"Why is there a headache where my expanded consciousness should be? And what happened to my other eight senses?"
— Black Mage (post-Lord of Hell), 8-Bit Theater
A character who has some kind of highly developed or superhuman ability loses it for an episode, and has to experience life as an average Joe. Often, the character actually enjoys the experience of being "normal". Otherwise, they will hate it and understand how hard it is to have no superpowers to help you, becoming Useless Without Powers. May result from being a Broken Angel.
By the end of the episode they get their skill back, usually just in time to save the day with it. After all, it may be interesting to see the hero without powers for a little time, but the people are Just Here for Godzilla, and want to see the hero in full action. A possible solution occurs when the hero has Got the Call on Speed Dial.
Frequently comes with An Aesop about how it's actions, not powers, that make one a hero, or Power Loss Makes You Strong.
Super-Trope of Depower, which is when this happens to a character permanently or for an extended period of time.
The polar opposite of "Flowers for Algernon" Syndrome. Contrast with Always Need What You Gave Up, Sense Loss Sadness. When an already badass character with no superpowers gains them, that's Empowered Badass Normal.
Compare Fight Off the Kryptonite. If the character can still kick major butt, they've been Brought Down to Badass instead. For when an immortal character is brought down to mortality, you'll want Mortality Ensues. When a supernatural being becomes normal by becoming a human being, see Humanity Ensues. If destroying or reversing some sort of device or spell renders you normal, then it's No Ontological Inertia.
Examples:
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- "Victory by Computer": Lex Luthor's gang use a red solar radiance machine to nullify Supergirl's powers and imprison her in their lair.
Anime and Manga
- In Ah! My Goddess, Belldandy has her "goddess license" (essentially, permission to use her magic abilities) suspended. This turns out to be more difficult than she expects because despite her immense magical power, her physical strength is on par with the normal human she appears to be (i.e., not very much).
- In Angel Sanctuary this is essentially what kills Kira after his healing abilities run completely dry. Not that Taking the Bullet didn't contribute to his demise.
- Habaek from The Bride of the Water God give up his powers to be with So-ah and have a normal life together. Sadly, there's a problem within it...
- Buso Renkin: At the end of the series, the Alchemist Army confiscates almost all the kakugane, forcing the Alchemist Warriors to give up the powerful weapons and abilities that they had granted. Tokiko in particular feels a great sense of loss when hers is taken as she had been fighting with it for almost as long as she could remember.
- Cardcaptor Sakura: Clow Reed wanted to lose most of his massive magical powers because he couldn't control his prophetic abilities, and thus conducted a massive Batman Gambit to make Sakura the new master of the cards. More details are explained in Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE-, as he was so powerful that he accidentally warped reality and kind of turned his girlfriend, Yuuko Ichihara, into a zombie.
- Claymore has Clare taking a preparation that suspends her demonic powers to avoid ecclesiastic prosecution.
- Happens to Francoise Arnoul aka 003 once in Cyborg 009. During an episode of the 2001 series she and the group are stuck in a high place with frequent sandstorms; this greatly decreases her enhanced senses, much to her despair.
- Light Yagami of Death Note loses his titular Artifact of Doom during the Yotsuba arc (all as planned, of course) as part of a complicated Memory Gambit. He doesn't seem to particularly crave his absent powers, nor is he glad to be rid of them — though he's none too happy when they come back.
- Happens a couple of times in D.Gray-Man. When Tyki dissolved Allen's arm, he got brought down not just to normal, but below it, since he now, well, only had one arm. It also happened to Lenalee after she pushed her Innocence too far in her fight with Eshi and went into a Heroic RRoD that left her unable to use her legs properly, let alone synchronize with the Dark Boots.
- DNA²'s plot revolves around bringing Junta Momonari down to normal before the Mega Playboy DNA within him awakens and subsequently has a hand in the future's overpopulation problem. In the final chapter, Karin finally shoots Junta with the correct DMC and removes the playboy DNA within him, turning him into a normal teenager again, with no chance of the playboy awakening as he gets older.
- In one episode of Dragon Ball Super, Goku suffers from a condition that temporarily renders him unable to use his ki properly in any way. He cannot even fly or teleport with precision and states that if he were to try to fight Piccolo, he would more than likely lose. So he decides to spend the evening with his granddaughter Pan.
- In Fairy Tail, this happens to anyone from Earthland who goes to Edolas, due to the differing laws of magic, unless they take a magical medicine to counteract this. Notably, Natsu continues to be a Leeroy Jenkins, which nearly gets him and his friends killed several times.
- Subverted to a degree in Fullmetal Alchemist. Ed sacrifices his power to perform alchemy in order to return Alphonse to his body. When Truth inquires how he will cope as a 'normal person', Ed confidently asserts that he has ALWAYS been a normal person, one who couldn't even save one little girl from being turned into a chimera.
- It happens to Ling too, when Greed is removed from his body.
- Hetalia: Axis Powers:
- The Republic of Nikko Nikko started out as an Ordinary Middle School Student, but was somehow able to become a micronation personification, much to Japan's bewilderment. He then voluntarily gave up his status as a nation personification to live as a Japanese citizen once again. Though Word of God says he still represents his micronation, he's lost the immortality that nation personifications have and now ages normally, has a steady job at the hot springs where his micronation used to be, and has a young son. He doesn't seem to mind at all, and keeps in contact with the still non-aging micronations like Sealand.
- A darker example is revealed in the "Private Concert" strip, which shows that Prussia has lost the rapid Healing Factor that the nation personifications inherently have; he's shown to still have a week-old dog bite on his hand that his unknowing younger brother Germany thinks he acquired recently, and should heal immediately. As he's no longer a nation and hasn't been one for some time, it may be a sign that he's beginning to fade away, die, or turn into a normal human.note
- Hoshin Engi: After using the energy-channeling paope Kyokoki for the first time against Prince Inko, Taikobo claims that after this use he'll be unable to use Sennin powers for a while and he'll dry to a husk should he dare touching a paope, so that for the following arc all his companions have to fight the baddies. Or so it seems: he lied to them in order to both: store enough energy for the upcoming battle with Chou Komei and give his friends the chance to grow stronger.
- Inukami!: Sekidousai and Dai Youko, because Jesei used up their power. Its unknown if this is permanent or if they're just exhausted.
- Half-demon Inuyasha loses his powers and becomes fully human once a month, under the new moon. He hates it with a passion, and with good reason, since he ends up severely injured and/or in mortal danger almost every time. Luckily for him, his demon strength and super healing abilities always return just in time.
- In Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon, Inuyasha's half-demon niece, Towa, goes through the same transformation at the exact same time.
- In Kanokon, Chizuru temporarily loses her powers (and her breasts) and has to cope without them. She never cares about her power being sealed, though. She just wants her breasts back.
- A very important plot point in the semi-canon The King of Fighters: KYO manga. One of Kyo's basic motivations to fight was protecting his loved ones, as seen in a flashback he confided on his mother as a little boy, but as he grew up he gradually forgot it. At some point in the manga, Kyo started having self-doubts (like when a boy interested in his girlfriend Yuki beat him in a judo challenge), which ended up catching with him and caused him to lose his Playing with Fire powers. This drove Kyo to close himself off his friends and have a big slump in his fighting skills... and almost to become Brainwashed and Crazy by Orochi. Once he remembers his real fighting motivation thanks to his father staging a mix of Hostage Situation and Batman Gambit, however, Kyo's beloved powers return.
- Episode 8 of Kotoura-san has the local telepath Haruka lost her powers due to a cold. Both pros and cons of a missing her powers were explored, although many are mundane in nature ("I can finally watch movies for the first time as I'm not spoiled at the theatre" or the like). Her power returns in The Stinger, in form of a Fainting Seer.
- Having one's Linker Core drained in Lyrical Nanoha renders them incapable of performing magic until it grows back to a normal size. This happens to both Nanoha and Fate during the second season (along with Arf in the movie retelling).
- In the second season of Magic Knight Rayearth, Nova breaks Hikaru's magic sword, which strips her armor and cuts off her connection to her Mashin, rendering her unable to fight. It takes six episodes (during which her friends are captured by and escape from Cephiro's invaders) and a dangerous Journey to the Center of the Mind for Hikaru and Presea to repair it (and Hikaru's Heroic BSoD).
- Maken-ki! ends with Takeru being permanently depowered as a result of expending all his Element during the final battle against Yamato Takeru. The final chapter explains that he had to transfer to a different school, because Tenbi Academy is for ability users and Maken users only, but he's still allowed to visit his friends there.
- In Medaka Box, Kumagawa gives his Reality Warper power "All Fiction" back to its original owner in exchange for a new power, "Book Maker". Book Maker allows Kumagawa to generate a special screw that, if it pierces someone's body, puts them on his level: no amazing powers, no superhuman abilities, nothing. During his final battle with Medaka, he challenges her to take Book Maker head-on and see the world through the eyes of a Minus. She agrees, and not only does she stay the same, she gains greater insight into the Minuses ("Winning isn't strength! Real strength is losing and getting back up!"). She still beats Kumagawa, but because it was fair and square he accepts it gracefully, completing the Heel–Face Turn he started earlier. Later still, Kumagawa receives a new power, "Incomplete", which allows him to generate a battlefield of giant screws — and he can hide a Book Maker among them to surprise an opponent.
- As part of her experiments for the Flask Plan (a project to create perfect (complete) human beings), Naze Youka continued development on a "Normalizing" liquid, which treated the absurdly amazing abilities of Abnormals as a disease and temporarily "cured" them. Ironically, the very concept of this serum was the exact opposite of what the Flask Plan was trying to do.
- This happens to Tiger and Mocchi in Monster Rancher's Post-Script Season, because they became Mystery Discs following the battle with Muu, and so lost their special attacks. Tiger, having much pride in his strength before, takes this especially hard, and the teasing from Hare and Suezo does not help.
- My Hero Academia: All Might's power has a time limit due to his past injuries, and after he passes his power on to Midoriya, it's implied that it's going to eventually fade away completely. Eventually he does, in fact, use up all of his remaining power fighting All For One, and as a result becomes a mundane, unpowered individual.
- In My-HiME, Natsuki temporarily loses her powers when she finds out that her mom attempted to sell her to the Searrs Foundation, rather than attempting to protect her. She gets better later, though.
- In the Chunin Exam arc of Naruto, after receiving Orochimaru's Curse Mark, Sasuke is unable to use his Sharingan or use any of his jutsus without suffering intense pain from the curse mark. Things get worse when he has to go first in the preliminaries and fights an opponent who can drain his chakra, which would potentially result in the curse mark activating. Fortunately, he manages to defeat his opponent with taijutsu alone (albeit with a move he had partly copied with his Sharingan a few days before). In the same arc, Naruto also gets a Five-Element Seal on the Nine-Tailed Fox's chakra (also courtesy of Orochimaru), which not only cut off his access to the Nine-Tails nigh-infinite supply of chakra, but also disrupted Naruto's own already shaky chakra control and thus making him a lot slower than usual at activating jutsu. Not helping was that Naruto's next opponent was really fast.
- Negima! Magister Negi Magi:
- Evangeline due to her Power Limiter.
- Also Asuna due to her self-induced Laser-Guided Amnesia. The power was still there, but she had no idea it was, or how to use it right.
- In a flashback, it is shown that Nagi had to enter a valley in which he couldn't use magic in order to save Arika. It didn't slow him down at all.
- Happens more traditionally near the beginning of the manga, Negi places a Power Limiter on himself to avoid temptation of cheating on the exams. Of course he gets dragged along on an adventure anyway.
- Temporarily happens to Hazuki in Ojamajo Doremi, as punishment for using her magic to heal someone despite knowing it's a taboo. Later happens to all of the Ojamajo when they completely drain themselves to power to wake up Onpu from a Convenient Coma.
- Occurs again at the end of Sharp when the girls are cursed by the Big Bad and once during The Movie when Pop's wish turns Doremi into a mouse; her tap is seen vanishing into light.
- Occurs once again during the second Movie when a curse suppresses the girls' magic.
- And finally happens again during the penultimate episode when they have to choose between being Witches or normal girls. All of them — sans Hana — go with the latter.
- In Oku-sama wa Mahou Shoujo Cruje deliberately casts a spell on herself to lock away her magical powers. Naturally, she ends up in situations where those powers would be very useful.
- Blackbeard of One Piece has, among the powers gained from the Dark-Dark Fruit, the power to inflict this to other characters for as long as he's touching them. So far this has happened on-screen to 'Fire Fist' Ace and Luffy. He also uses this ability on Whitebeard, resulting in a Curb-Stomp Battle. Delivered by Whitebeard.
- Pokémon the Series: Black & White does this to Pikachu, after being attacked by a Zekrom (possibly to justify his routine depowering at the beginning of every new quest). Ash doesn't find out that Pikachu cannot use his signature Electric attacks until the poor thing gets curb-stomped by a new trainer and his Grass-type starter. Pikachu gets his electricity restored in the next episode.
- It happens to Pikachu in the beginning of the Advance Generation and DP arcs, as well. In Hoenn, Pikachu got strapped to a giant magnet which made its powers go out of control, and after it all he was reset. Sinnoh, however, didn't really have an explanation beyond him being exhausted. Kalos and Alola didn't even bother to explain his weakening at all.
- Happens to Himeno Awayuki in the anime version of Prétear, when her mixed feelings after learning the Backstory cause her to temporarily lose her ability to merge with the Leafe Knights — at the worst possible moment. With bad consequences. She is anything but happy about this, especially since, unlike many other Magical Girls, Himeno doesn't really want to be normal.
- Pretty Cure:
- Both Futari wa Pretty Cure and Yes! Pretty Cure 5 had the main heroines lose their powers at the end of their respective series. Come their sequels (Futari wa Pretty Cure MaX Heart and Yes! Precure 5 GO!GO!, respectively), we come to find out that they miss the action and adventure and things are set to give them back their powers.
- In HeartCatch Pretty Cure!, Yuri loses her powers as Cure Moonlight at the very beginning of the series. It isn't until 3/4ths of the way through the series that she gets a chance to regain those powers.
- In Pretty Cure All Stars DX 3, the six teams at that point lose their powers and their partners defeating the Big Bad of the movie. The post-credits scene shows that they don't like the idea of being normal, but try to live on... until they all come back.
