Times where Worf Had the Flu in Fan Works.
Crossovers
- Downplayed in Amazing Fantasy. Izuku struggles in his fight against Yaoyorozu during the Heroes vs. Villains exercise as he was already injured and winded after his fierce brawl with Bakugou. His attention was also occupied with getting to the bomb hidden among her decoys and the increasing pressure of him running down the clock. Even then, he notes that he could probably defeat her if he went all-out, but he decides against that as he wouldn't be able to properly regulate his Super-Strength to avoid seriously hurting her.
- Avengers of the Multi-verse;
- In War of the Worlds, Vilgax pretty easily has his fleet wipe out Galaluna's defenses, but it's noted that the planet is still recovering from the previous Mutradi invasion and they're nowhere near their full strength just yet.
- Rex initially fares poorly against Van Kleiss, with his anger making him sloppier and easier to predict. Once Ben arrives and he calms down, the two easily gain the upper hand in the fight.
- It's made clear that the Dark Dragon underestimated Kim and Ron in their last fight, and wasn't using his full strength against them as a result.
- This is also the reason for how Goliath is defeated; Baron and Shego were arguing so much that Goliath was unable to operate at full efficiency to the point of falling apart.
- In Avengers of the Ring, the energy drain caused by the portal that sent them to Middle-Earth is the only reason Thor and the Hulk didn’t just tear through their early opposition such as the troll and the Uruk-Hai army and cut a path to Mount Doom single-handedly, as they needed time to regain their lost energy; immediately after arriving in Middle-Earth, the vortex had drained so much power that Banner only retained a degree of Hulk’s enhanced healing, and Thor’s only obvious abilities were greater-than-average strength and the ability to summon Mjolnir back to him after he threw it.
- In Blue Moon, Bella demonstrates her new strength as a vampire slayer by defeating Emmett in an arm-wrestling contest. It's explicitly noted after her victory that Emmett was holding back, and Alice has a vision that Bella would have been left with a torn shoulder and require surgery if she and Emmett had a rematch where he was going all-out, but the fact that a human Bella could actually beat Emmett proves that she's no longer entirely normal.
- In The Confectionary Chronicles, this is referenced as the reason Odin has trouble when Loki/Gabriel and his family attack Odin to save Hermione; while he had the faith of his worshippers to draw on in the past, in the present few people believe in Odin enough to give him much power, whereas Loki/Gabriel never drew on faith to begin with (even if he’s received a recent boost from Hermione’s worship) and his children, while essentially pagan gods themselves, were never worshipped in the first place.
- The Star Trek: Voyager/Stargate Universe crossover "Destiny and Voyager: Crossroads
" includes a confrontation between Destiny and some Romulan vessels. On its own against even one Romulan ship, Destiny has sufficiently powerful weapons to do some damage to the Romulans, but this depends on the enemy ship being in the right position as the guns on Destiny are so degraded from millennia of not being maintained that they cannot manoeuvre properly. However, once Starfleet ships show up to help out, Destiny is able to provide more support by directing their allies on where to fire, as Destiny is capable of seeing through the Romulan cloaking devices. Once Destiny is taken to Earth, the ship receives a thorough refit by Starfleet, ensuring that such a beating will not happen again. - Echoes of Yesterday: When Kara arrives in Earth Bet, her solar energy reserves are depleted and she estimates it will take her several days in the sun to fully recharge. During this time, she exhausts herself saving the inhabitants of a burning building and immediately gets into a fight with Lung. Though she gets several good hits in, she runs out of energy and gets beaten up and knocked out cold.
- Fate: Kill:
- Under normal circumstances, as proven in their source material, a fight between Akame and Enshin would be a Curb-Stomp Battle in the former's favor. When they clash here; however, Akame is running on fumes from all the injuries and exertion she's piled up over the course of the Final Battle, especially a stab wound in her stomach from Kurome that hasn't healed properly, while he's completely fresh. As such, he's able to overwhelm her rather easily and pin her down, which prompts Wave and Kurome to finally take her and Shirou's side against the four members of Wild Hunt present.
