to people who can be trusted to use them responsibly.
- Personality Powers is not in effect, and if it is, Eric has since grown horrified at his potential for evil and resolved to be good.
- Eric's calmness has slowly amassed in him over the years, with anger and pain being the most repressed parts of him, eventually forming into the ability to release his own pain onto others because he never did so before.
- Inverted:
- Good Powers, Bad People.
- Eric is a murderous fiend who uses his Fertile Feet to spread highly toxic and man eating plants all over the city.
- Subverted:
- Eric is actually The Mole.
- When Harold the Hater hits Eric with a Hate Wave, he inadvertently kills Harold... and likes it. Eric uses his evil powers for evil.
- Erics Eye Beams cause Heel Face Turns and heal puppies.
- Double Subverted:
- ... Until his boyfriend Eddie gives him a Cooldown Hug and The Power of Love puts him firmly back in heroland.
- Said Heel–Face Turn is actually brainwashing (and not for the greater good) and all those hit go psycho eventually. Also? The puppies all got inoperable tumors.
- Parodied: Eric has won the evil Super Power Lottery. He is a deadly Walking Wasteland. He is also The Pollyanna and refuses to be anything but nice, happy and optimistic.
- Zig Zagged: Eric is good and refuses to use his evil powers for evil. Except he's actually really trying to con the heroes. Only his power isn't actually evil. And he's pulling a double spy type deal to fool the villains into thinking he's secretly a villain when he isn't. Then it turns out that he's a Double Reverse Quadruple Agent.
- People only gain good or bad powers by starting out that way but they can still change and their manifestation will change with it. Ned the necromancer goes from binding spirits of the dead to their own corpses and puppeting them to summoning the spirits of dead heroes and helping them manifest. Alice has healing abilities but after she goes evil they become more painful and mutagenic in exchange for giving the healed Lovecraftian Superpowers in themselves.
- Averted:
- Eric is evil and uses his evil powers for evil. Evil!
- Eric is good and uses his good powers for good. Good!
- Enforced: The show is about Grey-and-Gray Morality, so the existence of Eric is necessary to confuse the protagonists.
- Lampshaded: "Whoever gives out superpowers must have a sense of humor, giving a literal Death Glare to someone who will never use it."
- Implied: Bob questions if there might be some good witches out there when all they have encountered were evil ones.
- Invoked: Eric wants to avoid the persecution and raw end of a Super Registration Act, so he founds a support and advocacy group of moral Differently Powered Individuals with bad powers.
- Exploited: Eric knows that good people with bad powers exist, so he pretends to be one to avoid scrutiny.
- Defied: Eric revels in using his evil powers for evil, and goes on a gloating spiel about how he's much more evil for knowing he could do differently.
- Discussed: "People like Eric really have it rough, if they don't prove they have Mind over Manners every day they'll be branded as villains."
- Conversed: "Of course that character Eric isn't evil, as the Sixth Ranger he has to provide dark power for the team's Yin-Yang Bomb without actually being evil."
- Deconstruction:
- Eric has the ability to command The Legions of Hell but commands them to return whence they came and never return. This prompts their masters to attack Earth. There are countless victims, and Eric can do nothing to command the Demon Lords and Archdevils, as they're much too complex for his unrefined abilities.
- Eric is a wizard who specializes in fearsome Elemental Powers, like Casting a Shadow and maybe Ice or Hellfire. Because he doesn't want to scare his allies, he masks these powers by focusing on more benevolent powers like Light The Way, Healing Hands, and Holy Hand Grenade. Eric is eventually forced to give his allies a big scare when he has to tap into his darker abilities to save the day. His allies lose trust in Eric, and/or accuse him of joining The Dark Side.
- Eric suffers from a case of Power Incontinence where he struggles to contain his incredibly destructive, dangerous powers. He has managed to control his powers out of sheer determination, but only time will tell when his will wavers and he unleashes a Super-Power Meltdown.
- Then Let Me Be Evil
- Eric has the ability to instantly send someone to an infinite hell dimension to be repeatedly murdered and forced to endure infinite pain for all of eternity. Eric knows that no matter what villians he encounters or what they have done, none of them deserve to suffer endless agony. Eric never uses his powers and has to save the city from supervillians using mundane items.
- Reconstruction:
- Eric learns that his eyebeams can also be controlled by wearing eyeglasses. He starts wearing them.
- It turns out Eric knew his command would summon the masters of Hell and hoped it would. He begins actively working with the Demon Lords and Archdevils to find the human with powers to command The Legions of Hell. Eric's plan is to finally defeat Evil. His actions and decisions creates a world without Evil.
- Though Eric's use of his darker powers was disturbing, the situation was desperate enough for his teammates to understand why he unleashed them upon their enemies. They've also worked with him long enough to know he's one of the most loyal adherents to their cause. This well-earned trust comes to be rewarded at a critical moment during the final battle, where Eric wields his frightening abilities once again, this time in a plan by the team strategist.
- Implied: Eric actively avoids killing the enslaved henchmen but sends the Complete Monster into the void.
- Played For Laughs: The hero has to roll a 100 sided die that picks his powers for the hour. At church, the priest starts suffering from a heart attack. In an attempt to save the man, He rolls and gets the ability to instantly summon a harem of nude anime women that are all madly in love with him. More people start getting heart attacks.
- Plotted A Good Waste: Eric is known and beloved far and wide as a pacifist and healer of the sick. There is seemingly no disease he cannot cure. The truth is that he does not employ healing magic, however: he is a Plague Master who uses his dominion over germs and viruses to cure people, magically willing the pathogens ravaging their bodies to die. As for his pacifism, well, it's not exactly him killing a mugger stupid enough to pull a knife on him, it's the flesh-eating bacteria he inflicted said mugger with!
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