Power Incontinence / Western Animation

Power Incontinence in Western Animation.

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• 50/50 Heroes: Some of the powers Mo and Sam receive are harder for them to control when they're not touching each other.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • Aang's Sneezes of Doom, with a variety of "oops" levels including accidental blown roofing. Turns out that airbenders will do this every time they sneeze hard. A serious one is also his tendency to reflexively enter the Avatar State whenever he's under emotional duress or he's pissed at someone/something. When he does, duck and cover. Should you happen to be the focus of his wrath, put your head between your knees and kiss your butt goodbye.
  • Early in the first season, Katara suffered from Power Incontinence while she was learning how to waterbend properly. When she gets flustered or angry, her subconscious bending is strong enough to split building sized icebergs, but once she gets some proper training near the end of the season she quickly becomes a waterbending master. Turns out that waterbending and its opposite bending art firebending absolutely require self-control, lacking of it will cause this trope.
  • In the sequel series The Legend of Korra, many of the new airbenders produced by the Harmonic Convergence have trouble controlling their new powers, understandably given that airbending techniques had only been known by a single family for more than a century.
• Batman Beyond:
  • Derek Powers a.k.a. Blight, the Big Bad for Season 1. Powers became a Walking Wasteland in the show's beginning. He managed to pass for human by applying a fake skin; however, it degraded after time. Anyways, as Batman continuously foils his schemes, Powers undergoes a season-long Villainous Breakdown which causes the fake skin to degrade even faster; eventually, his temper means that the skin wastes away too quickly for him to continue running his corporation. He then undergoes a rather literal Superpower Meltdown, though it's implied he might've survived.
  • Ian Peek from the episode "Sneak Peek" gets his hands on an experimental belt that allows him to pass through walls. Repeated use renders the belt unnecessary, but unfortunately for Ian, without the belt, he's not up to the task of regulating when and what he passes through. Guess what happens.
• In the first episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold, Blue Beetle has trouble controlling his suit and accidentally creates a wormhole.
• In Ben 10, Ben in general suffers from this, as at times the Omnitrix would give Ben something other than the form he had in mind. Ben's NRG form in particular is made of Pure Energy, with control over fire and radiation. Unfortunately he has to stay encased in a special suit of armor, or the people around him can develop radiation poisoning.
• Catscratch: In one episode, Mr. Blik gains the ability to control metal with static electricity as a result of sliding down a giant plastic slide. He has a lot of fun with his new powers at first but after a while finds that he isn't able to control them anymore and unwillingly attracts metal objects to his body. So he is forced to choose between shaving off his hair to get rid of the static or staying in a metal-free chamber for the rest of his life until they figure out another way to get rid of it.
• Combo Niños: In one episode, Diadoro and Gomez release a Divino who has the power to turn into anyone who touches him, regardless of the Divino wanting it to happen or not.
• The title character of Danny Phantom has this problem, especially at first. On top of generally not knowing how to use/control his abilities, hormones and extreme emotion can cause his powers to bleed over to his human form, although limited to glowing eyes, invisibility, and phasing — the former occurring when angry, and the latter two happening when flustered. These issues cause many problems for him... especially the phasing, which causes issues such as "dropping" objects because they're literally falling through his hands, and spontaneously phasing his own pants off. He also had a hard time learning to duplicate, with his early attempts having strange and grotesque results; he instead sprouts extra body parts, and continuing the attempt causes those to sprout further parts in turn. He manages to gain complete control over his powers by the end of the series.
  • His two strongest powers repeatedly gave him problems. His Ghostly Wail would use up all his ghostly energy and cause him to revert back to his human form after use. When he first manifested his ice powers, they caused him to feel like he was freezing, to the point where he eventually was.
  • The episode "Doctor's Disorders" subjects nearly all of Danny's classmates to this, with them being infected by ghost mosquitos that give each of them a random uncontrollable ghost power.
• The Fairly OddParents!
  • In one episode, Cosmo begins uncontrollably shapeshifting into harmful objects due to an organ going bad. The only way to cure this condition is to surgically switch the bad organ with the respective good one from Cosmo's Anti-fairy, who is uncontrollably turning into good things because of it. Timmy, Wanda, and Cosmo have to break Anti-Cosmo out of prison so they can get the surgery done to cure them both.