- Similarly, Shirou under normal circumstances is essentially the World's Strongest Man, but having run himself ragged with the injuries he's wracked up fighting the likes of General Esdeath, deflecting a massive bullet and cannon barrage, overusing his Projection magecraft up to using Unlimited Blade Works to exhaust his magical energy, and heavily damaging Shikoutazer, he's so spent that once unleashes a Strike Air to kill Enshin, he can't really defend himself from Syura attempting to choke the life out of him aside from forcibly manifesting blades out of his body to fatally impale his foe.
- In Fate/Parallel Fantasia, several characters get more than one Servant. The problem is that since a Master has to supply Servants with energy, the Servants are not as strong as they would normally be since the energy is divided.
- In Fractured (SovereignGFC), the JVLN Alliance (Cerberus combined with pro-human forces from another galaxy) actively exploits this trope by setting up "Worf" (RNS Revenant, a huge Star Dreadnaught) with the "flu." Specifically, by analyzing information about other ships like it, they know exactly how to Attack Its Weak Point after ensuring it is Point Defenseless due to being unable to fire on friendly IFFs stolen through old-fashioned spycraft. Further, a fake attack caused any other defensive weapons to initially fire in the wrong direction. Finally, the ship is experiencing a Phlebotinum Breakdown (out of fuel) anyway, so is already weakened.
- Taiyang Xiao Long in A Girl and Her Bike does very poorly against an Ursa Major, whom any normal Huntsman should have little trouble against, but he was caught off-guard when it attacked and by the time he got his weapon out, his Aura was already in the red.
- In The God of Destruction comes to Remnant, Velvet Scarlatina and Coco Adel get beaten up by thugs and nearly raped until they get rescued. Several chapters later, the thugs' leader, Cobalt Yashi, explains that he had been stalking the two for a while and had a telepath underling of his secretly mess with their minds for weeks to dull their reflexes, make them prone to mistakes, etc until they would be weak enough to capture.
- Invoked in the Infinity Crisis spin-off Women of Wonder, when Zatanna observes that she’s able to reverse Circe’s spell on Superman, Batman and the three Wonder Women because Circe wasn’t prepared to transform that many people at once and thus didn’t use her full power.
- In The Moon's Flash Princess, the Sailor Soldiers have been fighting against the Dark Kingdom for a decade straight, without the support of Sailor Moon or any of her healing powers. The stresses of this long conflict have worn them all down, impairing their judgment severely.
- My Ideal Academia: Shirou Emiya gets turned into a kid. He remembers all his fighting skills and magecraft, but is hindered by his smaller body and his underdeveloped muscles and Magic Circuits. He has to slowly learn how to reopen his Magic Circuits. He muses that if he had his older body, he would have defeated Angra Mainyu with ease.
- In The Ninth Sekirei Pillar, Naruto fought against Mutsu three times. The first two, he was either not taking Mutsu seriously or was completely exhausted. The third fight, Naruto was fully rested and pissed, resulting in Mutsu being on the wrong end of a Curb-Stomp Battle.
- A particularly literal example of this occurs in Spider-X when Peter misses attending the carnival where most of the X-Men were temporarily 'enslaved' by Mesmero because he had the flu and Rogue stayed behind to keep an eye on him, thus ensuring that Peter wouldn't get a spider-sense warning of the danger Mesmero posed and prevent the team falling victim to the hypnotist's efforts.
- The Vasto of White: When Shirou fights Ukitake, Shirou admits to himself that Ukitake is the superior swordsman. However, Ukitake suddenly suffers a coughing fit from his chronic illness, allowing Shirou to defeat him and take him hostage.
- The Weaver Option: Taylor establishes her status as a Living Saint by dueling and besting the Bloodthirster Ka'Bandha. Years later while fighting a fully empowered Daemon Prince, she comes to the conclusion that Ka'Bandha was most likely weakened by the nature of his summoning at the Death Star, which is the only reason she won. The next time they fight he will almost certainly be at full strength.
- What the Cat Dragged In: Tony and Clint didn't bring their full superhero kits with them to a fancy gathering, and find themselves struggling to deal with Seamstress as a result.