- Ranma ½: The "Ultimate Weakness Moxibustion" arc sees Ranma going from unnaturally strong uberhunk to a pathetic weakling who literally couldn't hurt a toddler, thanks to a moxibustion "attack" by Happosai. His many enemies (minus Ryoga) are happy to take advantage of this and beat the crap out of him as much as possible. Just as he's resigned himself to the situation, Ranma gets his strength back, and celebrates by giddily demolishing his house.
- In the anime, Ranma had to go through special training to learn a move that would let him defeat Happosai without using any strength, but collecting energy from the surroundings and then releasing it. He learns it, but it takes him lots more to grab the scroll containing the cure for his condition, which Happosai himself had among his clothes.
- You can probably count the times the heroines of Sailor Moon have lost their powers in some manner by either having their devices stolen, damaged or destroyed. While the manga and Sailor Moon Crystal tends to downplay this sort of thing, the original anime likes to have fun with it since, unlike other versions, they tend to enjoy the fanservice nature of it all.
- In one chapter of Sgt. Frog, Koyuki is distraught because of her struggle to balance her ninja training with living like a normal junior-high girl, and uses an identity-sealing ninja art to forget her life as a ninja. It ultimately fails because her friend Natsumi misses the old Koyuki too much... good thing, too, as Natsumi was in the middle of being attacked by Keroro when the spell wears off.
- Slayers:
- Lina Inverse ends up with her ridiculously powerful magic sealed for a good chunk of one of the NEXT story arcs.
- Also, in the first series, Lina's powers fade for a few days because "It's that time of the month".
- After the first episode of Str.A.In.: Strategic Armored Infantry, Sara has lost her family prestige and her ability to control her Strain, among other things. She resigns herself to a new name and becomes a trainee grunt pilot and scapegoat for her superiors... until she gets Emily.
- Tantei Opera Milky Holmes zigzags this to a ridiculous degree. The series starts with the Four-Girl Ensemble losing their powers, but they recover them for the first season's finale as an 11th-Hour Superpower of sorts, only to lose them again in that same episode. Come the second season, they seem to be recovering them again by the second episode, only to lose them AGAIN at the end of the SAME episode. The fourth episode has the girls using their powers while asleep; of course, they don't remember a thing next morning. They get them back once more in the final episodes to fight the Big Bad, and after all is said is done and it seems the season will have a happy ending, they lose their powers for the fifth time because basins fells on them. J.C. Staff loves Status Quo a bit TOO much for the well-being of those poor girls!
- In the second cours of Tiger & Bunny Kotetsu starts to show signs of a rare condition that causes gradual power loss in a NEXT. An especially painful example, since it's drawn out in a way that makes it seem eerily similar to certain Real Life progressive diseases...
- It's also revealed that this was the ultimate fate of Mr. Legend, the hero who Kotetsu idolized, inspiring him to become a hero as well. Unlike Kotetsu who, after a 10-Minute Retirement, continued to act as a hero even after his powers had degraded to the point of bordering on nonexistent, Mr. Legend did not take his loss of power very well.
- Towards the end of the first arc in The Twelve Kingdoms, Youko fights her rival Yuuka without the Hinman that gives her her martial art skills in order to prove her who was the real Chosen One.
- In Urusei Yatsura, one story arc featured a pair of yellow ribbons that when tied to Lum's horns sealed her powers. Later both Lum and Ten lost their powers when they lost their horns.
Comic Books
- All Fall Down: This happens to every superhero and supervillain. Permanently. Many of them are locked in denial for a long time about staying that way.
- Avengers: The Initiative: Komodo had her powers removed by SPIN technology after refusing to go along with H.A.M.M.E.R.'s sinister perversion of the Initiative. Note: Without her powers, Komodo doesn't have any legs. Thankfully, a "cure" of sorts was eventually fashioned and she's back in action.
- Batman/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: This slowly happens to the Turtles and Splinter; after analyzing a sample of their blood Batman managed to acquire, Lucius Fox discovers that the mutagen that transformed them is incompatible with the laws of physics in the DC Universe, and thus, they're slowly reverting back to ordinary animals. Part of the plot is the Turtles and Splinter trying to return home before that happens.
- Black Science: Grant McKay trades his genius away in a desperate bargain and drops to average intelligence.
- Convergence: A number of heroes and villains are left powerless after their cities are domed, including pre-Flashpoint Wally West and pre-Zero Hour Kyle Rayner and pre-COIE Wonder Woman. Once the domes are removed their powers snap back on. Even heroes who relied solely on technology have been depowered, in the sense that their weapons don't work. Pre-Flashpoint Batman and Robin can still use their gadgets, but Arsenal's cybernetic arm stopped working and the Atom's belt could no longer shrink him.
- This is inconsistent — Justice League International has the fully robotic Red Tornado, who clearly has all his powers. Shazam! sees Bulletman and Bulletgirl stepping in as Fawcett City's protectors since their gravity regulator helmets still work. And Ray Palmer, though he could not shrink or grow as the Atom, still had a superpower in his book; albeit with only the nigh-useless ability to make one of his hands grow very large. It seems that for some characters like Red Tornado and Mr. Freeze, their technology and gadgetry were left untouched because they either need it to survive or it's fundamentally ingrained in them.
- Daredevil: In the 50th Anniversary issue, set in a distant future, Matt Murdock's eyes are bathed in radioactive fluid when he saves New York. The result is he loses his radar sense.
- From the same issue, Matt's future son eventually developed radar sense as a child. However, it was pretty traumatising, and Dr. Valeria Richards eventually cures him of it.
- Deadpool: Deadpool once lost his Healing Factor thanks to a serum Tombstone had engineered as part of his plot to get revenge on the Merc with a Mouth for the events of "Suicide Kings". This turned out to be a good thing for Deadpool — the events leading up to this help him shake off his Death Seeker nature and giving him a new will to live. The serum also restored his face.
- ElfQuest: Rayek lost his magical powers for a while, after coming across an important crossroad in his life (and messing up). He hated it so badly that it almost made him lose his mind too.
- Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash: This happens to Freddy Krueger during Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash: The Nightmare Warriors. After Freddy betrays the Dream Demons who gave him his power by not sharing the Necronomicon Ex Mortis with them, they turn him back into a normal human and send him back in time, making sure that this time he gets arrested for good and never turns into a nightmare god.
- House of M: Scarlet Witch, fed up with everything that went into and resulted from achieving mutant superiority, uses her power to declare "No more mutants." Thus, Earth goes back to what it was before, depowering 90% of the mutants of the world (after all, looks like the X-Men are too popular to become Badass Normals). Some of them, like Blob and Chamber, end up in dire straits thanks to losing their mutant powers but not the body alterations that occurred because of them (notably, Jono almost dies thanks to his power having burned away his jaw, throat, and much of his chest when it first emerged). Hilariously inverted in that when Toad loses his powers, he becomes extremely handsome, which is how he would have looked had he not been born a mutant.
- The Incredible Hulk: In Hulk (2014) Vol. 3, an Extremis-enhanced Hulk called Doc Green decides to de-power the gamma-powered superheroes as he feels it is his responsibility to set things right. He manages to depower Betty Ross, Rick Jones, and Skaar.
- The Incredible Hercules: Following Chaos War, Hercules burns out of his godly powers and for the first time in his long, long life fully mortal without any god or demigod powers. He is so "weak" that he has to leave Olympus since he cannot survive around the other superpowerful gods. Of course "weak" is relative. He is still an extremely muscular man in top physical condition with centuries of combat training and experience. So he goes on to fight street-level threats. He also steals some magical weapons from Olympus to help him fight more powerful foes.
- Justice Society of America: In the "Fatherland" storyline, every superhero on Earth is robbed of their powers by supervillain Nazis and their darkness engine.
- Justice League of America:
- A plot in JLA (1997) saw six members of the League have their secret identities split off from their superhero selves. While Clark Kent, John Jones, and Wally West saw it as a blessing, Bruce Wayne, Eel O'Brien and Kyle Rayner could barely hold it together. The split was mental as well as physical. For example, Plastic Man became an ineffective, gibbering fool, while his Eel O'Brien half reverted to the gangster he'd been before he got his powers. And Eel was doing a lot better than Bruce Wayne, as Bruce was now driven by the rage and trauma of the memory of his parents' murder without any way to channel that rage into his role as Batman. The whole point was to show that the characters' hero and non-hero identities were both necessary to make up a complete person.
- JLA: Act of God: A strange wave of energy hits Earth causing heroes and villains alike to lose their superpowers. Some disappear into the woodwork while others reinvent themselves as Badass Normals in the Batman mold. Weirdly, this only applies if "normal" strictly means human. Superman and Martian Manhunter don't have any superpowers, technically speaking; their abilities are "normal" for their species. The same goes for Aquaman, except possibly for his ability to breathe air (which he does not lose). The Atom's powers vanish, despite him being a technological hero (his power comes from a belt with a fragment of a white dwarf sun.)
- Legends of Baldur's Gate: This appears to have happened to Delina after her brother Deniak uses a ritual to steal her powers and turn into a dragon. Actually, she can still do enough to kill him.
- Les Légendaires: Evil Sorcerer Darkhell gave this treatment to his former rival Skroa by testing the Stone of Jovenia (an artifact supposed to give youth back) on him, turning him back from a demonic garuda-like sorcerer to a regular small bird with no powers (though he retained his intelligence and the ability to talk). Skroa was then able to manipulate both an amnesic Darkhell and the heroes into leading him to the cure, allowing him to go back to his adult form with full power... only to lose them again in later issues when the cure is taken away from him.
- Ironically enough, this was averted with the protagonist; while they did get the same treatment from the Stone of Jovenia, they retained all their abilities and skills (probably because, unlike Skroa, those were actual skills and experiences that didn't require an adult body).
- Protagonist Jadina was the victim of this when Vangelis injected her with a serum called "antimag", which had the property to block magic. Since all of Jadina's powers were based on magic, this left her, according to herself, "as weak as an unborn". This didn't prevent her from still being badass, however, as not only did she not mope about it (she did have a Heroic BSoD, but it was because at this point things got so messed up she wasn't even sure to be the real Jadina anymore), but she was still able to save her comrades from the almighty new villain Abyss, by kissing him so he would ingest the Antimag. By the end of the book, the Antimag's effect ceased and she got her powers back.
- The Mighty Thor: Thor himself was brought down to mere mortal status for a while, and lost all of his fabled strength and power. Turns out that a 6 foot 5 tree trunk of a man with a big nigh-indestructible hammer is still someone you might want to avoid; he just went and beat the snot out of street-level villains for a while.
- Nightwing: In the Elseworlds series Nightwing: The New Order Nightwing's initial attack ended up removing the powers of about 90% of the superhuman population's powers. The weapon Dick uses is shown to affect everyone with superpowers, regardless of source. At least it doesn't affect Lantern rings, showing that the writers at least did more research than Doug Moench. This is explained when it is revealed the device is a weapon from Apokolips, designed to neutralize a planet to make it easier to invade.
- PS238: This seemingly happens to Ron/Captain Clarinet, though afterwards he gets Re-Powered instead. It turns out that Nurse Newby actually runs a support group for metahumans with this issue; Tyler's parents make him attend too, despite him actually having a different problem.
- Red Hood and the Outlaws: What Crux attempts to do to Starfire. It didn't last for long, thanks to the Citadel's experiments on them.
- Runaways: In Runaways (Rainbow Rowell), Gert Yorkes is brought Back from the Dead, but at the cost of losing her bond with Old Lace.
- Secret Invasion: In the aftermath, Tony Stark loses the Extremis inside him which allows him to basically "be one" with his armor, and even has to start using inferior models of his Iron Man suit.
- Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
- Villain Dimitri spent centuries as the Physical God Enerjak, but eventually had his powers stolen by Mammoth Mogul via the Sword of Acorns; with his powers gone, Dimitri's age caught up to him, and he was eventually reduced to a shriveled head in a floating fish bowl. Then, in a story taking place in an Alternate Universe, Knuckles (who had also become Enerjak) was stripped of his powers in the exact same way by his daughter.
- Before this, mainstream Knuckles lost all of his power after he came Back from the Dead. Turns out they were suppressed, but it took him a good year in-series to fix that as the Dingos held Angel Island and the Master Emerald.
- In Issue 232, Ixis Naguas ends up restoring Bunnie's former flesh and blood limbs after crystalizing them an issue before, removing the abilities she had as a cyborg.
- Spider-Man:
- In The Amazing Spider-Man (Dan Slott), while he couldn't lose all of his powers lest he ends up dying, Spider-Man is forced to drain a majority of Physical God Alpha's power after the kid recklessly battles Terminus, nearly killing Spidey's Aunt May and her husband (also J. Jonah Jameson's father) in the process.
- Spider-Man also lost his powers shortly after Acts of Vengeance, via a plot of the Chameleon. In actuality, his powers were more suppressed than taken away. Initially, Peter wanted this, as it was one of those times he had grown weary of being Spider-Man. When he left the lab which held the machine responsible, he found out quickly that his enhanced strength was a large reason he was able to web-swing, and almost got killed.
- During his early days in The Amazing Spider-Man (Lee & Ditko), Spidey's powers disappeared during a low moment in his life. When the Sinister Six kidnapped his Aunt May and friends, Peter jumped back into action and it took him a Fly Or Die moment to realize his power loss was psychosomatic and they came roaring back.
- During The Clone Saga, Peter put himself in the line of fire of a weapon that, supposedly, took away his powers, letting him live his life with Mary Jane and his unborn child normally. It didn't last as they sprung back just in time for Onslaught.
- Superman:
- Done in Infinite Crisis, during the final battle against Superboy-Prime. Up to that point, Prime had defeated the Justice League, the Teen Titans, and the entire Green Lantern Corps and seemed utterly unstoppable. Then both Superman of Earth-One and Earth-Two show up with a plan. Moving at max speed, they fly Superboy-Prime through Krypton's red sun Rao and the kryptonite asteroid field that used to be Krypton before crash landing on Mogo. Afterwards, all three Supermen lose their powers and the fight for the fate of the universe is settled in a normal, human-level brawl.
