Basic Trope: A character who can't control their own powers.
- Straight: Steven Ulysses Perhero shoots out electricity at random times.
- Exaggerated:
- Steven Ulysses Perhero shoots out death rays every 5 seconds, and at least a whole neighborhood gets leveled Hiroshima-style, if not worse.
- Steven Ulysses Perhero constantly shoots out electricity.
- Downplayed:
- Steven Ulysses Perhero shoots out weak jolts of electricity that fries people with a funny expression on their face. Thankfully, their injuries only persist for 5 seconds, and the leakage only happens when Steve gets too excited.
- Steven Ulysses Perhero can control his powers pretty well, but he tends to shoot electricity whenever he sneezes.
- Steven Ulysses Perhero can control when he uses his powers, it's just that when he does they always come out at full strength.
- Justified:
- Steven just got his powers; he can't be expected to control them without practice.
- Steven needs to actively take effort to contain his powers.
- Steven is sick, all the resources normally spend on keeping his powers in check are now allotted to his immune system.
- Steven's powers are activated by light - any light. Even in nights with so much overcast that Steven does not needs to mind about moonlight or starlight, there is still light pollution to worry about.
- Inverted:
- Steven has complete command of his powers.
- Steven suddenly cannot shoot out electricity at all, no matter how hard he tries.
- Subverted: Steven keeps shooting out electricity without warning, until he applies a heavy dose of Heroic Willpower...
- Double Subverted: Only for this to fail after a couple of seconds.
- Parodied: The power incontinence is treated like actual incontinence, with Steven periodically needing to go discharge, occasionally "zapping the bed", etc.
- Zig Zagged: Steven sometimes seems to be in complete control of his powers, while other times they appear to trigger randomly.
- Averted:
- The power leakage is never brought up.
- Steve does not get any superpowers.
- Enforced: The executives want some Angst to attract viewers, so they make Steven incapable of controlling his own abilities.
- Lampshaded: "You can't control it, can you, Mr. Livewire?"
- Implied: Steven passed through an area and everywhere is absolutely wrecked - either he was that angry when rampaging or he really can't control it.
- Invoked: Dr. Evilstein created Steven as a Super-Soldier. When he became a superhero, Dr. Evilstein turned his limiter off to make his job harder.
- Exploited: Dr. Evilstein sends employees who have outlived their usefulness to "monitor" Steven, knowing that they'll eventually die when his powers flare up.
- Defied: Steven equips himself with some extra tech that prevents these leaks from happening.
- Discussed: "I'm not always in control of my powers. Just yesterday, I shook hands with a fan, and his hair stood up. It was super embarrassing."
- Conversed: "He looks kind of like that character in last night's movie, the one who couldn't control his powers."
- Deconstructed: Steven has realized that he cannot guarantee he can be with people without a possible chance of electrocution on the victim, involuntarily causing property damage, or make all of their hair look weird.
- Played For Laughs: Steve's power leakage creates misadventures for everyone, which involves people's hairdo and fashionwear being singed, torn apart, or otherwise messed up within a five-mile radius of Steve. In all of this, fashion magazine Vogue has dubbed Steve as the Fashion-Slayer.
- Played For Drama: Steve's power leakage ended up leveling an entire city, with massive casualties. Dr. Evilstein manipulates the government to go after Steve to restrain/kill him so that Evilstein can further advance his plans of taking over the world without Steve's hindrance.
- Played For Horror: Steve's power has been deliberately created by the writers as one of the most absolute worst things a human being can be exposed to, let alone exude - flesh-eating bacteria, hard radiation in rads higher than Chernobyl, a Brown Note, etc. Steve is so distraught from the doom he brings to everybody by existing that he wishes he could kill himself and spare them the pain, but he is afraid that it will only make his powers go even more out of control, possibly to world-ending extremes.
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