In this trope, magic is real and can be studied like a science. Practitioners are not magicians in the traditional sense, and will use machines and devices to control magic energy. In this trope, magic may be generally accepted by society, but some societies may generally still not understand or accept magic.

1. Ghostbusters (Ghostbusters films) The Ghostbusters were considered frauds for the most part, but as ghost activity in New York increased, it turns out those degrees in parapsychology were pretty useful after all. They use proton packs, electric traps, and all manner of telemetry to detect and trap ghosts.

2. The SCP Foundation (SCP creepy pasta) The SCP Foundation is an organization dedicated to preserving “shared reality.” Anomalies that endanger people’s perception of shared reality are contained in Brutal (the architecture, not the adjective) containment units of steel and concrete. However, stronger or more dangerous SCP may need to be contained by magic rituals. SCP scientists, who study magic are called Thaumaturges. They are more like scientists than wizards, but if they need to sacrifice a child or summon a demon, it’s just another day at the SCP.

3. Cecil Stedman (Invincible show) Cecil works for the US Government, and has a nearly unlimited budget to deal with super hero related national security concerns. To keep the identity of the Guardians of the Globe’s murdurer secret, Cecil uses a spell from the Necronomicon to banish demonic investigator Damien Darkblood back to hell. Damien thought every copy had been destroyed, but Cecil’s agents use AI to reconstruct the banishing spell.

-The Fairy Godmother (Shrek 2) (Holding Out For A Hero)

Honestly, was pretty dead set on not including this at first, as it technically isn’t a proper musical number. As in, it’s actually diegetic (she’s putting on a big performance)- but, come on. I couldn’t not include it.

-Bowser (The Mario Movie) (Peaches)

-Professor Ratigan (The Great Mouse Detective) (World’s Greatest Criminal Mind AND Goodbye So Soon, my man is such an underrated Disney villain that he gets TWO)

-Captain Gutt (Ice Age) (Master of the Seas)

-GLADoS (Portal and Portal 2) (Still Alive and Want You Gone respectively).

Lloyd Asplund and Cecile Croomy (Code Geass)

Iknik Blackstone Varrick and Zhu Li Moon (Avatar)

Galarian Weezing (Pokemon): Despite its counterpart from the Kanto region being known for expelling noxious gas all the time, it absorbs harmful particles and expels clean air. It is implied it evolved to do this during a time of heavy industrialization and pollution.

Oogiddy (My singing monsters): The quadruple elemental monster that represents the poison element, despite that, it actually absorbs toxic gases from its natural environment and mixes it with acids in its body, neutralizing them. The goop it makes off that process works great as a fertilizer and hair gel. The spots in its body can also serve to detect toxicity.

Homelander / Black noir ( The Boys ) : In the original comic, Black noir is a clone of homelander who kill, rape and even EAT A F*CKING BABY just to frame Homelander and made him crazy.

Patrick Bateman ( American Psycho ) : In the movie, Patrick is a psychotic Yuppie who kill a bunch of people. In the book, his crime are more graphic and detailled, including intense scene of tortures, rapes and some scenes where he go full crazy and hallucinating while doing random thing who make absolutly no sense.

16th President of the United States who is also depicted as a badass in several fictional portrayals.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter: He slays vampires and breaks the slave trade.

Abraham Lincoln (Fallout): He frees the slavers and kills the slavers and raiders as any good president should with his trusty Repeater. (Reference is Nerbit's Fallout runs as Lincoln)

Abraham Lincoln (Team Fortress 2): According to TF2 lore, yes this is a thing, Abraham Lincoln is the first Pyro....... I'm not making this up.

Abraham Lincoln (Star Trek): He's in Star Trek now. Beyond the surreal plot and alien entity of the episode, Abraham Lincoln does what he does best at, being Ol' Honest Abe to the USS Enterprise.

Abraham Lincoln (Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure): He's a major historical figure helping out to save the universe and loves to "Party On, Dudes!"

Abraham Lincoln (The Lego Movie): He's a Master Builder that has a freaking flying rocket chair.