- After Infinite Crisis, Superman loses his powers for an entire year. 52 and Superman: Up, Up and Away!, the series that cover this one-year gap, have him lying low, focusing on his job as a reporter with the Daily Planet. It turns out that, despite how he views Clark as his "real" personality, he really is bad at his life without Superman's powers. He is more timid and unsure of himself as a reporter, and Perry White actually moves to fire him after he lets the Planet get scooped on the large story of a new superhero. However, this revelation that he is letting his new status change how he lives his life, which he never thought would happen, galvanizes him to take dramatic action (i.e. jumping out the window) in order to attract the attention of the new hero and get the story. The writers explained that they included that scene because they wanted to make it clear that even without his powers he is still Superman, and his willingness to take extreme personal risks did not go away just because he can no longer take a bullet.
- Also Krisis of the Krimson Kryptonite, where Mxyzptlk makes a chunk of plot device Kryptonite for Luthor that takes Superman's powers away. Notably, Superman is never happy with this outcome unlike in the above example, and tries to return to duty in powered armor. Also notable as being the storyline where Clark proposes and Lois accepts his proposal.
- During the Crisis Crossover Final Night, Superman's powers disappear as a result of the sun being eaten by the Sun-Eater. It takes until after Superman: The Wedding Album for Supes to regain his powers.
- Superman also loses his powers permanently in World's Finest #178, and decides to try his hand as a Badass Normal hero — turns out he sucks at it (for one thing, he instinctively pulls his punches), but fortunately by the end of the follow-up story, Batman has promised to train him.
- He also permanently lost his powers back in Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?, though this one was intentional, as he had broken his Thou Shalt Not Kill code. As such, he also gave up on all superheroism and resigned himself to a normal life married to Lois Lane. Their son has the full powers.
- Pre-Crisis Superman also had another superhero life while in the bottled city of Kandor, where he has no powers. In Superman 1939 #158 He becomes a Batman Expy with Jimmy Olsen, becoming Nightwing and Flamebird — Dick Grayson uses the former name in honor of Supes.
- In Who Took the Super out of Superman?, Superman discovered that he lost all of his powers every time he changed into his Clark Kent identity. He was faced with a choice of whether he wanted to live out his life as Superman or Clark. It was eventually revealed that an alien enemy had treated all of Clark Kent's clothes so they blocked the yellow sun radiation that gave Superman his powers.
- In Kryptonite Nevermore, Superman gradually loses most of his superpowers. Even so, he manages to defeat three armed gangsters in spite of not being bulletproof.
- Happens again in Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes, where Clark goes ten centuries into the future and becomes stranded at a time when the sun has been turned red.
- In The Unknown Supergirl, Lesla-Lar took away Supergirl's powers as part of a scheme to replace her. While in her powerless state, Kara finally found parents to adopt her. She nearly abandoned her career as Supergirl, until Mr. Mxyzptlk granted her all the abilities of Superman, plus a (temporary) invulnerability to green kryptonite.
- In Demon Spawn, Linda gets stripped of her powers temporarily when she is brought to the Innerverse. She feels even weaker than an ordinary human.
- In Supergirl (2011), right after the Crucible story arc, Kara was depowered due to the manipulations of Vandal Savage. DEO agent Cameron Chase offered to help her get her powers back if she joined the Department of Extra-normal Operations.
- The Jungle Line: During the early stages of Bloodmorel Fever, Superman's powers go away and return at irregular intervals. Superman gets so worried about his powers vanishing abruptly that he decides against trying to fly back to his home.
- In Starfire's Revenge, Supergirl loses her powers when Starfire's minion Derek slips a depowering pill into her drink, forcing her to resort to a power exoskeleton to operate as a hero.
- In The Strange Revenge of Lena Luthor, Lena Thorul loses her psychic powers after undergoing brain surgery.
- In The Supergirl-Batgirl Plot, Mr. Mxyzptlk's magic switches Superman's powers off and on at the most inopportune times.
- Supergirl's Greatest Challenge: Subverted. The entire Legion of Super-Heroes has apparently lost their powers, and Cosmic Boy suggests the cause might be radiation fallout caused by the explosive collision of two eldritch abominations. However, it turns out they were an alien race of shape-shifters impersonating the Legionnaires.
- The K-Metal from Krypton probably provides the original example in Superman comics. Clark Kent loses his powers due to the Kryptonite radiation. Permanently, as far as he knew at the time. After a brief hesitation, Clark decides he cannot stop fighting for justice as Superman, depowered or not.
- Superman/Supergirl: Maelstrom In order to train Supergirl, Superman takes Kara to a planet under a red sun where their powers do not work, and they must use other skills to survive.
- In Let My People Grow!, Superman and Supergirl enlarge the Bottle City of Kandor on a red sun world. When Kandor begins crumbling to dust, the Drygur Moliom (Kryptonian for the Science Council leader) asks Superman to do something, but Superman reminds them he has no powers under Rokyn's red star.
Drygur: "Superman, you must do something— quickly!"
Superman: "But I can't, Drygur! Under this planet's red sun, I'm as powerless as any normal man!" - "Superman vs. Muhammad Ali": Superman is forced to box in the Scrubb's homeworld Bodace, a planet that circles a red sun which nullifies his powers.
- "Supergirls Super Pet": Streaky loses his powers the instant that the effects of the X-Kryptonite wear off. Given that he and his owner were off-world, Supergirl needs to catch him to bring him back to Earth safely.
- The Ultimates:
- Ultimate Thor has it revealed that, after Loki destroyed Asgard, Thor was reborn as a human. It takes up until Ultimates 2 for him to regain his full might. And when he does...
- When The City annihilates Asgard, Thor loses his godly powers.
- After the Dark Ultimates arc, Tony Stark used Reed Richards technology to bring him back to the level of his old self again.
- Wolverine: Daken has his Healing Factor stripped from him in the last issue of The Death of Wolverine: The Logan Legacy when he's attacked by Siphon. This bites him on the ass hard in the first issue of Wolverines when Mr. Sinister rips off one of his arms and plucks out an eye for good measure.
- Wonder Woman:
- Diana was depowered in the Silver Age, and again when Artemis temporarily took the Wonder Woman title and responsibilities. Given her extensive training and the fact that some of the things that appear to be "powers" are actually the result of said training she was more Brought Down to Badass and neither time did she stop for an instant trying to save people, even though in the second case this was caused by her mother specifically to try to get her to step back and be safe as a normal human.
- In Wonder Woman (1987) Wonder Girl Cassie Sandsmark's mother is (temporarily) given the ability to nullify her powers in order to keep her safe and prevent her from jumping into dangerous situations without her mother's permission. She eventually gets enough training that this just results in her being Brought Down to Badass rather than crippling her ability to help.
- Wonder Woman (Rebirth): With Urtzkartaga destroyed, his curse is removed and Barbara goes back to being a normal human. She's not sorry to see the powers go. Then defied as later on she was convinced to become Cheetah again by Veronica Cale without using the curse.
Fairy Tales
- "Jorinde and Joringel": The male lead uses the Blood-Red Flower to remove the witch's powers permanently.
Fan Works
- This concept gets deconstructed in Action Pack. It shows what someone with a healing ability would actually be like when Naruto watches his brother become groggy and practically unable to stay awake every month.
- All Assorted Animorphs AUs:
- At the end of "What if Jake was stuck in morph?", Jake nothlits himself as a human again.
- Tobias offers his morphing ability as a sacrifice to resurrect Rachel in "What if Tobias brought Rachel back after the final battle?"... by literally carving apart all of his morphs.
- In the villains-centric Darkwing Duck fanfic Back to Basics
, as punishment for their latest screw-up, Negaduck deprives Quackerjack and Megavolt of their gimmicks. They have until midnight the following day to prove that they can pull off a crime worth his notice without their toys or electricity, respectively. Hilarity Ensues.
- Bakery "Enemies": All the Miraculous stopped working after the final battle with Hawkmoth. Which makes it very difficult for the old heroes to reconnect.
- Better Bones AU: Shadowsight, unlike in canon where he never had a connection to the Clans' dead ancestors in StarClan, initially has one but sacrifices it to channel Ashfur's spirit, holding him down so Bristlefrost can kill him.
- Call Me Kara: The titular heroine, when she goes through a solar flare. She promptly uses this as an opportunity to go out and get drunk for the first time. Later, when she gets pregnant, she is subjected to random power outages that makes her lose her powers.
- In the Fourth Movement of With Strings Attached, George has his ring stolen and Ringo cannot use his magic anywhere it matters, so they have to rescue the other two while effectively powerless.
- This is the crux of the plot of Cinderjuice, wherein Beetlejuice agrees to temporarily give up his magic in order to accompany Lydia to her senior prom as a normal human teenager. The problems set in when circumstances prevent him from changing back; the real issue is why. In the sequel, The Bug Princess, it happens to him again — and this time, he's not expecting it.
- Happens to Sasuke in the Naruto/Justice League crossover Connecting the Dots. He first loses an eye, then has his chakra taken away, and finally has half of the bones in his body broken as part of a Humiliation Conga.
- A Crooked Man:
- The Original. Johann depowers Kimura in which she ''doesn't'' takes this too well, causing her to remind of her old weak self.
- The Remake. Johann makes sure not to re-power Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, and Magneto while restoring post-M-Day mutants of their powers.
- Johann permanently removes the Venom symbiote from Mac Gargan and teleporting it into the sun. Norman Osborn soon booted Gargan out of the Thunderbolts and doesn't bother having him being back as the Scorpion as he saw Gargan only useful in taming the symbiote.
- The Sentry is stuck to being Robert Reynolds.
- Johann takes away Joseph Green's alien power gauntlet.
- Johann removes the Red Skull's spirit from Aleksander Lukin's body and gives him a depowered body with the same strength as his bellboy career.
- The Kim Possible fic "Dark Legacy" has Zorpox at least temporarily take away Shego and Monkey Fist’s powers using a gas of his own design and DNAmy’s notes to prevent Shego channelling her energy and return Monkey Fist’s DNA to human.
- In Along Came a Spider Twilight is, via subverted Power Tattoo called Gelding Marks, which were specifically invented to neutralise unicorn magic. She eventually overcomes these through sheer Heroic Willpower.
- In The Flash Sentry Chronicles (My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and My Little Pony: Equestria Girls): Flash and Twilight are turned into humans when they step through the mirror portal to the human world and lose their flight and magic. Flash also realizes later that he cannot enter the Theta Mode either.
- Goddess Reborn Chronicle denies this to the Guardians and Cambions. The source material states several times that it cannot be undone, there is no going back.
- Hold On Girl, where Mara Jade Skywalker briefly loses her force power after she's kidnapped by someone who wants to drain the power into her unborn child. Eventually, though, she gets it back during the birth of the child.
- The Immortal Game:
- This happens to Celestia twice. First, her powers are drained at the beginning by Titan in order to create Empyrean, and are returned to her by Twilight near the end of the story. During the subsequent fight with Titan, she gets cursed, which drains her power to ordinary pony levels; this thankfully wears off in time for the Final Battle.
- Also ends up happening to Empyrean, Terra, and Titan himself, though only Terra lives for more than a few minutes afterwards.
- Likewise, in the Dark World Series of the Pony POV Series, this happens to Celestia and Luna by Discord draining their magic somehow, simultaneously turning them into foals and erasing Celestia's memory.
- An Impractical Guide to Godhood: Hera is stripped of her divinity and exiled to New Byzantium as punishment for her crimes in the first interlude.
- Moonshadow: As part of the plan to deal with The Collector, in chapter 10 Vee manages to consume enough of The Collector’s magic to render them temporally powerless.
- New Chance: To one Jonin's horror and Naruto and Hinata's shock, their Rasen no Mai is a weaponized version of this trope.
- In the crossover fic Origins, a character loses the ability to use his Powered Armor due to not having the necessary materials to repair it (so, really, it works, but if it gets damaged...) Subverted later once these issues are overcome, but it keeps him out of the fight for a while.
- In Perfection Is Overrated, Yukino temporarily loses her Hime powers as a result of being hit with Shizune's Silencing Sigil, until the sigil is removed as a result of Shizune moving it to Mai. Yukino briefly ponders how her Hime powers have changed her, by forcing her to become stronger and more decisive, and how such changes are still in effect even though she has lost her power and expects to eventually lose it permanently.
- Pray for Us, Icarus: The demon Crowley suddenly starts to be reborn as a mortal human with no demonic powers or memories of his past lives sometime in the 17th century for reasons that neither he nor Aziraphale are aware of. It turns out that the reason he became like this was that it was a punishment from Death to teach him the importance of human mortality after he kept trying to save human lives from Pestilence.
- The Princess and the Pirate: The Imperial-aligned captors of Luke, Leia and Han put them in a room with some kind of small, furry mammalian creatures that somehow sap the two Force users' power and prevent them breaking out. Luke eventually solves the problem by killing them. However, it accidentally happens again later, when a young rebel thinks Leia would like one of the cute critters that he finds in another area, and lets it loose. Leia faints, but Luke's able to tell him to get it out of the area.
- At the end of Princess Trixie Sparkle, Astelle the Big Bad and Celestia and Luna's long lost sister is reduced to a mere Earth Pony after her Alicorn Magic is destroyed.
- A Prize for Three Empires: This happens to Carol Danvers twice: she is depowered after her run-in with Rogue, and later she gradually loses her Binary powers after closing a joint mission with the X-Men.
- Puella Arcana Somniator Madoka shows that showing up in the strange, unknown world will strip someone the powers of a Magical Girl. But surviving the Shadows in there and returning to reality will allow the person to unlock the potential and gain a Persona instead. This all happens after the Magical Girl turns into a Witch.
- Sonic Generations: Friendship Is Timeless : Sonic uses the Chaos Emeralds to disable the Changelings' disguises during their attack on Ponyville, and Chrysalis' reaction implies that this is permanent.
- Twilight Sparkle and Rarity, when they cross into the land of the Fae in Into the Hedge.
- Severus Snape, in Harry Potter fanfic The Peace Not Promised, loses his right hand. Not only does this leave him unable to cast spells (since he hasn't had practice channeling magic through his left hand), he's also unable to brew potions, and the disruption to his body's magic flow interferes even with his wandless abilities.
- In Soul Eater: Troubled Souls, Medusa uses a curse named Ouroboros to subtract an ability or personality trait from the person cursed, and it's usually one that makes or breaks a combatant. They either can't fight at all, or can fight but with a severely limited skill set.
- In Spider-X, the only way to save Peter from his transformation into the Man-Spider is a variation of the serum used to cure Conners of his transformation into the Lizard, which initially seemingly removed Peter's powers.