- Lampshaded in Why No One Messes With Celestia where the titular character notes that a lot of ponies doubted her power after she was defeated by Queen Chrysalis. According to the alicorn herself, she had to choose between losing the fight and hoping things would work out or winning but incinerating the entire castle and its inhabitants. Her true power fires a beam of plasma that burns as hot as the sun's core but also requires almost a solid minute of preparation to cast all the spells to protect her surroundings and anyone who isn't her target.
- Flashbacks in "Alive" reveal that this is basically how Belle finally managed to kill Gaston; she had spent a few years forced to act as his dutiful wife once it was made clear she couldn't escape and he would threaten the village if she did get away, but when Gaston actively tried to murder her for failing to give him a son, Belle manages to land a few lucky blows on him because he didn't expect her to still try and fight back. Belle is then able to put some distance between them after running into the forest because Gaston's so drunk he isn't operating at his best, but even then, Belle only actually kills Gaston thanks to a lucky break; as he's crossing an old bridge, Belle is able to use a knife he threw at her earlier to cut the worn support rope holding the bridge in place.
- Spike reflects in Hurt Me that he only beat two Slayers by severely weakening both first. The Slayer he fought during the Boxer Rebellion he'd killed after posing as a soldier and sending troops after her for several days. Against Nikki Wood, he left her sleep deprived by scaring her infant son several times each night for a few days then fought her in a subway car where she couldn't use her weapons effectively. He's fully aware that if he hadn't, he would have been staked in seconds by either one.
- When Lelouch tries to use his victory over Cornelia during the Black Rebellion as why he can defeat her in Saitama in Code Geass: Redo of the Rebellion, C.C. corrects him that he beat Cornelia while she was in the middle of a psychological breakdown, not at her prime.
- In the Facing the Future Series fic "Strength In Numbers", Desiree and her cohorts were able to overwhelm and take Danny captive mostly because his stomach was too full for him to fight.
- In Break Through the Limit, Gohan is taken out of commission right before the final battle with Cell due to contracting the same heart disease that weakened his father.
- Goku in Legend of the Monkey God is considerably stronger than canon, including knowing how to fly and use ki attacks before meeting Bulma. However, when the Pilaf gang steal the dragon balls, they also steal almost all of Goku's and Bulma's supplies. By the time Goku and Bulma are captured in Pilaf's castle, Goku's only had a single sandwich to eat in the last day and a half, leaving him too weak to do anything after blasting a hole in their cell. As a result, Bulma has to save the day by stealing Pilaf's wish.
- Many entries of Masako X - Dragon Ball What-If use these in their scenarios:
- In What If Frieza Turned Good?, Frieza's Golden Frieza form can't reach its original levels of power due to Frieza's being a cyborg; his cybernetics have to be manually upgraded.
- In What If Gine Went With Goku to Earth?, while Gine ensures her son takes his heart medication, he was meant to take it much sooner, and the virus still weakens him enough for Android 19 to get the upper hand.
- In What If Goku Landed at Capsule Corp?, Bad Launch sneezes during her match with Bandages, making her disoriented enough for him to get the upper hand.
- In What if Nappa Turned Good?, Nappa's age gradually gets the better of him, as he's the Saiyan equivalent of an old man, forcing him to need Goten's help against the resurrected King Cold.
- In Better to Reign in Heaven, Stanislaus Braun normally possesses godlike power over the simulation and enough experience in using it to make fighting him a suicide mission. However, in their final confrontation, Tessa Dithers and the Lone Wanderer are able to undermine him by turning his pain receptors back on for the first time in over two hundred years, leaving Braun too debilitated with pain to focus on using his power effectively; as a result, Braun is repeatedly overwhelmed in battle by his own playthings and unable to stop the Lone Wanderer from using the Chinese Invasion Failsafe.
- And Hell Followed With Them: While Assassin is quite powerful, able to fight on par with Berserker, he's limited by the fact that Shirou is his Master, meaning he doesn't have enough mana to battle for very long. This frequently forces him to retreat.
