Basic Trope: A character with electric powers is insane in some way.
- Straight: Bob has the power of Lightning, and is notorious for being a not-all-there Blood Knight.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob is an Ax-Crazy who likes to torture and kill his enemies with lightning...and uses it to fry his food.
- Bob occasionally goes on mad killing sprees with his lightning powers.
- Downplayed:
- Bob is a bit bizarre, but still genuinely a Nice Guy, and just happens to have Shock and Awe in his power set.
- Bob has lightning powers (or a lightning-y weapon) and is implied to be just a bit off, but it's both Played for Laughs and not his defining trait.
- Justified:
- Bob either lacks or doesn't have sufficient Required Secondary Powers, so the constant electrical currents running through him have either fried or messed with parts of his brain.
- Bob had to sacrifice his sanity in order to gain those powers.
- Inverted: Bob is the Only Sane Man and The Ego on his team, and has to play referee for Blaze and Yuki.
- Subverted: Bob was Obfuscating Insanity to scare his enemies and/or fool them into thinking he has a Fatal Flaw that he doesn't have, giving them false hope.
- Double Subverted:
- He started out Obfuscating Insanity, but he recently Became the Mask.
- It turns out Bob was really insane, just really unaware of it.
- It turns out Bob was really insane, just exaggerating his own insanity.
- Parodied:
- The instant Bob is driven insane, he gains electric powers.
- One of the symptoms of Bob's mental illness is actually electrical powers.
- Bob immediately becomes sane after he loses his powers.
- Bob's mental illness is attributed to his powers even though they clearly have nothing to do with each other.
- Zig Zagged: Bob was Obfuscating Insanity all along, but it turns out he became the mask except that was just to fool the people who found out he was pretending to be crazy.
- Averted: Bob is relatively sane.
- Enforced: A director is a metahuman bigot, and cannot believe that a man with electricity powers could be anything BUT crazy.
- Lampshaded: "The lighting-controllers always get a bit loopy, don't they? How shocking."
- Invoked: Bob is already faking insanity for unrelated reasons, and when given a super-suit to pick he goes for the one with lighting Powers to make his guise more believable.
- Exploited: Alice knows Bob is crazy, and so acquires a rubber bodysuit in order to protect her from the inevitable electricity powers. She turns out to be entirely correct.
- Defied: Bob goes to therapy after gaining electrical powers to make sure he's not (going to become) insane.
- Discussed: "Hey, Yuk', why the hell is Bob so crazy?" "Probably because that electricity's constantly frying his brain, Blaze."
- Conversed: ???
- Implied: Bob has electric powers, and there's something a little off about him.
- Deconstructed: Because of his dangerous personality and powers, he's considered to be a threat to the human race.
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