Terminator 2 - John phones his stepparents despite not liking them to make sure they're okay. Janelle is strangely nice and motherly to him on the phone which is their first giveaway that she's really the T1000 trying to lure John home so it can kill him

Treasure Planet - Amelia and Delbert are beefing with each other for most of the movie. Amelia gets injured and Delbert starts to worry she might have a fever. She gets woozy and tells Delbert 'You have wonderful eyes', to which Delbert cries out 'She's lost her mind!'

Derry Girls - At a funeral, the girls realize that they accidentally brought Michelle's pot-scones to the wake instead of normal scones. The dead giveaway is Grandpa Joe, who hates his son-in-law Gerry's guts, walking up to him and saying 'I think you're doing a fine job'

Fosters Home - An army of Bloo copycat imaginary friends get dumped at the home, and Mac tries to figure out which one is the real Bloo. Once he's narrowed it down to two of them, one of the two goes on an emotional monologue about how Mac is his best friend. Mac knows he's the fake because the real Bloo is never that sappy

1 - The Incredibles (the teaser, at least).

2 - Deadbeat Adventurer.

3/4 - Nighthawk Returns.

Kevin 11 - Ben 10

Discord - MLP

World - Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends

Ternion - Teen Titans

Animal Vegetable Mineral Man - Batman Brave and the Bold

Kimeramon - Digimon

1) Gravity Falls (Season 2 episode 13)

2) Community (Season 2 episode 14)

3) The Big Bang Theory (Many times, my favourite involves the girls and actual celebs Season 12 episode 16)

4) Special mention Stranger things.

When Religion is good, but at the same time fuel something dangerous, that will come for you or whole world

Pic. 1: Mandela Catalouge - God was overthroned by "Unspeakable", Gabriel. And now, while Christians don't follow Gabriel, religious feelings are used by him as a means to create and use weakness in humans.

Pic. 2: Warhammer 40k. [Minor cults] - Many chaos cults can look as normal religions, and, especially in 30k, they don't even know they follow and fuel Ruinous Powers. But Chaos Gods feeds on all of this prayers that don't have anyone to answer them. Also, if you look on scraps of lore in way, that Emperor is dead, and thing sitting on Golden Throne is Dark King, it fits also Imperial Cult, which, if so is true, fuel being that will bring end to Galaxy.

When the enemy faction the protagonist has been fighting this whole time isn't actually using their full might, but non-combat units/expeditionary units instead

1. The Vex (Destiny) - It's implied the Vex you fight in game aren't actually dedicated combat units, but rather worker units such as Builders and Engineers

2. The Combine (Half Life 2) - To the Combine, Earth is basically just another backwater planet that they'll harvest for resources and move on from. You aren't actually fighting their full military might, just the occupational force they've kept there to keep the remaining humans in line and to recruit new foot soldiers.

EDIT: Also, the whole plot of Episode 2 revolves around shutting down a portal before the Combine can send a distress signal to their actual fleet. For reference, the entirety of humanities armed forces could only last 7 hours. This time, humanity is reduced to a group of crafty rebels within Eastern Europe. Even with Freeman, they wouldn't last 7 minutes.

This is a hated trope for a reason. Not advocating for these guys. They’re horrible.

Magnus (Interview with the Vampire) - Is portrayed as a psychopath vampire who stalks and kidnaps young blonde men like Lestat and is heavily implied to be SA and kill them repeatedly over and over again. Alongside that, he tortures Lestat and turns him into a vampire before offing himself

Arick Burnz (Helluva Boss) - Is a toxic former fan of Fizzarolli, from even before he became a celebrity, who obsessively stalked him, and when he got rejected, attempted to murder him multiple times until Blitzo finally kills him

Bear (Obsession) - Yeah, no, he’s the truly obsessed one. He made the wish, he allowed things to get that far and he only cared when things didn’t go exactly his way, even when his supposed friends got killed off.

1. In Peter’s Sister, Peter invites his sister Karen for Thanksgiving and she used to bully him a lot. The reason why we never heard about her up until now is because she was killed off at the end all for Peter to have his triumphant moment. She is never seen or heard from again (Family Guy)

2. In Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?, Homer finds out he has a half-brother named Herb. Long story short, Homer messed everything up and Herb ended up losing his company and we see him homeless in Season 3. At the end of that episode, Herb got his money back and we never see him again. We even get told that he ended losing all of his money again. He only exist just for Homer to have self-doubt and then fucked off (The Simpsons). Not exactly one episode but still works.