- Fate/Harem Antics:
- Rider gets stabbed with Lancer's Gae Bolg. Since Gae Bolg inflicts wounds that do not heal naturally, the wound hinders her and makes her struggle in her next few fights. It isn't until she has sex with Shirou that she gains enough mana to heal the wound.
- Like in canon, Saber's poor energy supply from Shirou leaves her with poor stamina and unable to use Mana Burst very often, until she replenishes her mana by having sex with Shirou.
- According to Dumbledore in Breath of the Inferno, the only reason Harry beat Voldemort was because the latter was severely weakened, utterly deranged, and acting uncharacteristically stupid. Even so, Voldemort proves capable of casting a dozen spells with a single wave of his wand and Harry only barely wins.
- Daphne Greengrass and the Boy Who Lived;
- Amos basically argues that this applies to Harry’s Quidditch victory over Cedric as Harry had a vastly superior broom, believing that Cedric would have won if he and Harry were competing on a more equal footing.
- Moody says that he deliberately used a weaker version of the Imperius Curse in class to test the students' resistance (although even if this is true he is only shown using it on the Slytherins).
- Holo-Chronicles: Ina is, without question, one of the strongest fighters in the story, and yet, Iofi manages to defeat her pretty handily. According to Word of God, however, this is primarily due to the fact that Ina had no knowledge of Iofi's abilities going into the fight, in which a lack of intel makes her powers particularly nasty to deal with. If Ina did know what she was dealing with, it would've been a total Curb-Stomp Battle in Ina's favor.
- Becoming a True Invader: By the time of her final fight with Tak, Gaz is suffering from fatigue and wounds from earlier fights and has to struggle just to keep up with her. She ultimately wins only thanks to some pragmatic trickery.
- Re: My Hostage, Not Yours: The Valkians land at least one head blow on Gaz while capturing her. The resulting concussion leaves her so disoriented and sick that she can barely function, much less fight back; during the later showdown with the Valkians, this combines with a case of PTSD as she flashes back to having to kill Larb and she freezes up. However, she snaps out of it due to the Queen's taunting of her making her angry enough, pushing aside her physical ailment to curbstomp all of the Mooks that come after her, only being knocked down by the Queen herself.
- Jackie Chan Adventures: Olympian Journey has this pop up during the Poseidon arc. The true Monkey King having been cooped up in Heaven for centuries, along with the spell that the Six-Eared Macaque and Eris cast messing with his powers, means that he's rather rusty. It's implied that even with the power of Poseidon's essence boosting him, the Six-Eared Macaque would be finding the battle against the Monkey King, who's wearing the Armor the Gods, much more difficult if Sun Wukong was at full strength.
- Downplayed in The War Is Far from Over Now. Vision does remarkably well against Ultron and the Chitauri but he still realizes he's nowhere near as effective as he could be because, being only an hour old, Vision barely understands what his powers are, let alone how to use them.
- Invoked in "Stars Will Light the Way" when Strange Supreme ("What If... Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands?") is the Doctor Strange sent to Earth-838 (Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness). When he learns how the Illuminati killed his counterpart, he speculates that this is the reason they're so confident that they can handle Wanda (here possessed by Chthon rather than having gone insane on her own), while Strange Supreme recognises that they only killed his counterpart because 838-Strange let them kill him. His speculation proves accurate when Chthon-in-Wanda attacks the Illuminati; she is able to withstand Black Bolt's initial attack long enough to remove his mouth, and the rest of the Illuminati only survive because Strange Supreme stepped in to protect them and then Xavier sacrificed himself to buy them time to get away.
- Feralnette AU: Chat Noir gets hit by this during Even a Worm Will Turn when attempting to duel White Knight. As it turns out, the sword created by Ladybug's Lucky Charm was a prop sword — something he doesn't realize until the fight begins, putting him on the defensive and making it hard for him to compensate for the unexpected factor.
- Villain Of Your Own Story starts with a literal version: Marinette is ill, so Alya subs in for Ladybug as Scarabella. Unfortunately, she then learns about the Wish and decides they should totally use it, taking advantage of the fact her 'bestie' is sick to forcibly take the Miracle Box from her.
