Magic Meteor

A certain type of Applied Phlebotinum in giving powers. Here new superpowers come from above, literally. A meteor falling from the sky gives powers to a person. Either they're hit by it or exposed to it in some way.

For religious imagery, sometimes this meteor is actually Wormwood, a falling star in the Book of Revelation. For a Historical In-Joke, it may be The Tunguska Event.

Compare Thunderbolt Iron, where meteor ore is forged into a weapon.

Anime & Manga

 * In one manga adaptation of The Powerpuff Girls, they had to deal with everyone in the City Of Townsville getting powers from a meteor.
 * A meteorite is the source of The Medusa Plague from King of Thorn.
 * Futari wa Pretty Cure begins with a meteor shower that brings Mepple to Earth. Mipple came the same way a hundred years prior.
 * Meteor Strike (a one-shot by Nobuhiro Watsuki who drew Samurai X) literally has a boy's head impaled with a meteorite which grants him superhuman powers.

Comic Books

 * In the DC Comics comic book Ball And Chain, a fighting couple both get bathed in strange Phlebotinum from a meteor and get superpowers.
 * Hector Hammond, a Green Lantern comic book villain, found meteor rocks and used their powers for evil.
 * In the comic book Rising Stars by J. Michael Straczynski about 113 people (called "Specials") got superpowers from a mysterious meteor crash.
 * In the DC Comics series Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew, six ordinary animals gained their superpowers from a meteor. They had a rabbit for a leader, and a duck on the team.
 * Hawkman villain Lionmane got his powers from exposure to a meteor.
 * Metamorpho (alternate identity Rex Mason) got his superpowers from a crashing meteor.
 * In an Animal Man story, a fellow got powers from a meteor only to find out it was being able to kill with one touch.
 * There's a Spider-Man villain, the Looter, whose whole schtick was stealing meteorites for the yummy power-granting ability
 * In Scare Tactics, Grossout gained his powers (and became a giant walking tumor) from exposure to an exploding meteor.
 * Darna, the heroine of a Filipino comic, found her Transformation Trinket stone in a meteorite (or rather, the meteorite is the stone).
 * DCU villain Vandal Savage gained immortality from sleeping next to a magic meteor.
 * Marvel heroine Firebird got her (fire-based) powers from exposure to a 'meteor' that in a later story was revealed to be the dumped remains of a failed alien lab experiment which had accidentally landed on Earth.
 * Many powers in Wildstorm can be traced back to the Comet Effect, an event in the 1970s wherein the mysterious radiation from a comet passing close to the Earth caused widespread mutations.
 * Black Condor's origin from the 1940's consisted of him being raised by wild condors from a young age and somehow simply learning how to fly. When the story was retold in Secret Origins, writer Mark Waid added a panel showing a passing meteor, to at least give it some kind of explanation.

Film - Animated

 * Susan gets her powers from a meteor in Monsters vs. Aliens.

Film - Live-Action

 * My Super Ex-Girlfriend involves a meteor giving the titular character her powers.
 * She also turns blonde and gets a magical boob job.
 * In the movie The Meteor Man (it might have been a comic book too), a guy named Jefferson gets hit in the chest with part of a meteor and gets powers.
 * Played straight in Chronicle where the gives three teenage guys telekinetic powers.
 * Subverted in Creepshow; Jordy Verill (Stephen King) finds a meteor, which proceeds to turn him into a walking shrubbery.
 * Stephen King's Trucks and Maximum Overdrive uses a meteorite as an excuse for trucks coming to murderous life.
 * In George R. Romero's original Night of the Living Dead, the Earth passes through the tale of a comet, which then causes the dead to come back to life and, y'know, start eating people. Not a meteor per se but close enough.
 * A scientist becomes an insane Poisonous Person in The Invisible Ray, after he is in contact with radioactive meteorite for too long.

Literature

 * In the book Meteorite Strike, everyone who wasn't killed by an asteroid got strange powers.
 * Philip Jose Farmer's Wold Newton Family are descended from people who were in the vicinity of the Yorkshire village of Wold Newton the night a meteor came down in 1795.