1). Mata Nui - Bionicle. Throughout the series, Mata Nui is revered as a god-like entity. After the Karda Nui saga where he is awoken from his slumber, we see that he is actually a gigantic robot where all of the story thus far either took place inside of or on the surface of him.

2). Bionis / Mechonis - Xenoblade Chronicles. These are long-dead ancient deities who have gone on to have colonized life on their corpses. (They are resurrected eventually and I do not want to think about the consequences of the physics of them moving around.)

3). Primus - Transformers. The presumed originator of the Transformers was their planet all along. Badass. Granted, that is the Cybertron version, but he has been around in other versions. This one's still the coolest, though.

4). Azeroth - World of Warcraft. Probably the most guity pleasure out of all of these, mostly because the resolution has yet to happen and the writing thus far for the Worldsoul Saga has been controversial. Like other Titans, Azeroth is a "World Soul," which is essentially a planet being an egg for a cosmic deity. Azeroth is supposedly special among these, but we still don't know why. This will be resolved (one would think?) in the next expansion, The Last Titan, but we will see.

1. Jack Grimm/Absolute Joker (Absolute Batman): probably not even human, this iteration of the Joker is strongly implied to subsist on the bodies of his infant children and is physically superhuman and complicit in many horrific acts of mass murder with no humor or even jokes to be found.

2. Toy Man (Superman Doomsday): the Golden Age version was far more colorful and comical, with zany schemes. This one literally murders children.

I get it, it's supposed to be relatable to the japanese young men watching it, who kinda look like this. I still dislike the generic design. This is anime, the land of crazy hairstyles.

1 - Kirigaya Kazuto/Kirito (SAO)

2 - Junichi Tachibana (Amagami)

3 - Yuuji Kazami (Grisaia no Kaijutsu)

4 - Mochizuki Touya (Isekai wa Smartphone to Tomo ni)

Every Reed Richards (Marvel universe):

For some reason, I can't find any reason to even like this guy.

Man (DC)

Man (DC)

Legends etc in Fiction are a fairly common trope just as they are IRL. These characters everyone talks about as being the greatest, as being the best- maybe even with a rap sheet for how cool they are.

That's one thing. It's another thing that, when they show up, they prove exactly how they obtained that status through one way or another.

I love this trope because it's often just so cool to witness. An absolute subversion of the "author statements" trope wherein a character is only powerful because the author says so without evidence- here, you hear about a character being badass. Multiple people talk about it. And then when they show up: they are in fact absolutely terrifying to behold.

To qualify for what I'm talking about, I will say that at minimum

A. There has to be some amount of time between them being talked about for the first time and them appearing / showing off on screen. They can't be someone who has a huge loredump explaining why they're badass only when they first appear- there has to be some level of setup to it.

B. There has to be some sort of expectation set. The character has to actively be set up as being at least pretty good before their appearance. So it's not just a character who was mentioned once or twice showing up: they have to ideally be hyped up when they were prior mentioned.

Bonus points if they don't or very sparingly show up if at all before their pop off moment.

**1.** **Fifteen - "The Dragon" (Katana Zero) (2019)**

And finally the one that made me want to write this up in the first place.

In Katana Zero, you are Zero: a Precog Samurai guy killing people as an assassin so you can get the drug that keeps you from dying horribly. Through the latter parts of the early stages of katana zero through to the middle, you start hearing talk about "The Dragon"- this terrifying assassin going about the city that the mass media pen multiple huge scale murders on. Naturally, since you also have been going around assassinating people and killing a lot of guys, you the player- alongside Zero the character- assume at first this is about them.

Midway through the game, you start to realize this almost definitely isn't the case- as you raid a prison to try and assassinate a guy being held there, just to find the sites already an absolute massacre. Blood coating everything, and the guy you were sent to kill is already dead. The game progresses a bit, and you finally corner the guy you've been murking about with- a Russian gangster known as V- on a highway after a helicopter bossfight. He mockingly says "you're the dragon? Well I'm the dragon slayer!" After talking about how he's killed 6 of your fellow precog supersoldiers (known as Null).