  • In one of the Oh Yeah! Cartoons shorts, Cosmo and later Wanda catch the Fairy Flu, which causes them to lose control of their magic, causing their sneezes to have weird effects.
  • When Timmy wishes to swap places with Cosmo and Wanda, Timmy can barely control his fairy powers, to the point where he can't even transform properly.
• Jackie Chan Adventures: On its own, the tiger talisman has the power of balance, but within Shendu, as he explains, it unifies the powers of the other 11 talismans and prevents this trope from happening.
• Justice League:
  • J'onn tries to extend his telepathy to all of Metropolis in order to do a quick scan for Lex Luthor in "Tabula Rasa". He finds him... and then gets flooded with the private thoughts of all of Metropolis, and finds he can't shut off the flow.
  • In "Only a Dream", John Dee a.k.a. Doctor Destiny traps several members of the Justice League in their worst nightmares. Three of them have nightmares related to Power Incontinence. The Flash gets stuck in Super-Speed mode so that Time Stands Still for him. John Stewart's concerns that his new powers as a Green Lantern have permanently altered and isolated him from humanity are taken to an extreme. (Poor guy literally cracks up as green light bursts out of his body!) The worst is Superman. His powers go out of control, and he accidentally kills the people closest to him.
    The Flash: I've always been afraid this would happen. I'm gonna live out my whole life in the time it takes you to tie your shoelaces! Somebody! Say something! [curls up in a fetal position]
    Green Lantern: Come back! Why are you all running? What are you afraid of? [as his friends and neighbors all run away when they see him]
    Superman: I started out with no power at all. Then I kept getting more. What if it never stops?
  • In "Divided We Fall", Flash pushes his powers to the limit to take down a particularly tough foe (who's just wiped the floor with the rest of the League)... and then discovers he can't slow down. If not for The Power of Friendship, he'd have been lost in the Speed Force forever, and says outright that he can never do that again.
• Kaeloo: Lavanade has poor control over her supernatural powers, which leads her to cause bizarre events such as ghosts popping up wherever she goes. The problem gets even worse when she's upset, as her highly emotional state makes her completely lose control of her powers.
• Miraculous Ladybug: The kwamis have the same powers as their holders, but at a much higher level... and with much less control. Trixx, the kwami of illusion, can create incredible illusions on a city-wide scale, but includes nonsense like a bouncing Eiffel Tower. Kaalki, the kwami of teleportation, can open portals to anywhere, but tend to suck in random objects (including buildings and monuments), both nearby and away, and drop them off literally anywhere (including in space). Plagg, the kwami of destruction, sank Atlantis and wiped out the dinosaurs. (Oh, and tilted the Tower of Pisa.) When he has to unleash his power directly in present day, it's clear that, no, he has not learned restraint since then.
• My Little Pony:
  • My Little Pony 'n Friends: In "The Quest of the Princess Ponies, Part 1", when Dream Valley's magic starts breaking down, the unicorns' spellcasting becomes unreliable and chaotic, as Fizzy finds out when her bubbles start coming out unbidden and with enough force to send her rocketing backwards.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • In "The Ticket Master", when accosted by a crowd of ponies who want her ticket to the Grand Galloping Gala, Twilight unexpectedly teleports herself and Spike away to the library. Twilight is merely surprised, but Spike ends up shocked... rather literally.
    • In "The Cutie Mark Chronicles", Twilight Sparkle flashes back to her entrance exam for Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. In the course of taking the test, she taps into her latent magic for the first time and ends up accidentally leaking magic all over the place, turning her parents into potted plants, among other things.
    • "Lesson Zero": As her Sanity Slippage gets worse, Twilight starts to Teleport Spam without even apparently realizing it during the picnic with her friends.
    • In "The Cutie Pox", Apple Bloom steals some of Zecora's ingredients to brew a potion that could finally grant what she desires the most: a Cutie Mark. The problem is, the potion effect doesn't stop at one and keeps giving her an infinite number of Cutie Marks (every new Cutie Mark gives her a new special ability, to boot) and Apple Bloom neither can turn them off or stop using her new abilities. Eventually, her body ends up acting on its own, without stopping to rest or sleep while Apple Bloom desperately begs it to stop.
