Basic Trope: Super-Strength is justified by having few or none of the natural inhibitors normally present in others.
- Straight: Alice, by being able to use all of her muscle power at once (as opposed to the 1/3 or 1/4 power under normal circumstances in real life), can easily tilt a car.
- Exaggerated: Alice, by being able to use all of her muscle power at once, can lift cars over her head Superman-style.
- Downplayed: Alice's lack of limits means she can lift about a hundred pounds more than she would normally be able to do.
- Justified:
- Power Born of Madness or Traumatic Superpower Awakening: Alice is emotionally traumatized, and by recalling bad memories can voluntarily induce the fight or flight response, thus removing her natural limits at will.
- Alice had brain surgery or training to remove the limits.
- Alice's child is trapped under the car, activating her Mama Bear instincts.
- Alice is a Master of Your Domain
- Inverted: Alice has no natural limiters on how weak she can get(this may seem stupid, but is actually a Required Secondary Power for just about anything you do with your hands i.e. Most people wouldn't be able to draw if they applied all their strength on the pencil all the time.).
- Subverted: Alice seems to be able to defy her body's natural limits, but it turns out she has limits like everyone else and that she's just stronger than she looks...
- Double Subverted: ...but then breaks her limits anyhow and becomes even stronger.
- Parodied: Alice, an average soccer mom who somehow kept her hysterical strength after she lifted a car off her kids enters a powerlifting competition. She proceeds to match and surpass men three times her size who have been training their entire lives.
- Zig Zagged: Sometimes Alice has limits, sometimes she doesn't.
- Averted: Alice has natural limits, and never breaks or weakens them.
- Enforced: "How can we give a character superhuman abilities without getting into all that pseudo-science about toxic chemicals or gamma radiation? Well, did you ever hear about mothers who lift cars off their kids?"
- Lampshaded: "Look at me, I'm like Superman!"
- Invoked: Alice decides to learn how to master the fight or flight response to remove her limits.
- Exploited: Alice uses her abilities to win a competition.
- Defied: Alice uses her abilities in competition, but without the strong bones and tendons of someone who can lift heavy weights naturally, rips her body apart from the inside.
- Discussed: "Mothers lifting their cars? I never thought I'd see it in person, but here it is."
- Conversed: "Isn't it awesome that technically speaking, this is possible in real life?"
- Implied: A human, capable of seemingly superhuman physical feats, is spoken of in legend, with the secret being "he was able to unlock the hidden potential in all of us".
- Deconstructed: Alice's powerlifting win leads to scientists wanting to study her.
- The limiters are in place for a very good reason. That strength comes without Required Secondary Powers. Alice needs to spend her days being methodical to not overdo it. When she actually has to use her full strength despite it being impressive it often leads to crippling injuries that would require surgery and months if not years of recovery.
- Reconstructed: But then their research is stopped and Alice is left to live a normal life after it turns out that its impossible to test Alice's true strength without overexerting and hurting her.
- Fortunately Alice has an ally with Healing Hands as well. So while she does injure herself with her strength the damage can be fixed.
- Played For Laughs: Alice, lacking the natural limits of everyone else, has a habit of breaking one world record every day relating to physical activity.
- Played For Drama: Alice has Super-Strength due to having no natural limits, but is still very much a human. This leads to a horrible accident when she pushes herself too hard.
Back to Uninhibited Muscle Power.