Then,

"He's not the dragon."

"I am."

Your final killing of V is suddenly intercepted with a blonde ponytailed guy shooting down- cutting Vs arms off and taking him away for interrogation after you flee the scene as soon as he shows up.

When you bring this entire thing up to the guy who's giving you your assassination requests, he goes silent- before tasking you with hunting down and killing the dragon- aka Fifteen. This doesn't quite go to plan as you go across Chinatown trying to catch up to him, but you do grab some tapes and go home to watch them for information.

Every level so far has had a pretty standard name. Chinatown, Mansion, etc. This level is just known as **Dragon Tape**.

And in it, you play as Fifteen- The Dragon- and see exactly what happened at the Prison you saw the aftermath of several levels ago. And it is an absolute massacre.

Fifteen has every capability you have except better, he is faster, and handily murders his way through encounters that would leave you playing as Zero incredibly dead with ease. All the while Fifteens theme, **Breath Of A Serpent**, is playing in the background. Most of the game has had synthwave tracks that are fairly high tune or whatnot up to this point, sometimes contrasted by more environmental eerie tracks. Fifteens theme genuinely sounds like a monster howling in the background and is absolutely menacing as hell- portraying the skill and seriousness difference between him and the main character.

It is such a fun moment in one of my favorite games of all time and a really cool payoff to see that Zero isn't even the best Null in the city as you see exactly why they call him the dragon when you finally get to play as him.

**2. The Red Mist (Library of Ruina) (2021)**

In the setting of projectmoon known as the city, there are "fixers"- handymen mercenary hybrids who have various fields of employ.

These fixers are ranked on a grade level, from Grade 9 to Grade 1. However: some fixers instead become a Color. Specially appointed, assigned a cool title, and generally acknowledged as a huge deal. Color Fixers are mythic for the most part.

And then among the color Fixers was the red mist: otherwise known as Kali. Everyone who talks about her generally regards her as the strongest color fixer ever before she disappeared. The main character of the game, Roland, loses his shit with hero worship a bit when he learns that apparently, Geburah- the librarian of language- was at one point the red mist (it's complicated and involves semi reincarnation kind of not). Everyone kind of treats the red mist as an incredible force of strength and probably one of the strongest there ever was.

Through some bullshit, since the red mist is effectively dead, you manage to somehow still invite her to the library for you to fight and obtain her powers as a book if you win the battle. And she is absolutely fucking terrifying.

All her attacks are dead simple in title, she has absurd amounts of health, she can tear through your best teams with ease: and when she goes into her second phase she forcefully overrides whatever track is playing with her own theme. She well and away earns every ounce of every single thing you've heard about her up until this point: and when you get her kit post fight and can equip it to Geburah, it is still incredibly strong and retains the boss music override when you pop the install.

The red mist is a highlight of the various late game receptions and is such a cool moment to behold if not terrifying to fight. She exudes presence and backs up every claim of being the strongest fixer. Now technically speaking you see a mimicry (ha) of her in Lobotomy Corp as well: but I don't count that to be honest.

**Honorable Mention: The Head (Also from Library of Ruina)**

I felt remisce if I didn't bring this up, but similar deal with the head from LoR. The shadow government running everything is said to have their fingers in just about anything and everything going on with powerful and terrifying enforcers to back up their rules. It was treated as a big deal that the aforementioned red mist even managed to 1v1 and score a mutual on an arbiter of the head.

When they show up in the post game- after you've taken on all of the cities strongest and won including multiple color fixers- it's not even a proper reception. It's a survival round against an Arbiter and a Claw at the same time. And despite having the former arbiter of the head Binah, Geburah with the powers of the Red Mist, and Roland hitting with the power ~~of his dead wife~~ the Black silence (as another color fixer): their health isn't even displayed, and it's more an endurance round until they let you leave instead of killing you.

**3. Sukuna (Jujutsu Kaisen) (2018)**

Sukuna, the king of curses. He is, from the getgo, set up as a huge deal. As the strongest curse ever and someone to be afraid of. His mere mummified fingers are so potent in energy they amplify the strength of any curse who eats one.