    • "Baby Cakes": After the Cake twins are born, Rarity warns the parents that baby unicorns are prone to strange, unpredictable bursts of magical energy, and the unicorn foal indeed spends most of the episode manifesting random magical effects.
    • In "Three's a Crowd", Discord's Blue Flu messes with his reality warping powers and makes crazy things happen every time he sneezes. He's faking it, though.
    • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", Twilight has trouble performing even the most basic magic after the power transfer, blowing up the door to the Golden Oaks Library simply by trying to open it and briefly teleporting to random spots all across Equestria. It isn't until Tirek comes after her that she gets a handle on her power, if only because she's no longer trying to hold it back.
    • In "The Crystalling, Part 1", we're introduced to baby Flurry Heart, Shining Armor and Princess Cadence's child... who is a born alicorn. She's capable of sneezes that blow holes in the wall and a wail that shatters the Crystal Heart.. They have to put a Power Limiter spell onto her once everything is settled.
    • "All Bottled Up": Starlight Glimmer explains her greatest magical feats were accomplished by turning angry emotion into powerful spells. Thus, if she becomes upset enough to generate those feelings but doesn't have a spell she can focus it into, the magic simply escapes from her horn as a violent red storm cloud. If allowed to roam around, this will infect other ponies with a Hate Plague of her negative feelings so she has to stuff it away in a physical container to prevent that.
    • In the short "Ail-icorn", Twilight's spring allergies mix badly with her alicorn powers and cause uncontrollable blasts of magic from her horn whenever she sneezes.
    • The Kirin turn into fire monsters called Nirik when they get angry. They accidentally burned their village to the ground when an argument escalated out of control, so their leader ordered them to bathe in a magic stream that took away their ability to speak and feel emotions. They were convinced to cure themselves only after seeing a Nirik use their fire powers in a constructive way.
    • "The Ending of the End Part 1": Cozy Glow is unable to control Discord's Reality Warper chaos magic, and only succeeds in making a mess. Tirek implies that he couldn't do much with it either back in "Twilight's Kingdom", and so the villains conclude that it's too dangerous for anyone but Discord to use.
• The Owl House
  • In "Labyrinth Runners", it's revealed that when Gus is in severe emotional distress, his illusion-magic will go haywire. In the opening, he accidentally creates illusions of two of his classmates who mock him for being tricked into doing their project for them. Later on, he accidentally overlays the entire school with massive, lifelike illusions, and after Graye's Mind Rape, he gets trapped in a ball of rapidly shifting illusions that shows people their absolute worst memories when touched.
  • In "For the Future", Willow slowly starts feeling the pressure of trying to hold her friends together while going through one of the most harrowing experiences of her life. She tries to cheer Hunter up by giving him a photo of himself and Flapjack, but seeing as Hunter has barely processed Flapjack's death at this point, he just blankly stares at it, instantly making Willow feel like she's made things worse for him. When she, Hunter and Gus are thrown into the detention pit by Boscha and Kikimora, Willow starts breaking down as plants grow uncontrollably around her, ensnaring the three of them, and while she tries to free the boys, everything she does just makes the vines grow faster. She eventually gets swallowed by the vines herself as she admits that she can't do this anymore and calls herself Half-a-witch Willow like her bullies used to. In the end, she regains control of her magic after Hunter assures her she didn't do anything wrong and she and Gus mean the world to him, and she finally lets herself show weakness by bursting into tears and admitting she misses her dads.
• In PJ Sparkles PJ gains magic based on The Power of Love that can do almost anything, provided she phrases it "I'd love it if X happened." As a result, she uses her powers by accident a few times, giving her helpers magic badges and transporting herself, Blaze, and Peter to Twinkle Town.
• Popeye: Generally averted, as Popeye can maintain control well under the influence of spinach. However, in at least two shorts Popeye force-feeds Bluto spinach, who then proceeds to lose all control and involuntarily and senselessly beats Popeye up (in both shorts, Bluto has reasons for not doing so).
• Sofia the First: Winter the faun freezes anything and anyone she touches even if she doesn't want to.
