Basic Trope: The superpower of being abnormally/super-humanly strong.
- Straight: Bob can throw cars around with ease.
- Exaggerated:
- When Bob does push-ups, the world is pushed downwards.
- Every time Bob takes a step, instead of him moving forward, the Earth rotates backward.
- Bob is so strong that he can shatter a diamond with a single punch.
- Bob's strength is infinite and powerful, being able to be left unaffected by possible abilities that otherwise affect his strength, tear through space-time anomalies, and the list goes on.
- Downplayed: Bob is slightly stronger than the world’s strongest normal human.
- Justified:
- Bob is a Human Alien, a Hollywood Cyborg, or is otherwise a non-human which needs superhuman strength to survive.
- Bob wears a strength enhancing exoskeleton.
- Bob either is or has the DNA of a typically strong animal like a bear, rhino or gorilla.
- Bob is capable of using all of his muscle mass.
- Bob has a power that can greatly amplify his strength.
- Bob worked incredibly hard to obtain his great strength.
- Inverted:
- Bob is much weaker than he should be.
- Bob can make other people weaker.
- Subverted:
- It looks like Bob has Super-Strength, but then it turns out he was telekinetic all along.
- While Bob's strength is not immensely high, he is still strong enough to lift and shatter boulders, lift and overturn small to medium-sized vehicles, and most others that his level of strength is compatible with.
- Double Subverted: It turns out that telekinetics can only lift as much as they could their own arms, which still puts Bob in the super-humanly strong category.
- Parodied: Bob Does Not Know His Own Strength, and regularly breaks anything he touches.
- Zig Zagged:
- Averted:
- No-one has this superpower within the work.
- Bob only has Peak Human Strength, therefore making him a champion-class weightlifter.
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded:
- “Sometimes I forget that things have weight.”
- “You’re stronger than you look… and you look really strong.”
- Invoked: Bob gets cybernetic implants to become stronger.
- Exploited:
- Being stronger means you can carry the really big weapons.
- Bob puts on a pair of roller-skates, and becomes the most powerful dump-truck known to man.
- Defied: ???
- Discussed: “He’s got the archetypal powerset, right? ‘More powerful than a locomotive’ and all that, amirite?"
- Conversed: ???
- Implied: Bob is Ambiguously Human, but we never see him do anything that’s technically superhuman: only things requiring great strength.
- Deconstructed:
- Bob doesn’t even look human due to all the work needed to make him super strong. He can barely touch anything or anyone due to fear of breaking them, and when he tried to put his powers to useful work, he either drives himself into the ground or can’t get a hold of whatever he’s carrying without destroying it.
- Bob doesn't have the toughness to back up his strength and thus can only use a fraction of it without tearing himself apart.
- Bob is naturally so strong that there's no way for him to properly exercise. As a result, he looks thin and scrawny instead of bulky and strong.
- It is actually very difficult to balance a big heavy car on top of a small human. Bob may be strong enough to move cars, but he can't pick them up and carry them around without falling over.
- Reconstructed: The procedure first used on Bob has an improved version used on later superhumans that allows them to live mostly normal lives, at the loss of some strength. Bob is given "healthcare" benefits to deal with the downsides of his immense strength as an apology to him being the Flawed Prototype.
- Played For Laughs:
- Played For Drama: Bob accidentally kills a loved one due to his strength.
Back to Super-Strength