- Mean Rabbit: Momo opts not to eat before her final match, even though she's already low on lipids. This gives Izuku the chance to beat her.
- Black Flames Dance in the Wind: Rise of Naruto
- Deliberately averted when Ino challenges Sakura to a fight. Sakura gives Ino a soldier pill to make sure she's at 100% so she doesn't have an excuse when she loses.Sakura: You're going to be fresh as a daisy when I plant you in the ground.
- Much earlier, Naruto won handily against Zabuza because the latter got too caught up in the fight to remember the gravity seals on his sword weighing him down.
- Deliberately averted when Ino challenges Sakura to a fight. Sakura gives Ino a soldier pill to make sure she's at 100% so she doesn't have an excuse when she loses.
- Eroninja: Tsunade Lampshades this when a team of twenty jonin ambush her for an assassination attempt. While Naruto's concerned, Tsunade declares that the only time he ever saw her fight was actually pathetic by her standards, and proceeds to prove it by taking all twenty down without killing or permanently crippling a single one.
- In The Pride Sakura manages to defeat Tsunade because while the former isn't yet twenty, the latter is sixty and her ultimate technique has aged her closer to eighty. Once Tsunade is rejuvenated to her prime again, making her stronger than ever since she's still an Old Soldier, Sakura compares their spars to when she first started training under Tsunade.
- In Reaching for a Dream Naruto gets ambushed by Orochimaru (who not only has a powerful new body but has also learned Sage Mode) then shortly afterwards Itachi and Kisame come to collect the Kyuubi. While Orochimaru does flee when he realizes they've arrived and Naruto does manage to kill Kisame, Itachi's still alive (though injured) and Naruto's completely out of juice. He's left with no other option than to limp away and hope that either Itachi collapses before he does or help arrives.
- The Somewhat Cracked Mind Of Uchiha Itachi:
- Zig-Zagged with Itachi; while he doesn't have the Mangekyou Sharingan, he also lacks the mortal, debilitating illness that wore him down in Canon.
- Since there was no Uchiha Massacre, Danzo has to make do with just one stolen eye, and his overreliance upon it enables Mizuki and Iruka to take him down once they figure out how to circumvent it.
- Second Wind: Luffy and Zoro, having done Mental Time Travel, are capable of using Haki and are already stronger than most New World Captains. The thing is, they'd be even stronger than that if they weren't in their younger, untrained bodies. While they still know how to do their techniques, their bodies are too weak to handle the full scope of their improved fighting styles. It's explicitly stated that his is the reason why Zoro, despite putting up a much better fight than in canon, still lost to Mihawk at the Baratie.
- Ash's Duskull Spectre in Challenger is eventually revealed to be even older than Agatha but because it never bonded with a human trainer, most of it's power was still locked away in the Distortion World. After a single battle against Agatha's Mega Gengar, Spectre evolves into Dusclops and Agatha comments that once it has access to it's full power, Spectre will be a match for any of her pokemon.
- Pokémon Reset Bloodlines features a few examples of this:
- In Chapter 18, two of Misty's Pokémon were defeated by a wild Golduck. This happened because she was so worried about the possibility of Iris getting together with Ash that her head wasn't in the battle. In the same chapter, Ash loses a round against Paul because he's too angry to be focused, because Paul blasted Ash's Primeape into the sky, possibly with fatal consequences.
- In Chapter 21, the Team Rocket trio is able to capture a criminal named Felgrand since all of his Pokémon had just been defeated by Ash.
- In the Whitney Interlude, one night owl of a trainer tries to invoke this with Whitney by challenging her at four in the morning, thinking she'll be too tired to battle him at full capacity. It doesn't work. If anything, it backfired by making Whitney angrier and more motivated to beat him.
- Giselle in the Pokémon Tech Interlude lost rather easily to Ash, who despite being technically a rookie at the time, has knowledge about her from the previous timeline.