• The Spectacular Spider-Man:
  • The Villain of the Week Max Dillon (Electro) gets electrocuted in a Freak Lab Accident; this being a version of the Marvel Universe, he starts constantly emitting electricity and has to wear a protective suit at all times so other people won't be hurt. Even so, his power leaks out — he can't watch TV, lightning arcs out of his hands when he's upset — and he can't even eat without zapping something. By the time he gets into a supervillain teamup, of course, he's managed more control.
  • Later, we get Molten Man, a kid who was given the ability to cover his body in fire via nanomachines. However, he can not turn this ability on and off himself: Instead, his powers manifest on the whim of whoever is holding the remote control that activates the nanomachines.
• In the Spider-Man: The Animated Series second season storyline, "The Neogentic Nightmare", the web-slinger's powers start turning on and off at the worst possible times, which leads Spidey to run to the X-Men for help at one point. Ultimately, it is revealed that it was his body trying to morph him into a monstrous Man-Spider.
• Stan Lee's Superhero Kindergarten, being about superhero kindergartners, frequently shows how young the kids are, meaning they're not in full control of their powers.
• In Star vs. the Forces of Evil, Princess Star Butterfly doesn't have a perfect handle on her magic wand when trying to use it for non-combat purposes. She often causes things she's trying to affect to burst into flames or turn grotesque. The series starts with her being sent to Earth so that she can learn how to control her magic somewhere where she can't cause problems for her family and subjects.
• In the Static Shock episode "Sunspots", the titular hero begins to lose control of his electromagnetic abilities after being exposed to sunspots. Sometimes his abilities cease to work altogether, while other times, he becomes overpowered to the point that he almost harms those around him.
• Steven Universe:
  • The title character has trouble activating and controlling his powers. He is a child as well as being part human, though, and controlling his powers is suggested to be something he can learn.
    • He's showing signs of learning to control his powers; particularly being able to "bubble" objects as of "Monster Buddies", and intentionally summoning his weapon, a shield, in both its regular and spherical forms in the two part "Mirror Gem"/"Ocean Gem".
    • The show actually has several episodes whose plot consists of him discovering a new power but not being able to control it at first, such as "Cat Fingers" (for shape-shifting) and "Steven Floats" (for super-jumping and slow-fall).
    • His inability to control his powers nearly kills him in "So Many Birthdays" when he starts changing age uncontrollably and almost ages himself to death. In a later episode he tries to do the same thing again on purpose to make himself older, but isn't able to maintain it and ends us temporarily regressing himself into a baby.
  • Ruby and Sapphire have fire and ice powers respectively that can go out of control when they are feeling strong emotions. The two seem to cancel each other out when they are fused.
  • When Steven communicates with the Cluster, he convinces it to stop forming because it will destroy the Earth, but it is unable to stop itself from forming, so Steven gets it to put itself in a bubble so it cannot form. When the bubble is later popped by the Diamonds, it has gained control of itself and only forms a single arm to help fight them.
  • Padparadscha has the ability to predict things that already happened. She doesn’t seem to be able to turn this power off so she has a Delayed Reaction to everything.
  • Fusion can happen accidentally, not just to Steven but normal Gems too. Many first-time fusions have happened accidentally, and there have been a few causes of fusions occurring at inconvenient times.
• Steven Universe: Future: Steven's power problems are back as he develops a new power that seems to flare out of control along with his emotions. He now instinctively uses his shield, bubble, and floating abilities without thinking, and appears to have full control of his other older powers as well, but now his powers are pumping up to full Pink Diamond level, and he has trouble turning them off, especially when emotional. The emotion-driven shapeshifting rears its head at the climax of this arc. It culminates as him seeing himself as a monster for the damage his out of control powers are causing, and when a shapeshifter with Diamond-level powers sees himself as a monster, you get a monster. He ends up spending an episode as a rampaging Kaiju that the whole combined cast can't stop.
• Teen Titans (2003):
  • Raven's and Terra's powers fluctuate according to their level of emotional stability. Terra in particular had so little control over her powers that she was constantly on the move, because her powers would eventually lead to destruction wherever she went. Beast Boy finds out that she has little control, and she makes him swear not to tell anyone. Robin soon puts it together on his own, and Terra assumes Beast Boy told him, which causes Terra to lose faith in her new friends and run away, quickly running into Slade.
