Basic trope: One character explains to one of their enemies show their powers work.
- Straight: Evulz explains how his powers work before fighting Hiro.
- Exaggerated: Evulz explains in exhaustive details both the limits and weaknesses of his power.
- Downplayed: This is the entirety of Hiro's and Evulz's conversation:Hiro: Tell me about your power.Evulz: I shoot fire.
- Justified:
- Both sides are interested in a fair fight.
- Evulz is so powerful, arrogant, or both that he doesn’t care if he tells an opponent exactly how to beat him, because he thinks it won’t increase their odds much.
- Evulz is trying to throw the fight and is giving Hiro big hints on how to beat him for that reason.
- Part of the conditions for Hiro’s power is that he has to explain them to his foes.
- Evulz actually doesn't want any more people to be hurt than needed. Him explaining his reflective barrier is trying to scare off both people who would only get hurt and deter Glass Cannons that can penetrate his barrier.
- Evulz has already been defeated and reformed, and is now assisting Hiro in stopping a Greater-Scope Villain by teaching him his abilities. Their fight is just a training exercise. Hiro has to know the weaknesses, so he can compensate for them.
- Hiro and Evulz are playing a game, and the rules require them to explain their powers before using them.
- Evulz intended actions, in light of how Hiro's powers work, are suicidal… Hiro wants him behind bars, not six feet under.
- Inverted:
- Hiro explains his powers, or lack thereof as the case may be, to an ally.
- Hiro has his own powers explained to him by Evulz.
- Subverted:
- Evulz says he’s going to explain everything about how his powers work … and then just punches Hiro in the face.
- Evulz outright lies about how his powers work.
- Double Subverted:
- “Power one: Super-Strength.”
- Drake then explains Evulz’s actual powers to Hiro, much to the former’s annoyance.
- Evulz lies about how his powers work, but then it turns out he was himself unaware of their mechanics, and his "fake" explanation is accidentally completely accurate.
- Parodied:
- “So long as I have my crown, I am invincible!” *ZAP* “Oh no! I have lost my crown, and I am now vincible!”
- Evulz’s explanation devolves into a poorly-made metaphor, which he has to explain to Hiro three times before he gets it.
- Evulz’s power is Playing with Fire, and he has both Personality Powers and an Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance,and is currently burning a village with his bare hands. Hiro still has to ask what power he has.
- Evulz's power in itself is pretty much useless. However it is loaded with many details that both depend upon highly complicated subject matter and are highly semantically confusing. He just attacks them through mundane means while they are utterly confused with it.
- "For your information, my name is Captain Obvious, and my superpower is that I state the obvious!" To which Hiro replies: "Why would you just explain your powers instead of using them? …Oh. Clever."
- Zig-Zagged: Many characters try to strike the delicate balance between intimidating your foe with your power and not revealing too much about how it works. Sometimes it even succeeds.
- Averted:
- The powers remain unexplained.
- Powers are not directly explained to the enemy, instead being talked about in internal monologues, by the narrator, or by Hiro’s allies.
- Enforced: Evulz' powers are really unusual, and if they weren’t explained here nobody would get it.
- Lampshaded:
- “Wait, why am I telling YOU, of all people, this?”
- “Nice of you to tell me your weakness like that…”
- “Ooh! The bragging-in-such-a-way-as-to-reveal-your-one-weakness-bit! I love this part!”
- Invoked: Hiro explains his powers to the enemy in an effort to get his foes to reciprocate.
- Exploited:
- Hiro uses the newly explained knowledge to beat the crap out of Evulz.
- Evulz uses the discussion of his weaknesses to quietly brag. After all, if you admit your one weakness is sunlight, that can only mean one thing…
- Hiro takes the opportunity to take notes while Evulz is talking.
- Evulz actually grows stronger if he explains his power to the enemy, and doing so just leads Hiro into a Curb-Stomp Battle.
- Evulz or Hiro explains fake weaknesses of their powers to trick each other.
- Defied:
- “Knowledge is power. You wouldn’t give an enemy power, why give them knowledge?”
- “I’m here to fight, not to talk! Cease the exposition at once!”
- “Tell you what I can do? I'd rather show you!”
- Discussed: "Okay, now it is the time for Evulz to tell us what is his power."
- Conversed: “It’s pretty formulaic how Evulz explains his one weakness every time, isn’t it?”
- Deconstructed:
- Because Evulz explains enough information to Hiro, he eventually defeated Evulz by exploiting every strength and weakness Evulz explained to him.
- Evulz explains his power to Hiro, only to be eventually overpowered by Hiro. However, with a grin, he expected this, so when Hiro was nearly winning, Evulz told Hiro that he only explained how his suppressed power works, not his full power. When he releases his true, full power, he explains that his unbound power is literally too complex to explain and defeats Hiro right away.
- Reconstructed:
- Evulz learns his lesson, and while he does regularly brag about his power, he does it mostly to his allies (who are on a need-to-know basis) and to the broken bodies of his enemies (who are all, except for Hiro, dead).
- Just because Evulz can't understand the full extent of his abilities, doesn't mean it's impossible to understand. On the rematch, Hiro manages to match and then exceed Evulz's ablities, and ends by explaining Evulz's own powers to him, and in particular their weaknesses.
- Evulz explains his powers to Hiro because divulging his own abilities makes his technique more powerful at the cost of Hiro knowing how his technique works.
- Played for Laughs: Evulz and Hiro explain their respective powers to each other and then burst out laughing because they aren't nearly as extensive as they thought the other was.
Don’t bother “Explaining Your TV-Tropes Addiction to the Enemy”: they’re really not interested.