- In A Teacher's Glory, Haku suffers this at the hands of Naruto's chakra flood technique. Unfortunately, Haku thinks he's only been Brought Down to Badass and makes several critical mistakes after Zabuza breaks him free but tells him to sit the fight out.
- In the Charmed (1998) fic "Tempus Fugit", when Phoebe's temporary time hosting Belthazor's powers leads to a future where she will become the new host of the Source, the Elders and her sisters are forced to strip her of her magic and transfer her premonitions to Paige until the danger of the Source has been dealt with.
- In the Massive Multiplayer Crossover fic Operation Phoenix, Touhou Project's Reimu Hakurei has her Reality Warper powers forcibly stripped away from her by dint of Rick kidnapping her from her world.
- With This Ring: Due to the ring being the source of Paul's power, this comes up:
- OL's ring battery runs out of power in the middle of the desert after wasting it because he thought he was in a dream.
- OL is separated from his ring when Red Torpedo and Red Inferno invade Mount Justice.
- OL willingly gives up his ring after he freed from the Ophidian. Batman permits him to take it back when it becomes clear that Paul regained his sanity and his trustworthiness.
- OL's ring is tainted by Klarion in Displaced so Klarion would steal the ring's power. So he takes it off and uses his pistol to fight him off.
- OL's ring is stolen by Truggs after getting jumped due to a Wounded Gazelle Gambit.
- A non-OL example: Swamp Thing cuts off Poison Ivy's connection to the Green, reducing her to a normal woman.
- Paul voluntarily gives up the rings in order to hide the Orange Light from Larfleeze's construct, Blume. To paraphrase Paul, this creature was viewed as a god of hunger, and then it got Lantern Powers.
- In the Encanto fanfic The Wrath of Avelina, the titular Avelina loses her powers at the end due to a stray lightning bolt from Pepa.
- In The Legend of Zelda fanfic, Zelda's Honor, the villains (Naar and his commanders) are nigh impossible to kill. They revive mere moments after death, regardless of how mutilated they get. It almost seems a losing battle until Link and co. figure out the source of their power is the linked shards of the Fierce Deity Mask residing in their bodies, cursed with demonic magic from the old world, that grants them this horrible immortality. Once Link heals the mask properly and all pieces are returned, Naar and the rest are suddenly mortal and die ignoble deaths quite swiftly.
Films — Animated
- In The Book of Life, the majority of the climax has Joaquin without his precious medal, having to fight as a mortal again.
- Happy Heroes: The Stones: Using the Power Stone takes the superpowers away from the Supermen. Kalo, who is an Energy Being who usually takes on a humanoid form, can't shapeshift and reverts to his energy fireball form. The Supermen live with this and have begun leading normal lives by the time Happy S. is teleported into the future.
- When Disney's Hercules surrenders his godlike powers for 24 hours in exchange for Megara's safety, one of the first things Hades does is pick up one of Herc's oversized training weights and launches it at him to pin him to the ground. He then lampshades the trope by asking Herc how it feels to be just like everybody else, in an Ironic Echo of Herc's earlier I Just Want to Be Normal wish.
- My Little Pony: Equestria Girls:
- Twilight loses her magic when she enters the human world, and also can't depend on her encylopedic knowledge (since she knows nothing about the world she is in). As an ordinary human girl, she has to accomplish her task using only her leadership skills and her knack for repairing broken friendships.
- At the end, after Twilight leaves with the crown and the portal closes, the Humane Five revert from Magical Girls to normal humans.
- My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Rainbow Rocks:
- After Twilight effortlessly figures out how to activate the Magic Mirror and subvert the Celestial Deadline from the original movie, she tries to write a musical counter-spell to the Dazzlings' Hate Plague. It quickly becomes obvious that Twilight is a pony who can do just about anything she sets her mind to...while she's a pony.
- In the final showdown, the Dazzlings' Amplifier Artifacts are destroyed, permanently stripping them of their Magic Music powers.
- This is finally fully subverted My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Legend of Everfree, where the Humane Six (and Human!Twilight) develop individual, constant magical superpowers they can use even without transforming.
- The Powerpuff Girls Movie: Giant Chemical X-fueled Mojo Jojo topples off a skyscraper and onto a puddle of Antidote X, returning him to his regular chimp size. The girls are about to take it as well, feeling that Townsville would like them better as normal little girls. Townsville votes otherwise.
- The Wild Thornberrys did it in their movie with Eliza's loss of her power to talk to animals.
Films — Live-Action
- In All Superheroes Must Die the abducted heroes wake to find that this has happened to them. Well, to most of them.
- Hancock and other immortals like him suffer from this when they come into contact with their immortal mate. The loss of their powers allows them to decide to live a normal, mortal life and eventually die. All but Hancock and Mary have chosen this fate and died before the start of the film.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- At one point in Iron Man 3, Tony's current suit is busy recharging and the rest are underwater and inaccessible. He improvises weapons from what he can buy at a hardware store, and uses them to infiltrate an enemy base and take out several armed guards.
- Doctor Strange (2016) includes a Sequel Hook in The Stinger showing that Mordo, disillusioned by The Ancient One and Strange's willingness to use forbidden and dangerous dark magic, is now on a quest to De-power all the sorcerers on Earth.
- In Man of Steel, Clark loses his powers aboard Zod's ship, since it has the same atmosphere and environment as Krypton.
- In Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie, the Rangers lose their powers (and their entire arsenal) when Ivan Ooze wrecks the Command Center. They spend a good chunk of the movie on a quest for an alternate power source, and at one point are overwhelmed by mooks they could otherwise have handled easily.
- Raiden in Mortal Kombat: Annihilation willingly gives up his powers to help the heroes. He then spends most of the time getting his ass kicked.
- The Mummy Trilogy:
- In The Mummy Imhotep is stripped of his powers after Evelyn reads from the Book of Amun-Ra turning him into a mortal man.
- In the sequel, The Mummy Returns, Imhotep (again resurrected) loses his powers when entering the pyramid in Am Sher, as Anubis wants him to fight the Scorpion King as a mortal.
- The sea goddess Calypso in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (Tia Dalma).
- Shir Khan, in The Shadow, awakens after the climatic battle, wearing a straight-jacket in an asylum. When the doctor shows up, he tries to use his mind-controlling ability on him to get free. After this fails, the doctor mentions how the life-saving surgery that kept him alive had to remove a part of his brain, but only a part that "we never use". As Khan starts shouting how he "must be released! [He is] the direct descendant of Genghis Khan, destined to rule the world!", other patients start yelling that they are Napoleon, or George Washington...
- In Spider-Man 2 Peter Parker loses his abilities due to a psychosomatic response to stress and burnout. While he enjoys the freedom from responsibility and the improvements upon his life, he realizes he should, and wants to, use his powers to help people. Once he's at peace with that decision, his powers return and he's back to saving the world. It was based on a famous storyline from the comic books.
- In Superman II, the eponymous Last Son of Krypton gives up his super powers so that he can become romantically involved with Lois Lane. The holographic image of his dead mother explains the need for this vaguely as "If you wish to be with a mortal, you must become mortal", but those of us who've read Niven's Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex know the real reason.
- The plot of X-Men: The Last Stand revolves around a serum created from a mutant that imposes this trope on any other mutant around him. Throughout the movie, several characters take the serum, either forcefully or willingly. Major characters include: Mystique, Rogue, and Magneto. In Magneto's case, it's revealed in The Stinger of The Wolverine that it is not permanent. There is an alternate scene where Rogue doesn't take the serum.
Literature
- Allegiant. Inverted. It is revealed that the Chicago walled community was an experiment to restore humanity back to normal after years of selective breeding caused what they considered to be "damaged genes" in humans, making them prone to certain vices and violence.
- This almost happens twice in David Eddings' The Belgariad and does happen a third time in the followup, The Malloreon:
- A sorcerous duel between Belgarath and Ctuchik leaves Belgarath weakened to the point that Polgara fears Belgarath may have lost his powers, or worse, had just enough to kill himself when he finally does use them.
- Later on, Polgara believes she has given up her powers as a price to bring Durnik back to life and spends several weeks living as a normal human. Turns out she had overlooked the Exact Words the deal had entailed, which was for the two to become equal as part of her sacrifice. Rather than her losing her power, it meant that Durnik gained powers of his own as a result of his resurrection.
- In The Malloreon, the titular Seeress of Kell of the last book is stripped of her power to read the 'book of the heavens' (see into the future) in order to make the final decision between the two prophecies. She is, however, rewarded by the prophecy of light by eventually marrying Emperor Zakath.
- A variant occurs in Birthright (2017). Sabrina shares her magic with Ko-Kraham, who is in reality much more magically powerful than Sabrina. As a result, Ko-Kraham is able to suppress any attempt Sabrina makes to actually use the magic, making her functionally powerless.
- Bruce Coville's Book of... Magic: Miranda Windwood Rose in Windwood Rose is born with magic, but voluntarily gives it up so she can be normal.
- In the final book of Captain Underpants, the titular hero is reverted back to being Mr. Krupp permanently, no thanks to Mr. Meaner.
- In Jeramey Kraatz's The Cloak Society, the Gloom has this effect. For those exposed for minutes, the rebound is fairly quick. Lone Star and Lux, while still alive and intelligent, don't have powers after a month there.
- Destined to Lead Kajiya is brought down to normal — sort of, when her magic gives out after a particularly stressful assembly. She was banished from the very tribe she was supposed to lead. While her magic does not give out completely due to her being a magik, and thus favored by magic, she is still considerably weaker than before the assembly — making her magic the equivalent of other females.
- In the Doctor Who Eighth Doctor Adventures novels, between "The Adventuress of Henrietta Street" and "Camera Obscura" the Eighth Doctor's second heart is removed by his Frenemy Sabbath to save his life after it apparently begins poisoning him while trying to keep the Doctor linked to his destroyed home planet. Without his second heart, the Doctor notes that sometimes his remaining heart beats worryingly fast as though trying to compensate for the loss of the other, and the Doctor himself loses some of his old advantages such as his respiratory bypass system or ability to rapidly metabolise toxins.
- Slightly subverted when "Camera Obscura" reveals that Sabbath implanting the Doctor's heart in himself had an unexpected side-effect; with one of his hearts still beating in Sabbath's chest, the Doctor can sustain injuries such as having his own chest crushed by sandbags and survive as he is still linked to the other heart in some way. However, this ability is only demonstrated when the Doctor and Sabbath are on the same planet at the same time and in the same city, making it unclear if this would have applied if the Doctor suffered a similar injury anywhere else, and at the end of the novel Sabbath removes the heart he stole from the Doctor, breaking their link and leaving the Doctor to start growing a new one.
- In the Dragons of Requiem novel Light of Requiem, none of the Vir Requis can shift into dragons because the mimics are capable of nullifying their magic. They have to fight off the mimics in human form for nearly the entire book.
- The Dresden Files: In Fool Moon Harry manages to unfasten and steal Agent Harris' Hexenwulf belt just before Harris can tear his throat out. Harry understandably does not return the dark magical artifact to the addicted murderous agent.
- Sparrowhawk loses his magic in the later books of the Earthsea saga by Ursula K. Le Guin. It is even theorized by another character later that the ability to always pop up exactly where he was needed was actually his greater power, which he retained.
- The Empirium Trilogy: Queen Rielle's last blast of magic suppresses everyone's tie to the empirium, rendering each elemental powerless. In Eliana's time, the era of elementals is less fact than myth. In the new timeline, Rielle does this intentionally, only letting three people keep their powers. Before she dies, Rielle implies that this new status quo won't be permanent.
- Ferals Series: The Mother of Flies' fate. As a result of straining her powers during her battle with Caw, Cynthia's bond with the flies is broken, rendering her harmless.
- Forest Kingdom: In book 4 (Beyond the Blue Moon), this happens to the Forest Castle itself, thanks to the Inverted Cathedral (which it was built around) being re-inverted as a result of the climactic battle. Without the Cathedral's magic affecting the Forest Castle, it's restored to its original form.
- In Freakling, Taemon loses his Psychic Powers, called psi in this universe. This causes major problems, since the majority of the population has psi and uses it for all daily living.
- The Guardians, human-angel hybrids, can choose to Fall and become normal humans. They will still have highly diminished versions of their superpowers. The longer they spent as Guardians, the stronger those superpowers will be when they Fall. Many Guardians regarding Falling and being human as a retirement, after a long career of fighting evil.
- Heart of Steel, superintelligent Cyborg Alistair Mechanus loses his mental connection to his stronghold's computer network through the actions of the antagonist. He is still a superintelligent cyborg, but he loses the near-omniscience his network gave him and is badly disoriented as a result. In the process of protecting Julia and getting his network back, he learns how to be human again.
- The Heroes of Olympus has Calypso. She was a titan who was trapped on a lonely island for thousands of years. Finally, Leo returns to her and takes her. When Calypso leaves the island, she becomes an ordinary human. Later it turns out that she has retained her special beauty and her magical powers, but she is no longer a titan, and has lost most of her powers.
- In The House of Night, this happens to Aphrodite, and as of Revealed she has NOT gotten her vampyrism back. Still kept her visions, though, which was the one thing she could have happily gotten rid of.
- In Sergey Lukyanenko's Labyrinth of Reflections, one of the main plot points are a group of people in Deeptown called Divers, who can see programming holes and backdoors visually and are able to voluntarily break the illusion of full-body presence, whereas everyone else requires timers to kick them out or "exit menus" to allow their consciousness to go back to the real world. The protagonist is a Diver who, by the end, gains certain Neo-like abilities (except the book came out before the movie) after an encounter with a strange being (whose nature is left unexplained). The sequel starts with a Time Skip and the protagonist explaining that there significant changes have taken place in the Deep within the last few years. The kick-out timers are now mandatory, eliminating the need for Divers to pull people out. They also somehow lose their ability to see "holes", leaving cyberspace security work to hackers. The protagonist himself no longer has his powers that allow him to literally fly around the Deep and do anything he wants. He also can't connect to the Deep without the use of a computer (although it's not clear if this he actually had this ability). By the end of the second novel, he regains his powers by embracing them.
- In A Little Vice, Saint Castitas suffers a Heroic BSoD after losing to Invidia Bat, losing her ability to transform.
- Loyal Enemies starts with the excellent wizard Veres being beaten to a pulp by supposedly random tavern thugs. Throughout the entire story he's self-healing slowly but surely thanks to a special spell. The downside is that said spell consumes almost all of his magic, leaving him with only ten percent of his normal power and forcing him to rely on his swordsmanship and wit, as using even the smallest amount of magic makes him faint half the time.