- In his own gaiden, Ash's Charmander constantly lost his battles under Damian due to a mix of overworking himself and Damian not bothering to properly feed and heal him.
- Lampshaded by Ranma in Happenstance Gone Right that the first time he and Shampoo fought she'd been tired, had no idea how he fought, and severely underestimated him while Ranma was rested, had watched her fights, and knew she was a strong fighter. Now that they're sparring after knowing each other for some time, she'll do much better.
- In Imperial Servant, the titular pressure point technique is an ancient Amazon punishment for martial artists guilty of rape that has the double effect of making a male unable to have an erection and severely reducing their physical abilities. As Ranma has been under its effects since he was twelve (though not because of Genma), every defeat he suffered since then retroactively falls under this.
- Cinderella And Prince Charming:
- Atlas is able to hold onto Cinder after the Battle of Beacon because her injuries are so severe that she can't use her full Maiden powers.
- Jaune's fight against General Ironwood. Ironwood has lost his cybernetic arm, lost his weapon, is injured and exhausted from two major fights, and completely out of Aura. He still almost completely curb-stomps Jaune, and Jaune only wins with cleverness and observation.
- Jaune does fairly well against Neo in In the Kingdom's Service despite her being overwhelmingly the superior fighter because the car she was standing on a moment ago exploded, leaving her injured, deaf, and physically unbalanced.
- In Darth Vader: Hero of Naboo, after Darth Vader finds himself in the past, both Plagueis and Sidious have their ability to use the Force temporarily ruined by the Dark Side flowing out of Vader and returning to the galaxy at large, causing them to sometimes have too much or too little power to work with.
- In Shadows of the Future, the time-displaced Obi-Wan admit that he basically suffered a self-inflicted version of this when he lost his duel with Anakin on Mustafar, acknowledging that he didn’t actually want to fight Anakin so wasn’t putting his full focus into the confrontation. By contrast, when he confronts Palpatine (Palpatine expecting him to be an apprentice on the verge of being knighted rather than a Jedi Master with years of experience fighting a war), Obi-Wan does a far better job, ending with him forcing Palpatine to surrender by performing a move that only didn’t cut Palpatine’s head off because Obi-Wan stopped at the last moment.
- In Faded Blue, Lapis is unable to defeat Garnet when confronted at the fountain because the most readily available body of liquid consists of Rose's healing tears, which instantly heal whatever damage she deals. Lapis herself quickly realizes this and decides to retreat, but Garnet manages to grab and poof her when she tries to fly Steven and Blue Pearl to safety as well.
- Kara in Daughter of Fire and Steel ends up getting captured by the military due to the fact that she was still adjusting to her new Super-Senses at the time and was suffering from Sensory Overload, causing the loud noises made by the military's weaponry to hurt her until she was knocked unconscious.
- Optimus in TFA Kaleidoscope doesn't do so well against Pyro-Goblin since his reformatting at the car factory had him rebuilt using weaker Earth metals (it's noted that even the police drones have more durability), plus he starts out the fight with a worn out, powerless battle-axe and the entire fight was in a cramped tunnel where he didn't really have any room to move about.
- In The Land of What Might-Have-Been, it is revealed that Elphaba suffered from a minor variant of this in her first fight with 'Alphaba', an alternate version of herself with virtual immortality and over fifty years' more experience of using magic than Elphaba herself. In Elphaba's first direct fight with her counterpart, Elphaba had just survived a particularly gruelling battle with a creature that is essentially the manifestation of Frexspar's rage and loathing, where Alphaba came to the fight fresh and ready to attack. When the two face for a second time with both of them starting the fight refreshed and alert, although Alphaba still has more raw power and experience, both of them starting the fight at their peak allows Elphaba to withstand Alphaba's initial assault and provoke her into a rage where she will make mistakes and let Elphaba get past her defences.
- InThe Shattering of Oz, this basically applies to the Ruby Slippers; by the time Dorothy gets the chance to put them on, the Nome King's experiments have drained a significant portion of their magical energy, allowing Dorothy to heal the worst of the damage his invasion did to Oz without being driven insane by that power herself.