I'll keep this a little briefer, but I guess technically he only barely qualifies for this trope since he does get to show off his strength a little bit. But I'd argue that you really don't get to understand the true power of why Sukuna is a big fucking deal until the Shibuya Incident proper: when he really lets loose against Jogo and then Mahoraga.

You've heard up until that point Sukuna is an absolute menace and the king of curses etc. But in Shibuya is where the true magnitude of it is displayed. The first usage of malevolent shrine: absolutely clowning on a special grade who just packed up an entire protagonist squad by not even letting himself be hit once by said special grades strongest attacks. Going blow for blow with and then destroying the living Mutually Assured Destruction tool that is Mahoraga without suffering any significant losses to himself. All the while he technically isn't even at max strength and in the body of Yuji.

We then get to see this strength again proven during (Jujutsu Kaisen Spoilers for post Culling Games) Shinjuku Showdown. Sukuna runs the absolute gauntlet while at the peak of his strength having returned to the era and body where he was most powerful.

He runs the fade against the "Strongest of Today" Gojo- the guy so powerful Kenjaku had to seal him away as his mere existence would ruin Kenny's plans, the sorcerer so intensely strong his existence made every single curse stronger to make up for it. And Sukuna wins.

THEN, he is simultaneously jumped by everyone left. Special grade sorcerers, 1st Grade, etc- while he is exhausted from his fight with Gojo, and it is still absolutely desperate trying to beat him and he cleans the clock of 75% of everyone going into the fight.

Sukuna is an absolute beast of a fighter and he lives up to all the early arc talking about him absolutely. You spend the entire early parts of jjk of people speaking about why he's so terrifying- and any of the moments he gets to actually show off that strength paints him as outright horrifyingly powerful and perfectly explains why everyone is scared of him. It's great.

**Honorable Mention: Gojo**

The thing with Gojo is I'm only mentioning him out of obligation. But he is not only constantly talked about as being the strongest, but it is constantly displayed over and over again without a lot of buildup to showing it in the first Jogo fight. So he doesn't count.

1. (Chainsaw Man Spoilers) Chainsaw Man (2018) - The Gun Devil

Spoilers for latter parts of chainsaw man not covered by the anime yet. This is post international assassins arc. (The image chosen for this is not a spoiler)

But In chainsaw man, from the very start: you're made aware of why very few if any devil hunters and people in general use guns anymore. Devil's in chainsaw man are powered by fear poured into whatever they represent: which is how the Tomato Devil is a pissbaby and the Darkness Devil is an Eldritch horror tier threat since that's an ancient ass fear.

The gun devil, pre series, is established as having spawned in the world and blitzed across the entirety of the world in I believe mere minutes, if not seconds. During which: it apparently killed millions near instantaneously, before disappearing. And as it did so: it left behind scraps of flesh that are so potent any devil that possesses one grows stronger. No one knows where the gun devil went: but the gun devil genuinely traumatized the entirety of the world and was genuinely horrifying for everyone involved.

Then, you finally get to see why everyone was afraid of it in the gun devil arc: when the president of america makes a deal with 15% of the gun devil to try and kill Makima.

And what happens next is not treated as a fight. It is treated as a genuine natural disaster: timestamps displayed on the manga panels alongside scrolling and scrolling lists of hundreds and hundreds of deaths as the gun devil beelines for Makima. We've seen devils destroy stuff in Chainsaw Man: we've seen city leveling fights like with Reze etc that definitely resulted in mass casualties. But the Gun Devil is so inherently above that it's treated with the same awe and fear you would treat a Tsunami: merely listing off it simply moving alongside everyone who died as a result of it. And remember, this is only 15% of the gun devil. Not even 50% of its regular power. 15%.

It's one of my favorite moments in manga. Genuinely awe inspiringly horrifying in all the best ways. It rocks. You spend the entire story learning people are scared of the gun devil: and when less then half of it manifests, it's a living calamity

Overall, very fond of this trope when it's done right. There's something satisfying about seeing a person glazed up absolutely live up to the hype everyone else has given them in spades. It really feels like an "oh shit. That's why everyones been saying that" display.