- A Mage's Power: After maintaining an elemental fusion spell for far longer than safe, Eric is unable to use magic for a brief period of time.
- Michael Vey has Nichelle, who has the power to painfully take away a Glow's power. When Michael manages to overload her power, Hatch deems her to have outlived her usefulness. While she still has her power, she was too scared of Michael to use it again, and many have stated that without other Glows around, her power is useless. In the second book, the Elgen invents a device called RESATs that replicate Nichelle's power, but in greater doses.
- Monster of the Month Club: When Rilla first meets Owl, he can absorb knowledge and correctly use it from the paper he eats with things printed on it, but he loses the ability permanently after his glasses are removed once. Even putting them back doesn't undo it, nor does his being de-animated and later reanimated by stellar alignments.
- In The Mortal Instruments, there is Simon Lewis. He begins as an ordinary human, but soon becomes a vampire. After a while, he gets the ability to stay outside in daylight. Toward the end of the book series, however, he is transformed back by a demon into an human being. But shortly thereafter his friends find him, and make him a shadowhunter.
- The New Heroes begins with all of the superheroes and villains losing their powers and talks mainly about their children. It's further explored in the prequel series Superhuman.
- At the start of Night Watch (Series): The Day Watch, Alisa winds up completely depleting her magic in a conflict with the Night Watch, and has to spend time at a summer camp to replenish. She rather enjoys the challenge of seducing a man using only her appearance and words.
- The man in question turns out to be a Light mage also suffering from this due to the same battle.
- A common non-lethal punishment imposed by the Inquisition is depowering, effectively turning an Other into a normal human with no ability to use magic. A worse punishment is to leave some magic for the person to use, constantly reminding him or her about their former power.
- In School Supervision, a genie-type Other creates a spell book that allows an Other to be depowered. She uses it along with a copy of the Fuaran text to turn a group of vampires and werewolves into top-level Others with a perfectly gray aura (neither Light nor Dark).
- At the end of Sixth Watch, Anton sacrifices himself to save everyone else. Instead of killing him, though, the Eldritch Abomination makes him human permanently.
- The entire mechanism of Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate series is that the main character is a 'preternatural' who can take away the unnatural powers of both werewolves and vampires simply by touching them; these socially respected undead refer to preternaturals respectively as 'curse-breakers' and 'soul-suckers.'
- In Please Don't Tell My Parents You Believe Her, Penny loses her ability to invent. This is somewhat compensated for with a robot body that never tires, and is fireproof (except for the hair, regrettably).
- The entire point of the energy shield surrounding the city-state of Tonzimmiel in A.L. Phillips's The Quest of the Unaligned is to strip the power from any mage who passes through it. This is the keystone of Tonzimmiel's extreme meritocracy, as the nobility of the surrounding realm of Caederan rule principally because of their magical powers.
- Nearly happens to the protagonist when he walks through the shield without knowing either what it does or that he has magic for it to affect. Luckily for him, his Love Interest was on hand with the antidote.
- Wide-scale involuntary rehumanification is the major plot element in the second book in the series, Changeless.
- In the fourth book of the Ranger's Apprentice series Will is still suffering the after effects of drug addiction and has lost his Ranger conditioning.
- Retired Witches Mysteries: With a few exceptions (who continue to grow in power and live longer because they've somehow bought extra magic from the Grand Council), witches' powers generally grow weaker as they get older, until they finally give up their magic entirely and retire. The titular characters are among those who are weakening, which is why they're looking for new witches to replace them in their coven.
- Former Knight Templar Cass/Sister Kassdy from Jack L. Chalker's Soul Rider series agreed to give up all of her flux powers as part of becoming The Atoner. Ironically, this actually results in her becoming even more badass since the mechanism involved also makes her totally immune to those powers, tuning her into every flux manipulator's worst nightmare: a ferocious Mama Bear who cannot be injured — or even detected — by their powers. Given that most of the heroes are members of her extended family she is thus a person much to be feared. Fortunately for the bad guys the heroes tend to keep 'Grandma' in reserve until the absolutely last moment because she can't be healed by magic either.
- In Star Wars Legends, ysalamiri are creatures that "push back" the Force for a space of a few meters each. Their planet of origin has so many that on that world, the Force is inaccessible, which makes Luke Skywalker have some difficulties when he's imprisoned on it and later has to go through a forest crowded with beasts that hunt Force-Sensitives.
- Mara Jade: Welcome back to the world of mere mortals. Don't like it, do you? It's not easy to suddenly lose everything that once made you special, is it?"
- Interestingly, in I, Jedi Corran Horn notices that when in a ysalamiri's field Luke seems younger and more optimistic, since not sensing the greater galaxy also means a reprieve from sensing his overwhelming responsibilities.
- Happens to Richard during the last two books of the Sword of Truth series.
- In Anne Rice's Tale Of The Body Thief, Lestat (her favorite vampire) longs to be human again and make a deal with the con man to switch bodies. The rest of the book is how Lestat gets his real body back.
- This happens at the end of Eddings's The Tamuli, when Sparhawk renounces the title of Anakha and becomes a normal human as opposed to a god-killing being who exists outside of destiny.
- In Villains by Necessity, the main character Sam, in order to get the final MacGuffin, is forced to give up his personal identity as an assassin, essentially losing both the skills and psychological training he'd worked for all his life. One of his companions helps restore it to him just in time for the final confrontation with the story's Big Good Mizzamir.
- In The Waterless Sea by Kate Constable, second book in the Chanters of Tremaris series, the heroine Calwyn loses her powers of chantment after she tries to mend the "wounded land" of Merithuros. She doesn't like that very much. Actually, she says she'd have rather had her hands cut off. But she gets it back after she has a swim in a magic pool so she can then go on and becomes the Singer Of All Songs like she's supposed to.
- Gene Wolfe's Able of the High Heart (novels "Wizard" and "Knight") is effectively brought down to normal by promising not to use his higher powers as price for being able to return to Mythgarthr in pursuit of his true love. The grant of this dispensation is driven by concern for his happiness, not by admiration of true love; although God does move in curious ways.
Live-Action TV
- In the Babylon 5 episode "Dust to Dust", Psi Cop Alfred Bester shows up on the station to track down a drug supply which gives mundanes telepathic abilities. Given that he is himself a powerful telepath whose history with the station crew has, ahem, created certain trust issues, he is forced to take "sleeper" drugs which completely inhibit his ability to read minds. He then uses the Psi Corps' reputation to trick a suspect into confessing by merely being present at the interrogation and blurting out "he's lying" at some point (he figured the guy had to be lying about something).
- The third season of Being Human (US) plays with this with the main cast, but Status Quo Is God, and a vengeful one at that.
- Josh is cured of his lycanthropy after murdering Ray, the werewolf who originally cursed him, and enjoys his life as a mundane human until purebred werewolf Liam attacks him and Aidan, leading to him being scratched and cursed, again. Only this time, he can't be cured because when Liam attacks them once more, Aidan is forced to kill him in self defense.
- Aidan is freed of his stifling social ties to the Boston vampire clan when pandemic flu causes vampires who feast on the blood of humans who had been infected to painfully die, and he was the only one spared from the ravages of the disease because Mother had him buried underground for transgressions against her. This respite is short lived because Liam's actions lead to him ingesting flu-infected werewolf blood, which proves to be the only cure to dying of the flu. The resurgence brings the vampires out of hiding, but also any new vampires sired during this time become horribly mutated and particularly ravenous.
- Sally is saved from Purgatory and is actually brought back to life in a flesh and blood body after Josh and Nora use Ray's heart in payment to the witch Donna to save her. She and her friends Nick and Stevie, who were brought back with her, go to enjoy their lives once more, with the only stipulation being they cannot meet anyone from before they died. Sally encounters a high school friend and then her brother, leading her to seek out the witch to renegotiate the terms of the deal, which expedited the three not-zombies bodies to begin to rapidly decompose, only prevented by eating fresher and fresher meat, up to and including human flesh. Sally resists the urges, and seeks out a way to prevent her soul from being eaten by Donna to extend her own life by learning magic herself.
- The Boys (2019): When A-Train, a member of The Seven, confronts Hughie in his home, A-Train says that he was incredibly stupid to take the "Come Alone" instruction to heart, and as they are discussing whose fault was it that their girlfriends were dead, Kimiko (a young woman who was given Compound-V to turn her into a super villain for the Seven to fight) sneaks up from behind and breaks A-Train's leg. As result he has to use crutches and has to navigate the world as a disabled Black man for some time. While clothes shopping he notices a security guard tailing him, and when A-Train confronts him, the guard gets defensive, and only backs off when some fans recognize him, which leads to A-Train to angrily call out the fact that the guard only backed off because he was harassing a superhero and nothing else.
- Buffyverse:
- "Helpless" from Buffy the Vampire Slayer features a "test" called the Cruciamentum — a rite of passage to test the Slayer's intellect and wit, induced by Buffy's mentor — at the command of the Watcher's Council. Only problem is, she was never informed of this or given opportunity to prepare for it.
- Aiko from Season 8 of Buffy, a Slayer who is full of Squee when Buffy personally calls her after she is impressed the Japanese girl had killed a bunch of demons, is used as a test subject by vampires who want to depower the Slayers. They easily beat her to death and string her up as a warning/threat to Buffy.
- Buffy, in particular, but it can be jarring to see everybody else being so... so normal in Season 9. Simone by proxy attempts to have her depowered and slain. Especially Willow, who has no powers at all.
Willow: Without magic, I'm back to being part hacker, part hostage, while my superpeeps kick evil's butt.
- On Angel, Angel becomes human for one episode by touching the blood of a particular demon. He feels his heartbeat for the first time in centuries and actually needs to eat. Buffy comes to town and they share a day as "normal" lovers. Except she is still a slayer who has to fight evil, and he can't help her. So Angel undoes it all by the end of the episode, and he is the only one to remember the entire thing.
- During the After the Fall series, Angel is reverted to humanity by the Senior Partners to handicap his attempts to oppose them after they've sent all of Los Angeles to Hell, forcing Angel to rely on various magical amulets and other spells to create the illusion that he's still a vampire.
- Charmed (1998):
- In one episode, Cole has to fully give in to his demon side in order to protect the girls, which leaves him as a mindless beast for all of ten seconds before they use a spell to permanently remove his powers, leaving him mortal for a while and hating it. He then goes on to assume the throne of the underworld and become the Source of all Evil in the world, but hey, there was a difficult transition period. Where he goes from there is difficult to follow. Cole sort of embodies Powers as Programs.
- Additionally there are several times during the series where the sisters, while retaining their ability to cast spells, scry, and make potions, they lose their active powers, for example in "Power Outage" when a demon tricks them into using their active powers against each other in anger, breaking the Power of Three and removing their powers. Also in "Ordinary Witches", when an accident causes Phoebe and Piper's charmed powers to go to innocent bystanders. And when they are given the chance to experience not being witches as a reward for defeating the Source (twice). And several demons/evil witches who have stolen their powers over time.
- Leo also loses his Whitelighter powers towards the end of the series, after choosing his family over his responsibility as a Whitelighter. Subverted in that, unlike Cole, he never regains his powers.
- Notably one episode featured the entire magical world losing all of their powers due to the birth of Wyatt.
- In the comic book follow-up once again the entire magical world loses their powers and every non-magical human gains magic powers.
- Chuck without the Intersect, which happens several times over the series. He's without it in Season 5. As with before, this doesn't stop Chuck from showing that he's far more than just a bunch of government secrets stored in his head.
- Doctor Who:
- Seasons 7, 8, and 9 featured a lengthy arc where the Doctor is exiled to Earth by the Time Lords and deprived of his knowledge about time travel (after being convicted of violating Gallifrey's Alien Non-Interference Clause in "The War Games"), holding only vague recollections of how to operate the TARDIS. This ends up having a major knock-on effect once the Doctor's exile is lifted in "The Three Doctors": during his exile, he spent his free time examining the TARDIS inside and out in an attempt at brute forcing his way back into being able to use it again. Thus, when the Time Lords finally give back his knowledge of time travel, he's now able to properly control his ship (though not without the regular detours here and there), a skill he lacked during Seasons 1-6.
- "Human Nature"/"The Family of Blood" features the Doctor turned into a human via Applied Phlebotinum. He doesn't even remember being a Time Lord. Martha points out, "God, you're useless as a human!" and has to save his butt a few times.
- In "The Eleventh Hour" he's left without his TARDIS or sonic screwdriver, his standby tools, and has to foil an impending alien invasion in about a half-hour using only his wits.
- While he's still a Time Lord in "The Lodger", he can't get to the TARDIS and is forced to live life normally (and in the right order.) Watching the Doctor cook and work in an office is adorably jarring.
- Discussed in First Kill. Oliver claims that he's found a spell that can turn a vampire into a human, which Juliette is tempted by because it would allow her to be with Cal and not draw the ire of Cal's family.
- In The Flash (2014), Barry loses his powers several times. The first time, he's drained by Blackout and tries to use different means to jump-start his speed again. It finally works when Blackout is about to kill Dr. Wells, revealing that his abilities are, at least in part, powered by his emotions. In Season 2, he's forced to allow Harry to drain all of his speed to boost Zoom after he kidnaps Wally. Team Flash ends up recreating the dark matter explosion to make Barry fast again, and it works (albeit after he proves to the Speed Force that he can let go of his mother's death and move on).
- In Season 3, Wally is temporarily robbed of his powers after Barry (and therefore Savitar) gets Laser-Guided Amnesia, as Savitar was the one to give Wally his powers.
- Cisco also suffers from this in a Bad Future after getting his hands frozen off, and in the present he develops handcuffs that temporarily dampen metahuman abilities.
- In the fourth season, it happens to Barry again after an encounter with a metahuman results in his powers being transferred to Iris. At the end of the episode, they get him to transfer them back to him, but Barry makes sure Iris doesn't mind. Soon after that, Caitlin ends up losing her powers after the season's Big Bad supposedly uses the powers of the same metahuman on her after stealing them from him, but while she may no longer be a metahuman, it's hinted that Killer Frost's personality is still in there somewhere. Eventually, it turns out that he actually used a different metahuman's powers to suppress hers, and she eventually gets them back in the fifth season.
