This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Looney Toons: Actually, Lex Luthor's baldness motivation was a Retcon, created in "Superboy" comics in the 1950s if I'm not mistaken. Lex, when he originally appeared in the comics, was a redhead; in one of his earliest appearances, though, he was somehow confused with a bald henchman (I would presume by the letterer on that issue, although I don't know the entire story). After that point he was "officially" bald, and as with so many other things in the Superman mythos, explanations were backformed as needed.
Ununnilium: And it's still not quite right; the thing was, Superboy was careless when he saved Lex, and in addition to the whole bald thing destroyed an irreplacable experiment into the creation of life. Lex was actually justified to some extent at that point.
Devil's Advocate: Are there examples of aliens accidentally giving someone superpowers? Because when they do it intentionally, that seems to be covered by Touched by Vorlons.
Ununnilium: Green Lantern is a good example. It wasn't accidental, but it wasn't quite intentional, either -- the old, alien Green Lantern had been shot down and needed to find a replacement, and summoned the new, human one to him because he was one of a very few "men without fear" on Earth. He didn't even get training for a fair bit. Also, for instance, Animal Man was originally given his powers by an exploding alien spaceship (with the later Morrison version being much more Touched by Vorlons).
LTR I think the "aliens accidentaly gave me powers" is a particular subclass of Imported Alien Phlebotinum , especialy if the recipient has to work out how his/her powers function without any help or insight by the granting aliens, because they really didn't grant them, they just kinda left them lying around for Joe Schmoe to stumble on.
Ununnilium: Good point. I think there's a bit of crossover space here.
There was definitely an episode of Earthworm Jim dedicated to making fun of this trope. I don't know the title, though. --Document N
Ununnilium: Taking this out, because his creation wasn't an accident:
- A webcomic example that turns out badly; in El Goonish Shive, a cloning experiment left Vlad a monster, who almost killed himself when he tried to become human again.
Akei Arkay: Andrew Martin of The Bicentennial Man didn't get his unusual intelligence through an accident (in fact, we never do learn why he's different) and so isn't an example of this trope. The "kid typing randomly on a keyboard" bit was from another Isaac Asimov short, "Lenny", and resulted in a mentally deficient robot. Entry is being changed to reflect this.