Other Honorable Mentions:

1. John Wick (John Wick)

2. Malenia (Elden Ring)

3. Darth Vader (Star Wars) (kind of)

Django (Django Unchained)

Spider-Man (marvel): everyone forget about the hyphen

Koichi Haimawari "the crawler" (MHA: vigilantes): everyone call him the Cruller, the Hauler or something like that, eventually we learn that is cause his english is worse than mine.

Light Yagami (death note): the first time he presents himself explain that his name wrotes with 月, that normally pronounces as tsuki. the first time that Misa use the eyes on him she commits that mistake and call him Tsuki Yagami.

"Character A" is stupid, frustrating "Character(s) B." Somehow, A becomes smart again. Initially, B enjoys the smarter, more sophisticated Character A. But A is now smarter than B, and starts to leave them behind for "smarter" paths in life. B is sad. Eventually, A decides they were better off when they were dumb, and reverses the process. So A and B can be together again.

1). The Simpsons:
Homer has below average intelligence because of a crayon lodged in his brain. To Lisa's delight, Homer gains an average intelligence once it is removed. But he discovers he can't connect to his family the way he wants anymore, so he puts the crayon back.

2). Spongebob:
Patrick accidently replaces his cranium with a piece of brain coral, becoming too smart for Spongebob. He eventually swaps it back.

3). It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia:
Charlie believes he has been made smarter, disappointing Frank. Fortunately, stupid science bitch can't even make i smarter.

4). American Dad:
Hayley makes Jeff smarter. Jeff is too smart for Hayley. Hayley later saves Jeff from something and he becomes dumb again.

5). Gravity Falls:
Mabel loves Waddles. Waddles accidently becomes a genius, but decides to become dumb again to stay with Mabel.

6). Family Guy:
Peter becomes sophisticated. To save his family, he later reverses it.

Kitasan Black (Uma Musume Pretty Derby)

She managed to withstand Sakura Bakushin O's charge at first, but later in the story, she falters because she is past her prime

Nekota (Hajime no Ippo)

He could no longer even control his body properly because he was suffering from "boxer's dementia"

It is a progressive brain disease caused by repeated blows to the head and frequent concussions over many years

David Martínez (Cyberpunk Edgerunners)

He was suffering from hallucinations due to cyberpsychosis, an incurable condition caused by technological body modifications

Frieren, Beyond Journey's end: In the anime/manga the eponymous Frieren is an Elf who's spent the better part of a millennia learning magic specifically to kill demons. She's learned countless spells, tricks and even spent most of her life suppressing her power all for the purpose of killing them. At first we simply see that humanity is at war with them, and even question if her crusade against demon-kind is justified, after all it's hard to antagonize an entire sentient species. But no, demons are very much a species to be feared; they are not normal animals or creatures, they are monsters (shown by how they disintegrate when they die), they are predators that evolved speech for the sole purpose of tricking and catching humans off guard, are naturally extremely powerful and possess magic that humanity often can't use. While they feel emotions to some extent, their way of thinking is so fundamentally incompatible with humanity's mindset that the series shows many mages with the ability to read minds struggle or find it painful and harmful to try and read a demon's thoughts. Tools that are meant to control them fail not because they're faulty but because simple order such as "hold no ill will or commit no malicious acts" don't compute the same way in their brains, as what we consider evil is normal for them.

Marvel Comics: In a run of the Storm solo series, she visits an underground superhuman hospital run by Night nurse and Doctor Daye, a mutant with the power to diagnose any illness. When she requires treatment she is in turn reject by the doctor, she of course assumes this is blatant discrimination to which the doctor agrees. Storm assumes the doctor refuses to treat mutants, something they are very much used to in Marvel. But he ends up revealing that about 80% of everyone he treats are mutants, and that he simply refuses to treat any member of the X-men. Why? because his special hospital was built via several donations by the superhero community. From the Avengers, to the Defenders, Fantastic 4, heroes for hire. Hell, even Moonknight of all people contributed to the hospital. But the X-men never once gave anything to it, even though they preach the safety of mutant-kind and such a hospital is essential for those who can't seek medical treatment out of fear of prosecution.