- On Friends, resident snarker Chandler Bing is said to have a nubbin, a third nipple. Just after he has it removed, one of the gang makes an obvious joke that he misses saying. When he realizes this, he laments, "The source of my powers! Oh god, what have I done?"
- Grimm:
- The blood of a Grimm can strip a Hexenbiest (or a Zauberbiest) of his/her powers (in fact, they can't woge anymore), making them pretty much human, although they still have extensive knowledge of potions. Nick does this to Adalind by forcibly kissing her, knowing she will bite him to stop it and, in the process, ingest his blood. She later manages to restore her powers through a long and complicated (not to mention gross) ritual involving the death of another Hexenbiest, which also supercharges her unborn baby.
- In the third season finale, she returns the favor by pulling a Bed Trick on Nick and using a potion to make him normal.
- Both of those events have lasting ramifications, resulting in Adalind becoming pregnant with Nick's child, Juliette becoming a Hexenbiest, Nick's mom being killed, and, most surprising of all, Nick ending up with Adalind, who willingly takes a Hexenbiest-suppressing potion in order to be more human.
- On Heroes, Sylar spent all of Volume 2 depowered after being infected with the Shanti virus. In Volume Three, the entire cast experiences this for a couple of episodes during a solar eclipse.
- Earlier in Volume 3, Peter, the Physical God of the entire cast, loses his powers entirely... to his father!
- Notably, the episode with the eclipse has Sylar and Elle realize how dangerous HRG can be with his superior training, when they're without their powers. As soon as HRG realizes that everyone has lost their powers, he grabs his sniper rifle and goes hunting.
- In one episode of Hustle, Mickey falls victim to a minor scam himself and loses his mojo as a result, going from suave and frightfully intelligent to an unlucky, bumbling idiot.
- Ice Fantasy: The Fire King manages to destroy most of Ka Suo's spirit, which results in Ka Suo losing his supernatural powers and longevity.
- In an episode of John Doe, a lightning strike causes the titular character to regain his color sight and lose his encyclopedic knowledge of nearly everything. The status quo is restored at the end of the episode by another electric shock. Despite this, he still manages to solve the case.
- While Kamen Rider characters rarely lose their powers, it happens:
- Kamen Rider Gaim has Ryoji Hase lose his powers by having his belt destroyed about a quarter of the way into the show. He doesn't take it well, and what happens as a result of his desperation to get his powers back leads to some dark truths being uncovered.
- He's not the only Rider to lose their belt either. Zangetsu's second belt is stolen (and later disabled while in the hands of the thief), and his first is destroyed in battle after he recovers it; fortunately, he gets replacements for both in the Gaim/Drive movie. Gridon, Bravo and Knuckle all have their belts destroyed before the series is over; Gridon gets a replacement in the finale, but it's also destroyed. He and Bravo finally get permanent replacements in the novel, while Knuckle gets a new Driver a year after the events of the final arc.
- Kamen Rider Zi-O ends with Sougo Tokiwa giving up the godlike powers he's acquired as Zi-O in order to undo the entire story's events, the sacrifices he made to get those powers having been so great that in his estimation it was all for nothing. The new timeline he creates has the possibility that he'll one day get his powers back, but probably never to the same heights again.
- Kamen Rider Gaim has Ryoji Hase lose his powers by having his belt destroyed about a quarter of the way into the show. He doesn't take it well, and what happens as a result of his desperation to get his powers back leads to some dark truths being uncovered.
- In Legends of Tomorrow, Nate loses his steel skin (as well as his knowledge of history), when George Lucas decides to leave the movie business before making A New Hope and Indiana Jones, since the former inspired Ray to become a scientist (and turn Nate into a meta), while the latter inspired Nate to become a historian. During the Crisis on Earth-X crossover, Stein's death means Jefferson can no longer become Firestorm, so he leaves the team, even though he's the only one aboard the ship who knows how to keep the Waverider running. Also, in the Season 1 finale, Vandal Savage's attempt to reset history inadvertently results in him becoming mortal again, allowing the Legends to kill him. Three times.
- The episode of Lois & Clark that introduced kryptonite. There was also an episode where a villainess used a ray gun to take away Clark's powers and Lois ended up with them instead.
- In Merlin (1998), this happens to the gnome Frik, who loses his magic and becomes basically a strange-looking human. However, this might have worked to his advantage, as he shortly thereafter becomes a Badass Normal working for the heroes, and because he is no longer magical, he survives the end of magic instead of fading away as Mab does.
- In Merlin (2008), Merlin loses his magic for a while in the Season 4 opener, after which he ended up passing out for a while. He was still in a bind when he woke up, but during the trip back to Camelot with Gwaine, he regains his power.
- Kai Lucero on Midnight, Texas has the ability to drain "dark energy" from supernatural beings. He restores the humanity of one newly-turned vampire in one episode and permanently depowers the Rev in another. The trope is fulfilled when he drains Lem the vampire at his request, only for Lem to reclaim his powers shortly thereafter.
- In Moonlight (2007), Mick is a Friendly Neighborhood Vampire who spends much of his time bemoaning the fact that he's a vampire. Finally, he's given the chance to (temporarily) turn back into a human... just in time to get his ass thoroughly kicked by an ancient vampire. Then again, even as a vampire, he couldn't have done much, as the guy is too good. The very next episode, he realizes just how badly he needs to be a vampire again and has Joseph re-turn him.
- An episode of Mutant X has a New Mutant with a Healing Factor (which makes his Death Seeker personality a little ironic) working for GSA, when an epidemic starts that threatens to wipe out all New Mutants. He is forced by his boss to work with Adam (although ordered to shoot him as soon as he has the cure). When Adam extracts his DNA to use his Healing Factor to cure the disease, he inadvertently removes this ability. The guy is happy to be able to injure his arm without it immediately healing. Then the Big Bad realizes this and has him shot... the guy isn't too upset at that either.
- Once Upon a Time: When the curse took over, all fairytale creatures that were nonhuman or magical became human and/or lost their magical power. For example, the Evil Queen can no longer use magic, Rumplestiltskin is returned to his human form (even regaining his limp and accent), the fairies are human nuns, and Red Riding Hood no longer transforms into a wolf every full moon.
- Zelena sacrifices her magic to save Storybrooke in "Where Bluebirds Fly", but "The Eighth Witch" shows that she regained it.
- In Painkiller Jane, the agency's goal is to do this to all neuros, which they achieve through "chips" which stop them from using their powers. It's revealed that it only works on first-generation neuros. Second-generation neuros, like Jane herself, are immune.
- Power Rangers is fond of this trope.
- Tommy Oliver lost his powers as the Green Ranger, twice.
- The whole team loses its powers three and a half times in the first 6 seasons.
- The last three Saban seasons (Lost Galaxy, Lightspeed Rescue, and Time Force) have the rangers willingly give up the call.
- The Disney era has it happen to every single team except one (7 in all) are forced to give up the call.
- Wild Force has Animus take the zords (and by extension, their powers) because Humans Are the Real Monsters.
- In Powers Walker used to have powers, but they were stolen by Wolfe before the start of the series.
- Pushing Daisies had a variant: Ned didn't lose his power, but decided to stop using it.
- In the Red Dwarf episode "D.N.A.", Kryten is temporally brought down to normal when he is turned into a human being.
- In The School Nurse Files, when Kang-sun disappeared, Eun-young stopped seeing jellies, causing her to resign.
- On the last episode of The Secret World of Alex Mack, Alex is given the antidote to the chemical GC-161, which originally caused her powers in the first place. We never find out if she uses it.
- A comedic pseudo-example is an episode of Seinfeld where George finds himself getting very bad at lying.
- The Season 2 opening of The Sentinel has Jim struggling with his heightened senses until they fade out altogether. He's later told in a vision that his experience so far has just been a taster and he needs to decide whether to continue as a Sentinel.
- The third season opening reuses this trope. Jim accidentally shoots a security guard, blames his Sentinel senses and loses his abilities due to his guilt. He then has to go through with another vision to get them back and save the day.
- In Siempre bruja, this happens to Carmen when her powers are taken away. She also takes away Lucien's powers.
- Barney Miller, the "backup bionic guy" in The Six Million Dollar Man, had his bionics "throttled back" to normal human level after his initial appearance.
- The same kryptonite thematic episode of Smallville. Plus the one where a kid steals Clark's power with Kryptonite and thunder; when that same kid steals them again with more Kryptonite and a power generator; when he and Lex are trapped in a series of tunnels with just enough Kryptonite to make Clark normal; the episode with Perry White and the solar flare thingies (half the time); when Jor-El takes his powers at the start of the Zod arc; when Jor-El takes his powers at the end of the Veritas arc; when the clone of Zor-El tricks the clone of his mom into tricking him into taking the Blue Kryptonite ring; when Jor-El takes Kara's powers (and memories) for the vaguely plot-centric reason that her dad was evil; when they followed Brainiac into Krypton in the past; cloned Zod's Bad Future with the artificial red sun (and cloned Zod and his army of cloned Kryptonians have artificial powers, of course); and all the cloned Kryptonians count, too, though as clones they've technically never had powers; and... all in all, Smallville writers just love to take their character's powers away.
Eric Summers: Welcome back to being normal, Clark. Kinda sucks, doesn't it?
- Star Trek: The Next Generation in the unimaginatively named episode "The Loss", in which Counselor Troi loses her empathic abilities. Also "Déjà Q", with the Sufficiently Advanced Alien Q, much to Picard's great annoyance.
- In one episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Odo has his shape-shifting abilities taken away by his people as a punishment for killing a fellow Changeling. Unusually for this trope, he does not get his abilities back until quite a few episodes later.
- Star Trek: Voyager: In the episode "Q2", Q's Jerkass son causes so much havoc that he has his powers taken away, forcing him to stay on the Voyager for a week in the hopes of teaching him some restraint.
- Stranger Things: Over the course of Season 3, Eleven exhausts herself exerting her powers, using them even while sporting a leg injury. The epilogue reveals that even 3 months later she's completely burned out, though it may be temporary as Mike believes they'll come back sooner or later. Her nose still bleeds from the effort, so she hasn't exactly lost whatever makes it possible.
- Supergirl (2015):
- In the episode "Human For A Day", Supergirl loses her powers for a day after exhausting all her solar energy in a "solar flare" to destroy the Red Tornado.
- In the episode "The Darkest Place", Cadmus boss Lillian Luthor forces Kara to use her solar flare again, temporarily depowering her once more so Cadmus can steal some of her blood.
- In another episode, Kara and Mon-El travel to a moon in a red sun system, causing both of them to lose their powers and having to free a group of slaves about to be sold using their wits. Notably, Mon-El is about to be shot by a slaver, only to be stopped by a Dominator, who recognizes Mon-El as the Prince of Daxam.
- Supernatural:
- Happens to Castiel several times over the series. In a Bad Future, he becomes human after the angels leave Earth for good and is a complete mess, indulging in drugs, booze, and orgies. Near the end of Season 5, he gradually loses his powers as he's cut off from Heaven and becomes much weaker, even needing to rest and sleep. For the first half of Season 9, he is reduced to human after his Grace is stolen by Metatron, forcing him to kill enemy angels to take their Grace for himself as a temporary measure until Metatron returns Castiel's own Grace to him.
- In the fifteenth season episode "The Heroes' Journey", Dean and Sam find themselves dealing with regular human problems such as cavities, expired credit cards, and car trouble, which is attributed to them having previous enjoyed God's favour as the stars of his story; now that they have turned against God, he has brought them down to normal people. In the subsequent episode "The Gamblers", Dean and Sam are able to make a deal with the goddess Fortuna to restore their previous luck.
- The fate of every Super Sentai team, and at the beginning of the first episode of Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger, after sacrificing their powers to defeat the invading Zangyack forces.
- Captain Jack Harkness discovers in Torchwood: Miracle Day that the healing factor and immortality he previously had is gone, although Word of God is that it was only the healing factor that was taken away.
- The episode of "Election" in Tower Prep features a disease that causes this.
- Cole experienced this in Tracker, thanks to an energy weapon made by one of Zin's guys. It nullified his Cirronian energy, and he was essentially human until Mel realized she could power him up again.
- Bosses in Undercover Boss go deep undercover, work in the front lines working minimum wage jobs and sleep in cheap hotels.
- The Unforgettable episode "DOA" has Carrie get poisoned, which interferes with her Photographic Memory (the show's primary schtick).
- Wizards of Waverly Place:
- This is what happens to young wizards when they lose the Family Wizard Competition.
- Alex Russo had this happen to her when she lied to Professor Crumbs about her parents in regards to her failing report card.
- Wonder Woman (1975): The effect on Princess Diana of not wearing the belt of strength of her Wonder Woman costume away from Paradise Island. She still retains her warrior training, but does not have Super-Strength. It is implied that her speed and reflexes as Diana Prince are also reduced to human norms.
Myths & Religion
- The Bible: Samson loses his godlike strength when his hair is cut by Delilah — it stayed gone until his hair grew back and he prayed for his strength to return so he could do a Taking You with Me.
- The Saga of the Volsungs: Brynhild.
Podcasts
- In Episode 13 of Interstitial: Actual Play, Criss Angel finds himself fighting the Smoke Monster from Lost. He uses a series of successful moves to turn the Smoke Monster back into the Man in Black, who he then kills with a single punch.
Tabletop Games
- In Don't Rest Your Head, if one of the Awake falls asleep, upon waking they lose all their powers until they stay awake at least as long as they slept... If they live long enough to wake up, that is. They'll be asleep for at least a full day, and from the moment they fall asleep to when their powers are restored, they act as a beacon attracting Nightmares to kill them or worse. The game is called Don't Rest Your Head for a reason.
- The Drow of Dungeons & Dragons are occasionally subjected to this — powerful clerics of the spider goddess Lolth may find themselves inexplicably stripped of their powers, or in extreme cases devolved into elf-spider hybrids called Driders. Some who persevere and keep their faith are eventually given their cleric abilities (and/or original form) back, and claim that it was a Secret Test of Character on the part of their goddess, but given Lolth's Chaotic Evil nature it's just as likely that she's messing with her followers for giggles.
- The 4e rendition of Forgotten Realms had the Spellplague do this to Elminster: once the mightiest archmage in the setting, with a direct access to the goddess of magic (his on/off lover) and an essentially limitless lifespan, reduced to a near-powerless tired old man thanks to the ravaging of the Weave and the murder of Mystara.
