Times where Worf Had the Flu in Literature.
- Codex Alera: The Awakened Vord Queen offhandedly mentions in First Lord's Fury to Invidia that normally, Carna should've been completely consumed by the Vord in less than five years after she was accidentally awakened by Tavi and Kitai in the Wax Forest. However, her being Intrigued by Humanity has caused each of her Daughter Queens to try and kill her, with her being seen as "defective." This severely cripples the Vord's strategic abilities since the Awakened Queen can't rapidly create multiple Daughter Queens to properly manage their forces, ultimately giving Alera and her newfound allies a fighting chance.
- Discworld:
- In Men at Arms Lance-Constable Cuddy brags in one scene about his axe-throwing prowess; he's so good that he won the last contest he was in by a landslide, aiming at a target behind him, while he was sick with a bilious attack. Right now he's healthy as a horse. So don't mess with him.
- Played for Laughs in Going Postal: Reacher Gilt hires Mr Gryle, a banshee hitman, to kill his business rival Moist von Lipwig. Mr Gryle's supernatural fighting skill and awesome killing physique are talked up hugely; So, why are Moist and his subordinate Stanley able to beat him? Simple: Mr Gryle made the mistake of snacking on an Ankh-Morpork pigeon before the fight, which gave him food poisoning.
- The Dragon Business: A big part of the reason that Cullin and Affonyl manage to kill the first real dragon they encounter is that it has a Balloon Belly from eating several knights who tried to kill it over the last few days.
- The Dresden Files: In Battle Ground, the Battle of Chicago takes place near midsummer, where Winter Queen Mab is at her weakest and thus isn't as much of a Physical Goddess as she normally would be. She's still the most dangerous combatant on the side of the Accords who is engaged in the entire battle, and her apparent impending death after she is taken out by the Fantastic Nuke the other side is using turns out to be a Batman Gambit to take their opponents by surprise with the rest of the forces of Winter and Summer.
- The giant from The Faerie Queene is introduced subduing the Redcrosse Knight and capturing him, but only because Redcrosse had drunk from the a cursed fountain that fatigued him. This gives King Arthur a chance to come in and save the day without making our protagonist looking too weak.
- Harry Potter:
- Alastor Moody suffers this a lot. At his prime he was the toughest and most successful auror (dark wizard hunter) of all time, but in present, he seems to get defeated a lot, apparently due to his skills having reduced after years of retirement and after being imprisoned and malnourished for a year.
- Neville Longbottom is eventually revealed to have been using his father's wand for the first five years of his Hogwarts education. While he does come into his own during book five, it's noted as being the result of a lot of hard work and in the previous four books, Neville was generally bottom of the class.
- As Rowling clarifies, this is the reason why Lupin and Tonks died against Bellatrix and Dolohov. Lupin had been spending months not fighting as he had to look after his pregnant wife while Tonks had just recovered from giving birth. Had they been at their primes, they would have at least survived, but months not duelling had left them out of practice and they subsequently and tragically died, leaving their infant son an orphan.
- It's indicated that this is why McGonagall, Kingsley, and Slughorn couldn't finish off Voldemort, even thought Voldemort was using an unmastered Elder Wand and they were protected by Harry. Voldemort was fresh while the three had been fighting for hours and clearly battered. They did fight him to a stalemate, but they weren't able to win and eventually Voldemort managed to force them back. Needless to say, this is clearly for canon purposes as it has been already established it had to be Harry who kills Voldemort.
- Inheritance Cycle
- In Brisingr, Paolini has made certain that Eragon has not had time to recuperate to his full strength since achieving his super-human power.
- At the end of Eldest, Murtagh defeats Eragon while the latter is exhausted from battle. When this pair fought a second time Eragon was fully rested, at full power, and had thirteen elves assisting him, but still only managed to drive Murtagh off thus implying that the loser's exhaustion from the first battle was a non-factor.
- Kindling Ashes: Corran losses his second bout in a tournament because his father demanded that he use his non-dominant hand. His reasoning was a "true warrior is equally skilled with both". When he gets into a real fight with raiders later in the story, he kills several of them without injury.
- In the Nightside series, the major players aren't instantly overwhelmed during the Angel War because the angels are weakened by the very nature of the place. The first time John and his allies successfully beat down the Harrowing, it's because his Enemies' homunculi are weakened from having to break through the wards that protect Strangefellows, some of which were laid upon the bar by Merlin himself.
- Reign of the Seven Spellblades: Main character Oliver Horn has a reputation as one of the finest swordsmen in his grade year, though few know the true scope of his abilities. He has, to date, only lost once to his class rival Tullio Rossi, while recovering from nearly dying from a Phlebotinum Overdose that caused his body to unnaturally grow slightly older and feeling uncoordinated as a result. It's so unexpected that Rossi has to frantically defend himself from Oliver's friends when they accuse him of cheating.
- In the fourth Riverworld novel The Magic Labyrinth, master swordsmen Cyrano de Bergerac and Sir Richard Burton take time out of a running battle to fight a (rematch) duel. Both are itching to see who's better, but they're both weary from battle, both slightly wounded, and have both been drinking to boot, and they're on a rapidly sinking ship (they really wanted this rematch). In the end, Burton draws first blood, and offers to help Cyrano to his feet... only for Cyrano to be shot by one of Burton's companions, who had no idea the duel was a gentlemanly one. Burton later (and during the fight too) wonders what the fight would have been like had they both been at their peak condition.
- Slapshots: The Stars beat the undefeated Penguins during an early season game in the first book but are very nervous about whether they can do so again during the championship game in the fourth book. The Penguins were overconfident, playing on lumpy ice they had no experience skating on, and were tired during the second half of the game due to exerting themselves too hard in the first half out of a panicked desire to compensate for their disadvantages. None of this is true for the championship game, and while the Stars have improved throughout the season, the Penguins are harder to beat.
- A Song of Ice and Fire: The fight between Brienne of Tarth and Jaime Lannister. Jaime is regarded as possibly the greatest swordsman in all of Westeros and is defeated by Brienne. However, while Brienne is an extremely capable fighter in her own right, something that even Jaime notes during the fight, Jaime has also been a captive for around a year, has been malnourished, out of practice, and is still in manacles when he fights her. Thanks to these, Brienne is able to triumph and even she expresses surprise at how good of a fight he still put up despite all those disadvantages, believing that if he had been at full strength, there would not have been a single knight in the Seven Kingdoms who would have been a match for him. Of course, Brienne herself had two arrows in her back at the time...
- Happens twice in Warrior Cats:
- In The Darkest Hour, Tigerstar sends Blackfoot to kill Stonefur, who he has in captivity. Blackfoot defeats Stonefur, but only because Tigerstar had been starving him for several days, and because Stonefur was tired from fighting Darkstripe just minutes earlier.
- In The Lost Warrior, Graystripe is defeated easily by a kittypet named Duke. However, Duke defeated Graystripe so easily because he had been captured by humans and stuck inside a house for two months, leaving him out of practice.