  • Starfire is allergic to metallic chromium, and sneezes starbolts. Which should mean she'd be doing it almost constantly, as chromium is something you'd run into all the time a modern setting.
  • In the episode where Raven and Starfire end up in each other's bodies they have a lot of difficulty with each other's powers. Both of their powers are controled by emotions but in different ways. Raven has to suppress her emotions to keep them from going out of control, which causes a problem when the very emotional Starfire is in her body, and Starfire needs to feel strong emotions in order to activate her powers, and so Raven has to let out the emotions she normally suppresses to use them.
  • "Snowblind" introduced Red Star, essentially the Soviet Captain America, and a crapload more powerful. Problems arose when it was revealed that his body periodically discharges a highly corrosive and dangerous plasma like substance, as well as deadly amounts of radiation. In a true Tear Jerker moment, Red Star was revealed to have lived in exile his whole life in a compound built to contain him after he accidentally destroyed half of his hometown.
  • Beast Boy tends to change shapes randomly when he sneezes, such as in the episode when he caught a cold.
  • The villain Plasmus is a human with the ability to turn into a purple sludge monster, but he has no control over what he does in his monster form, he only returns to his human form if he is rendered unconscious, and he will change back to his monster form involuntarily shortly after he wakes up, so he has to be kept unconscious at all times.
• Occurs in Transformers: Animated when Sari gets in touch with her heritage and ends up with more power than her system and low level of control can safely handle, causing her to go on a rampage. It is even lampshaded when Bulkhead says, "Maybe you should try holding it in!" She tries, then damn near explodes. Lose/lose.
• In The Venture Bros., Cody Impossible has the power to turn himself into a human torch but lacks the Required Secondary Powers to either turn it off or be immune to the pain of being set on fire. Any amount of time he spends awake and in a normal oxygenated atmosphere is an unending torment of unimaginable pain.
• Winx Club:
  • In Season 3, the Winx have to achieve their Enchantix; to earn it, one must rescue someone from their homeworld, and it will require a great sacrifice. Unlike the others, Bloom earned hers through sheer force of will and believing in herself to vanquish evil; because of this, her Enchantix powers are rendered "incomplete", and side effects often show such as she sometimes isn't able to transform, her spells sometimes backfire, she loses control and suffers a Power-Strain Blackout, and she cannot miniaturize.
  • Duman in Season 4 eventually becomes sick and has trouble controlling his powers. This indirectly leads to his death.
• Wishfart: Unlike all other leprechauns on the show, Dez has absolutely no control over his wish-granting powers, which is why any wishes he grants come out wrong no matter how good his intentions are. On the other hand, he's the only leprechaun willing to grant wishes to others, so everyone on the show goes to him for their wishes.
• A second season episode of W.I.T.C.H., "U is for Undivided", has Lillian begin to manifest her Heart of Earth powers, making her as powerful as Elyon, one of the most powerful characters on the show. Without even knowing it, she gives her cat Napoleon the ability to speak and transforms her family's apartment building into a medieval castle. The girls and Matt have to arrange a complex plan to get Lillian to unknowingly pass off her powers to Matt, Mr. Huggles, and Napoleon, keeping the girl Locked Out of the Loop about her abilities until she reaches the age where she can handle her powers responsibly.
• X-Men: Evolution:
  • Spyke slowly gained this problem. In the third season, he has increasing trouble retracting his spikes, to the point where he simply can't do so. Then he is Put on a Bus via making him join the Morlocks... until the fourth season, where his spikes have grown into full-blown bone armor he can't remove.
  • The episode "Power Surge" does this to Jean, who progressively loses her hold on her telekinesis and telepathy until she collapses.
  • Rogue goes even wilder when all the personalities and powers she had absorbed resurge and cause her to flip out. It's even worse than in her first episode when she could barely handle the sudden awakening of her powers and then absorbed those of Storm of all people...
  • In the third season, Cyclops is kidnapped and then dumped in a small Mexican town by a vengeful Mystique without his glasses or visors. Guess what happened.
• Young Justice (2010): Metahumans are humans that have powers, and due to a human trafficking ring for metahumans, many of them are teenagers who have no idea how to control their new powers. While there are places where they can train to get their powers under control, some choose to wear inhibitor collars to keep their new powers in check.

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