- In GURPS Illuminati University there is a specific trait called Mundanity, which is literally this as a power. Those with high-enough level of Mundanity can literally turn anything extraordinary into something normal. For example, any aliens threatening a character with high-level Mundanity with zap-guns will find that their arsenal has turned into stage props while he’s enjoying the antics of the “drama students.”
- Magic: The Gathering:
- Numerous cards exist which remove the abilities of target creatures. For instance, Crash Landing targets creatures with flying while Blood Moon turns all non-basic lands (which notably can do things like create more one one type of mana, or have special powerful effects) into basic, mundane mountains.
- The sheer havoc inflicted on reality by the New Phyrexian invasion has done something to the Planeswalker spark, with a long list of Planeswalkers losing their sparks in the aftermath (including major characters like Nissa and Sarkhan). It's anyone's guess what exactly caused it, if it can be reversed, or how widespread the losses are.
- Numerous cards exist which remove the abilities of target creatures. For instance, Crash Landing
Toys
- BIONICLE:
- Happens to the six Toa Nuva after the Bohrok-Kal steal their Elemental Powers.
- The six Toa Metru, after they've temporarily used up all their own elemental powers but before they've unlocked their mask powers, are reduced to relatively "normal" during parts of the 2004 arc.
- The storyline from 2009-2010 centers on this happening to Mata Nui, of all people, after Makuta takes over his Humongous Mecha body. Eventually he manages to tap into the Mask of Life's power and return to a Flawed Prototype body and defeats Makuta.
Video Games
- Breath of Fire III:
- Once is actually done humorously in the Null Magic Hall to the opponent you are supposed to fight, he is a magician, but due to the rules of the Null Magic Hall; magic cannot be used. However Techs and Ryu's Transformations can.
- Another is Fighting the Elder Dragon, Ryu cannot transform due to specific wards placed in the room to prevent Myria from spying.
- In the Dark Forces Saga, between Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II and Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, Kyle Katarn ends up willingly giving up his Force sensitivity, giving his lightsaber to Luke for safekeeping. This results in a Hopeless Boss Fight early in Jedi Outcast against the Big Bad Desann, since there's nothing an ordinary merc can do against a powerful Dark Jedi. After that, Kyle ends up getting Re Powered in order to go after Desann. It turns out that he was playing right into Desann's hands, as the latter wanted to find out the location of the Valley of the Jedi, so that he could create an army of Force-sensitive Reborn. Kyle learns his lesson and accepts his destiny as a Jedi, becoming a teacher at Luke's academy.
- In Disgaea 4, the main character had this happen to him because he refuses to break a promise he made not to drink human blood. Slightly subverted in that, thanks to The Power Of Sardines, he is still stronger than most of the enemies thrown his way. "Normal", in Hades, is still pretty badass.
- Seen in the "Trespasser" DLC of Dragon Age: Inquisition. The player character, having spent the bulk of three in-game years as the Herald of Andraste with a special magic Anchor on one hand that lets them do the impossible, has to have the hand in question removed from his/her body because the Anchor is going haywire and trying to kill them. Whether the Inquisition is disbanded entirely or merely downsized, the Inquisitor more or less retires to private life with his/her Love Interest, no longer capable of doing the Herald-specific magic which made them so renowned. Of course, the character was a Badass Normal in the first instance, so this is less of a jarring transition than it would be for some, but it's still quite the shift.
- Dragon Quest IV: In the DS version, the Marquis de Leon, upon being defeated by the team, reverts to being King Leon... and with a normal accent.
- Toward the end of Final Fantasy VI, this happens to Terra because Magic slowly disappears from the world because its sources are dead.
- Final Fantasy XIV: The Endwalker main scenario quest "In from the Cold" has the Warrior of Light kidnapped, and their soul ripped out of their body and stuck in a random Garlean soldier. As a result, not only do they lose all their job skills (having them replaced with some extremely basic Gladiator moves — a single attack combo, a damage boost, and a defense boost), they don't even have Regenerating Health. In this extremely weakened state, they're forced to fight their way back to their camp before Zenos, piloting their body, gets there himself and slaughters their friends.
- At the beginning of God of War II and III, you start off with some of the magic attacks from the previous game but are soon relieved of them.
- Inazuma Eleven GO: Chrono Stone: The Second Stage Children are the next step in human evolution, but while they possess massive power, they die before reaching adulthood. El Dorado first tried to prevent them from existing by altering time to make soccer disappear, but they later made a vaccine to cure the Second Stage Children of their genes.
- Slight subversion in Kingdom Hearts when Riku steals Sora's keyblade in Hollow Bastion. It's subverted in that, while Sora is normal for all intents and purposes during this time and forced to fight with a wooden sword, it is not shown as a good thing in the slightest, as only the keyblade can defeat The Heartless and keep the universe from unraveling.
- Iori Yagami as of The King of Fighters XII & XIII. He can still tear you a new asshole with his bare hands.
- Life Is Strange: Near the end of Episode 2, Max manages to freeze time so she can reach Kate in time as she's about to jump from the roof, but when she gets there time starts flowing again, and she's too burnt out to use her powers again. Meaning Max only has one chance to talk Kate down. Max's powers are also inhibited by drugs, as she discovers thanks to Mr. Jefferson in Episode 4.
- In Lufia & The Fortress of Doom, Lufia loses her magic powers after her "death", cementing that she's no longer the Sinistral of Death — just an ordinary girl. The same goes for Seena in Lufia: the Legend Returns .
- Miitopia: Following the clearing of Greenhorne and Neksdor, in addition to the Dark Lord capturing the hero's teammates, he also puts a curse on them which seals their powers away, resulting in them picking a new job before they go on. This does not happen after clearing Realm of the Fey, given that their divine power has grown.
- In the Monster Hunter series, this is what happens when Hunters have been hit with the Dragonblight status by a monster (usually Elder Dragons): the elemental damage and status effect properties are removed until the status effect wears off, or they've taken a nulberry.
- Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark has an optional bonus dungeon in Chapter 2 that is under the effect of an ancient artifact that blocks all magic. Without your bags of holding, magic weapons, potions, spells, and Rings of Protection your character will have trouble dealing even with the normal monstrous spiders around the entrance, let alone the Belibith further in. And good luck if you're playing an archer and neglected to buy ammunition since you've got that cool unlimited-electricity-damage-arrows shortbow...
- Happens to Aya in Parasite Eve, which she is actually grateful for, as it was nothing but a reminder of the horrific nightmare that she dispels after dealing with the True Final Boss.
- Peret em Heru: For the Prisoners: While Kyosuke develops 11th-Hour Superpowers during the climax, it's revealed during the epilogue that said powers appear to have faded due to their leaving the pyramid. They're not too bothered by the loss, as retaining them would have made their life significantly more complicated.
- Halfway through Persona 2: Innocent Sin, Yukino (if she is alive at this point) will give up her Persona powers and transfer them to Jun, thus she becomes an ordinary person once again. The follow up sequel, Eternal Punishment, undoes her sacrifice due to an alternate timeline.
- [PROTOTYPE]: Well, almost normal, anyway. About halfway through, you get infected with a parasite that robs you of all your powers, save disguises and your baseline abilities. On the plus side, the upgrades you get for removing the parasite are worth the wait.
- Shantae: Risky's Revenge ends with Risky stealing Shantae's genie powers. Shantae and the Pirate's Curse has Shantae adjusting to life as a non-genie, and fighting to get her magic back.
- Sonic Labyrinth has Eggman sealing away Sonic's speed in the form of very heavy shoes. Sonic can still Spin Dash, though.
- World of Warcraft: In the aftermath of the Final Battle in Cataclysm, the Dragon Aspects lose their immortality after channeling their powers through the Dragon Soul to slay Deathwing for good.
Webcomics
- In Alice Grove, Gavia has nanotech in her body that, among other things, allows her to hover in the air and float around instead of walking...until the mysterious nanite swarm known only as the Night Walker strips away her nanotech then apparently leaves the planet.
- Apparently happening to Abel in Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures as a consequence of not feeding on emotions. Aaryana believes that this is why Abel is able to dream (something Cubi normally can't do) and why he needs to eat and sleep. His Being half is becoming dominant since he is starving his Cubi half.
- Gregory Deegan suffers a pretty brutal version of this in Dominic Deegan in the "Built to Resist" arc. TIM, having recently escaped from another dimension and packing Lovecraftian Superpowers, rips out Gregory's white magic. And this is just one part of the Break the Cutie treatment Greg gets in this arc... especially since, unlike most examples, his depowering turns out to be permanent.
- Dominic himself loses his Second Sight, as part of The Finale.
- This happens to the cast of Dubious Company in the Back To School arc. Magical Girl Mary and Dark Magical Girl Sue lose their superiority. Walter and Tiren lose their animal attributes, but are barely hindered due to rarely using those, except for acclimatizing to the super hearing loss. And Elly gets back his manly hair.
- Nanase suffers one of these in El Goonish Shive when she uses too much mana in a fight. In this case, being brought down to normal comes with a hair color change; it changes to black as a side-effect of burning out magically. This is apparently a relatively common occurrence, to the point that hair color changes are a recognized medical condition (though it's referred to as a "spontaneous" change as part of the Masquerade.) Subverted as Nanase can, even without her magic, lift 160 pounds (she doesn't seem to realize this is unusual).
- Girl Genius has an interesting inversion: Agatha starts out brought down to normal, but when someone steals her Power Limiter (which she didn't know about), she starts coming into her own.
- In Godslave, Anpu's family stripped him of his powers until he's little more than a talking fennec.
- Jade Harley of Homestuck started off with her Dream Self already awake, which gave her a huge advantage over the other three kid protagonists. That quickly changed however, when her Dream Self got killed and she lost the ability to see future events, along with all her cool stuff in her house. To make matters worse, since Jade was asleep for so much of the storyline, she was actually behind now when compared to the other protagonists' progress in Sburb. She was brought down to sub-normal.
- Of course, she caught up to everyone else fairly quickly, then went God-Tier in [S] Cascade, putting her on even ground with the other kids.
- I Don't Want This Kind of Hero: Dune can inflict this on others using the smoke from his pipe. He notably did this to Naga early on without his consent and was brutally called out for it.
- Inhibit: When a variant goes dormant, they lose their powers.
- Inverloch has the Severed elves, distinguishable by golden eyes and silver hair, which are elves who are mortal and lacking magic.
- Happening to Richard and his townspeople in Looking for Group. As a consequence of being less of a figurative monster, Richard is slowly becoming human again. Since the people of his village are linked to him, they too are becoming human. Maikos compares this to dying since they are no longer immortal pseudo-undead beings. They can age, get sick, starve, and die just like any other human.
- The Order of the Stick:
- The ancient black dragon triggers an Anti-Magic field around itself when battling Vaarsuvius. As it points out, Vaarsuvius without magic is nothing but a fragile, pointy-eared monkey, while a dragon without magic is still a dragon.
- Also attempted in Start of Darkness, when Lirian inflicts Xykon with a disease that saps his magic. Unfortunately, his minions have just enough resources to allow him to undergo the Emergency Transformation into a disease-immune lich.
- The ancient black dragon triggers an Anti-Magic field around itself when battling Vaarsuvius.
- The title character of Princess Pi once lost her throne, and later her invincibility, as a result of a bratty little girl using a genie to help herself become the ruler.
- In Supermom, Liza starts losing her powers around the time that her children start evincing theirs. While without her powers, she's nearly laid out by a nasty cold that she'd presumably never gained immunity against while Nigh-Invulnerable.
Web Original
- This happens to Fjord twice during Campaign 2 of Critical Role. The first time is in episode 61, following a nightmare from his patron, as a warning not to stray too far from his task. When Uk'otoa tries it again in episode 72, Fjord doesn't take it lying down, and ultimately chooses to throw his falchion in the lava and permanently sever his pact with Uk'otoa, rather than continue to live in fear of the entity. He remains Depowered for the next four episodes, before gaining Dwueth'var as a replacement to the Sword of Fathons, and becoming a paladin of the Wildmother.
- Funny Business ends with the main character using her Reality Warper powers to permanently get rid of said powers.
- Monster Girl Encyclopedia has a Cute Monster Girl version of a doppelganger. A girl in a black dress, she can read the mind of a man who was rejected by the woman he loved, and use her shapeshifting ability to become the ideal version of said woman. When she approaches him, the man can't help but love her as well. However, should the man see the doppelganger in her true form, and love her as she is, then she will lose the shapeshifting ability. Not that she needs it anymore though.
- In Phaeton the Bounds children all burn out their powers during the mission to Japan. They still haven't been restored.
Western Animation
- In Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic's shoes are stolen, forcing the speedy hedgehog to walk. It also happens in Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) due to a laser that tracks whenever Sonic runs. It should be noted that both times Sonic doesn't actually lose his speed. He's just put into a position where he can't use it. His sneakers are designed to protect his feet from the intense friction running at the speed of sound would create.
- The Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers episode "The Power Within". A slight subversion as it was demonstrated here that the Series 5 implants don't give the Rangers their abilities, just enhance what's already there. Niko could still sense the hunter on their trail and misdirect them, and Doc was still able to hack Nimrod's computer — it just wasn't as fast or as flashy as what they could do with a badge push. Of course, one scene could be read as the Series 5 implant curbing Shane's ability to use his abilities, but seeing as he is the last of a failed super soldier experiment, that could have been deliberate.
- Adventure Time:
- In "The Witch's Garden", Jake has his stretchy powers taken away by a witch. Oddly, he's given a man-baby-like body as a result.
- In "Betty", Ice King is temporarily turned back into Simon Petrikov by Bella Noche, a being of Anti-Magic.
- In "You Forgot Your Floaties", Magic Man loses his magic in a botched attempt to grant himself the powers of Glob, and he starts referring to himself as Normal Man from then on.
- Amphibia: When Anne, Marcy and Sasha got teleported to Amphibia by the Calamity Box, the three gems on the box's lid lost their power and somehow got transferred to each of the girls, as evidenced by each girl's eyes flashing the color of the gem they're associated with before manifesting them. Recharging the gems at each of the temples causes them to lose their powers in addition to their connection with them, as shown by the glow draining out; this allows them to be useless against King Andrias in his quest to conquer all dimensions, just as he planned. Anne only charged her gem halfway, meaning she still has her connection with it, which comes in handy in the Season 2 finale.
- Happens in a direct-to-DVD/Netflix episode of The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, specifically to Captain America, Thor, and Iron Man due to a magic spell. Captain America goes back to his scrawny, pre-Super Serum self, Iron Man is in his prototype armor (and doesn't know how to use it), and Thor becomes a mortal (and promptly gets his leg broken, in homage to the injured leg of Donald Blake, his comic incarnation's non-powered human form for some time).
- In Barbie and the Secret Door, Malucia drains Romy and Nori's magic, turning them into humans.
- The Batman Beyond episode "Lost Soul" has an AI possess the batsuit, forcing Terry to fight the super-strong suit with just a Utility Belt and Domino Mask.
- In the Batman: The Brave and the Bold episode "Powerless", Captain Atom is a Smug Super who gets Brought Down to Normal. And, now that he truly understands how puny and helpless ordinary people are, becomes an Even Smugger Super.
- In the Ben 10 What If? episode "Gwen 10", Ben wakes up without the Omnitrix, but remembering the series so far. Upon realizing that it's the day he got the Omnitrix, he tries to get it back... And fails. He kinda mopes for the rest of the episode, but nothing else is shown of how it would have gone from there; it's a one-shot "What if?" style episode, complete with Shout-Out at the end. A more straight version of this was the Season 2 finale, where Ben loses the Omnitrix after finally mastering its abilities, resulting in him having fight both of the show's major villains (up to this point in the franchise, anyway) without it. The episode ends with him and his cousin winning the battle with limited use of superpowers, and Ben regaining the Omnitrix, albeit unable to access the device's full abilities once more.
- At times, the whole Ben 10 show seemed to play with the idea of losing powers. It was a story formula, he would use his alien powers, beat the tar out of several guys, then the true big bad would show up and the Omnitrix would be out of juice. Ben would then have to use his wits, creativity, and family to hold them off till he could juice up again. Presumably, they got tired of that, because in the Sequel Series Ben 10: Alien Force he rarely runs out of juice and changes from form to form at will.
- Danger Mouse loses his strength and his confidence after drinking spiked milk delivered to the pillar box by the Mexican bandit El Loco (episode "Beware Of Mexicans Delivering Milk"). It's up to Penfold to tow DM along so they can stop the villain from robbing the Bank of England.
- Danny Phantom:
- Thanks in part to Sam's unassuming wish, Danny ends up an Average Joe without his ghost powers until she wishes it back.
- His almost suicidal attempt of removing them in the final episode in Season 3.
- DuckTales (2017):
- The first season finale sees Magica De Spell, a major Adaptational Badass in this version, lose all of her powers when Donald accidentally breaks her staff, ironically reducing her to same level she was on in the classic series and comics.
- Happens to Gladstone Gander in the episode "The Phantom and the Sorceress". The Phantom Blot, using a magic-draining gauntlet, rids Gladstone of his good luck, resulting in him becoming a Butt-Monkey due to not needing any basic survival skills before.
- While a hyper-evolved worm is by no means "normal", there was an episode of Earthworm Jim where Jim's super-suit was replaced with one that only gave him strength comparable to an ordinary person. Or as Professor Monkey-For-A-Head found out the hard way, "an ordinary, really big person".
- In the Grand Finale of El Tigre, after the Riveras' destructive antics inconvenience the Mayor Pain he has them sentenced to family counseling, where they're told that their constant fights is because they relate to each other as heroes and villains than as relatives. In an attempt to remedy this, he temporarily confiscates their Transformation Trinkets and forces them to live normal lives. They're completely miserable while the villains take advantage of their absence to wreak havoc, prompting them to confront their counselor as a family with him allowing them to save the day after a kaiju eats his roof.
- The Superhero Episode of The Fairly OddParents! has everyone become heroes or villains. The Nega-Chin then changes the world so only the villains remain.
Baby Shredder: Regular people!
Nega-Chin, Bull-E, & Dr. Crocktopus: Without powers!
Janitor: Right! Now surrender! Or face the wrath of we everyday heroes! - In an episode of Fantastic Four: The Animated Series, the team lose their powers after an nuclear explosion goes off. Ben's overjoyed at being human again, but Reed is out to prove that he isn't useless and makes a set of gear to replicate their powers. They end up regaining their powers confronting Doom with the aid of Daredevil.
- In the Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes episode "The Cure", Reed manages to do this for Ben, who feels confused from his Laser-Guided Amnesia about being the Thing and depressed at being left out of the team. He still manages to save the day before returning to normal.
- Generator Rex delivers this to series Big Bad Van Kliess. After bringing him back from the dead (long story) Rex agrees to join him if he lets his friends go. He then shakes Van Kliess's hand... and promptly cures him, sapping him of his powers, and reverting him back to a normal human. Needless to say, Van Kliess quickly makes a hasty retreat courtesy of Back from the Dead Breach.
- The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy:
- "Night of the Living Grim": Grim contracts a bizarre magical disease, "Encroaching Doom Syndrome", that results in him turning into a mortal human. He goes back to being The Grim Reaper when the living slime creature his sickness created apparently eats off his flesh.
- There was also an episode were Mandy lost her nerve (as in a little Anthropomorphic Personification of her attitude living her head) and it moves to Billy's head. This downgrades her from Heroic Comedic Sociopath to meek little girl and Billy up to a bully (though he's still stupid). She later decides she doesn't need the nerve and returns to her usual state while making the nerve vacate Billy's brain.
- Justice League:
- In "Hereafter", Superman takes a stint on a future earth with a red sun. He shows that he's apparently a very tough individual with a variety of skills even without his powers. For instance, he got around by getting an ancient automobile into running condition.
- In "Chaos at the Earth's Core", Supergirl is trapped in Skartaris, which likewise has a red sun, depowering her considerably. However, instead of moping around, she quickly confirms that her powers indeed don't work and adopts new ways of being awesome, namely, by being a Little Miss Determinator.
- Happens to Green Lantern a couple of times during the series as well when his ring is drained, broken, or taken away. But since John was a member of the Marine Corps before getting his ring, he can and will kick butt without it, if not as effectively.
- The Legend of Korra: The Big Bad of Season 1, Amon, has the ability to take a person's bending powers away. In the Series Fauxnale, he eventually does it to Korra herself, but the trauma also unlocks her airbending, which she had been unable to use until then. Later she gains the Avatar State, restoring her own bending, and Aang teaches her to use spiritbending to restore everyone else's.
- Lloyd in Space, "Francine's Power Trip": Telekinetic Francine has a cold and has lost use of her powers, usually used to annoy Lloyd.
- Max Steel did this near the end of the first series. After an argument between Max and Rachel about Max relying on his powers over his training, he (naturally) loses them for the episode. However, he hates this fact and is all too willing to get his powers back.
Rachel: How are you feeling?
Max: Human. I hate it. - In the Men in Black: The Series episode "The Out to Pasture Syndrome", in a climactic battle with Alpha, Jay turns one of his weapons on him and destroys all his alien appendages, reducing him to a (horribly emaciated) human. He is then locked in a highly-advanced prison cell.
Alpha: Go on, Zed. Destroy me. Do it!
Zed: No. You're a mere mortal now. You'll be punished like one.- Of course, this comes back to bite MiB in the butt in the next season when Alpha escapes, gains new robotic appendages and helps the Ixions attempt to invade Earth.
- Done Once per Episode near the end of every episode of Miraculous Ladybug, with thanks to Ladybug de-evilizing the Monster of the Week and undoing all the damage they made.
- Monster Allergy had Zick losing his powers to Magnacat after being trapped in a container that absorbs his powers ("The Devourer"). Later, he gets them back after he sees his father in danger ("The Last Tamer").
- Raiden of Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm loses his godly powers during an episode involving a magical orb. He's still badass thanks to the fact that he has been fighting for thousands of years. During the episode, Raiden does show distress and unease at losing his powers, explaining that for him, being a Physical God is normal.
- My Little Pony:
- My Little Pony 'n Friends: In "The Glass Princess, Part 4", with the destruction of her cloak, Porcina loses her magic powers and becomes just another creature. She admits it's probably better this way.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: This crops up occasionally.
- In the pilot, Princess Luna undergoes this after her defeat as Nightmare Moon.
- Discord can take away pegasus wings and unicorn horns on a whim, which he demonstrates on the mane cast in the Season 2 opener.
- Happens to Rainbow Dash at least twice: in "Fall Weather Friends," where she is dared to resist using her wings for leverage in the annual Running of the Leaves; and in "Read It And Weep," when a wing injury leaves her climbing the walls.
- In the Season 4 premiere, the Mane Six is forced to give up the Elements of Harmony to stop Everfree Forest from growing out of control. On the plus side, doing so revealed a special chest that may be able to get them back. If they can find six special keys.
- "Twilight's Kingdom Part 2": Celestia, Luna and Cadance experience this when they transfer all their magic to Twilight, and Discord goes through this when Tirek drains him of his magic. This also happens to Twilight when she surrenders her own and the Princesses' power to Tirek. The Mane Six return the favor after unlocking the aforementioned Rainbow Power chest.
- In the Season 5 premiere, Starlight Glimmer can take away a pony's Cutie Mark and replace it with an equals sign, resulting in this (e.g. Rainbow Dash no longer has Super-Speed, Fluttershy can't communicate with animals, Applejack loses her Super-Strength). Though the mane six aren't helpless this time and use their wits to expose Starlight and restore the cutie marks of the townsponies, who then help the Mane Six recover their own cutie marks.
- This happens to Discord again in the series finale, just after being drained of his chaos magic by Lord Tirek, Cozy Glow, and Queen Chrysalis, exposing him as the true identity of Grogar. As a result, this forces him to tell the ponies about the oncoming attack on Equestria, as well as his involvement in reviving King Sombra earlier that season.
- The Powerpuff Girls:
- In episodes such as "Slumbering with the Enemy" and "See Me, Feel Me Gnomey."
- Mojo Jojo attempts to do this to the girls in one episode with a custom-made ray that would make the girls lose their superpowers should any of them be hit with the beam. He accidentally hits Princess with it when Princess gains superpowers.
- ReBoot. Part of the plot for "My Two Bobs" involved Bob bringing himself down to normal in order to be more "original" like the other Bob. Hexadecimal was also brought down to normal earlier when a viral scan reformatted her into a Sprite.
- Adora from She-Ra and the Princesses of Power loses the ability to transform into the titular heroine after breaking the Sword of Protection at the end of the fourth season to avoid triggering a universe-wide annihilation. Subverted later, when it's revealed that the sword was really a Power Limiter created to control her, and she's She-Ra with or without it.
- Sofia the First: If the Amulet of Avalor is ever removed from Sofia, she loses all the powers she got with it; most importantly, she loses her ability to talk to Clover, Mia, and Robin because the amulet blessed her with that ability.
- In Spider-Man: The Animated Series, Spider Man suffers from Power Incontinence, removing most of his abilities. He mentions he's kept some of his Spider Agility, in order to justify why he's able to dodge like he does with the Stock Footage.
- The backstory of Stan Lee's Superhero Kindergarten has superhero Captain Courage and supervillain Dr. Superior both lose their powers after their final clash, becoming ordinary men.
- "Power Outage" from Static Shock. Every Bang-Baby in the city, including Static and Gear, gradually lose their abilities. Most of them like it that way. Static and Gear are restored at the end — they have to be, since "Future Shock" confirms that they're members of the Justice League in forty years — but the rest of the Bang-Babies are implied to be permanently depowered. This was the last episode.
- Superman: The Animated Series:
- Luminous blocked off yellow sunlight, sapping Superman's power source. Clark hated it, as not only couldn't he do any super heroics, he finally had to use iodine on his wounds and got to experience what a pulled muscle felt like.
- In another episode, Mr. Mxyzptlk's powers are removed for misusing them.
- In "The Main Man" Supes is kidnapped and imprisoned in a Fantastic Nature Reserve, and his cell is lit with red starlight as he would have had on Krypton, sapping away his powers. He only gets them back when he makes his way into a cell holding a dodo... with artificial sunlight.
- Subverted in Team Umizoomi, Where The Shape Bandit takes Geo's shape belt so he can use the shapes to build a house. Geo still has his powers, he just builds necessary items out of toys, food, and toiletries instead.
- Terra in the Teen Titans (2003) Grand Finale. It's left ambiguous if she's actually lost them or not.
- Part 1 of Transformers: Animated's Christmas special sees the Autobots suddenly wake up in their factory base as ordinary humans. They spend some time trying to adapt to their new, weaker bodies and figure just what happened. Ultimately, the whole scenario was revealed to be a virtual world generated by Soundwave so that he could keep their conscious minds occupied while he brainwashed them into becoming Decepticons.
- Trollz:
- This happened when the girls and boys accidentally broke the Sacred Altar, causing magic to disappear.
- This is generally what happened to most of the magic back then. All trolls alike used to use magic, but nowadays, only girls could do it, because Simon grabbed most of the magic and turned it evil and let loose black amber.
- Winx Club:
- Done in Episode 7 of Season 1 where, as punishment for sneaking out of the school and causing trouble, the principal strips the main characters of their powers, forcing them to stop a monster using brooms and soap. The special based on the season released by Nickelodeon altered this into a project for new students.
- The show also did a variation on this as Story Arc later in Season 1, with Bloom losing her "Dragon Flame" powers to the Trix. Several episodes later, she is under a lake with her sister/secret guardian Daphne, and it's revealed that Bloom's powers never left her (even though all signs pointed otherwise, starting with the fact that she was stuck in her regular form all these episodes), but her Heroic BSoD blocked her from summoning them. Once she stops moping, she gets her powers back.
- The Trix and Ancestral Witches in Magical Adventure do this to every fairy in the Magic Dimension to give themselves exclusive rights to magic-using.
- In Season 5 when the Winx take up the Sirenix Quest, if they don't complete it and earn Sirenix within one lunar cycle, they will lose their powers forever.
- All of the girls but Bloom lose their powers early on in Season 6 when they get outmatched by the Trix's new dark powers powered by the Legendarium, leaving Bloom to share her Dragon Flame with the others to give them minimal magic which they use to earn their Bloomix.
- W.I.T.C.H.:
- In one episode Cedric's attempt to track down Elyon resulted in the Guardians losing their powers (It Makes Sense in Context). Unfortunately, they were stuck in their altered forms.
- Another episode had Cornelia accidentally take up the others' powers, turning her into a super-Guardian, forcing Will, Irma, Taranee and Hay Lin to figure out how to keep fighting without their powers.