Live Action TV

 * In Vanpires, the four teen heroes get the power to transform into cars by a meteor.
 * That's So Raven has Eddy get powers for one episode by a meteor passing that only does once in a while.
 * Superman himself may not count but in Smallville the Monster of the Week was often a "meteor freak," i.e. got their power from exposure to Kryptonite.
 * In Power Rangers Dino Thunder, it turns out that the meteor that killed the dinosaurs was one of these. Presumably it would have given them superpowers had it not destroyed their entire ecosystem first with the impact.

Video Games

 * The meteor that starts Ness' adventure in Earth Bound. Not only was the time traveler Buzz Buzz riding in it, but the meteor contains a material needed for time travel. Which makes sense in retrospect.
 * The object of Super Power Island, an online game, is to capture 6 villains who escaped from the County Prison after a crashing meteor gave them all super powers.
 * The Chaos Comet from Illusion of Gaia apparently gives off a type of magical radiation. Being bathed in the comet's light had been known to give people anything from psychic powers to horribly mutating them into demons. At one point, it's mentioned that "The Ancients" had enough understanding of the comet's powers to outright create living things, like camels and the Dark and Light Knights. The comet also ended up causing these civilizations to fall, since "evolving too fast brings destruction". It seems to return once every 800 years, however.
 * In Final Fantasy VII, if Sephiroth lived to see his gigantic rock crash into the Planet, the massive damage it would cause would have granted him the powers of a god. This trope is only averted because the heroes stopped him.
 * Since the Zodiacs of Etrian Odyssey III gain their magical abilities through studying the stars, it's hardly surprising they can learn a Meteor spell. Simply learning it takes a lot of investment, however, and the spell itself is the most expensive one they can learn.
 * The Temsik Meteor from Ghost Trick:
 * The early Penvellyn alchemists from The Curse Of Blackmoor Manor believed that a meteor found by their ancestor had magical powers. More recent generations may not have believed this, but kept up the tradition of guarding it as a family secret.
 * In Terraria, every night Fallen Stars will crash down like meteors in random places. You can collect them and craft them into an item that will permanently increase your maximum Mana pool (which is the only way to get a Mana pool in the first place). They can also be used as ammunition for a special type of gun, and do the most damage of any type of ammunition in the game. Actual meteors can be summoned by smashing a Shadow Orb. The resulting meteor ore can be crafted into various items, including the aforementioned star-shooting gun.
 * The early Penvellyn alchemists from The Curse Of Blackmoor Manor believed that a meteor found by their ancestor had magical powers. More recent generations may not have believed this, but kept up the tradition of guarding it as a family secret.
 * In Terraria, every night Fallen Stars will crash down like meteors in random places. You can collect them and craft them into an item that will permanently increase your maximum Mana pool (which is the only way to get a Mana pool in the first place). They can also be used as ammunition for a special type of gun, and do the most damage of any type of ammunition in the game. Actual meteors can be summoned by smashing a Shadow Orb. The resulting meteor ore can be crafted into various items, including the aforementioned star-shooting gun.

Web Comics

 * In the webcomic Super Frat, fratboys gain powers from a meteor striking.

Western Animation

 * The origin of Team Go in Kim Possible. Rainbow meteor!
 * In Loonatics Unleashed, a meteor strikes Acmetropolis, but instead of destroying the city, gives everyone strange superpowers. The team in the show is ripped off of the Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew.
 * In Avatar: The Last Airbender Sozin's Comet is a celestial object which passes close enough to the world to become a huge and powerful source of fire every 100 years, providing an enormous boost of power to Firebenders. The fact that it heralded the genocide of the Air Nomads also marks it as a Comet of Doom.
 * An episode of Rescue Rangers began with a meteor falling to Earth, splitting into two crystals, one of which goes to the hero, the other to the villain, giving them both Rubber Man abilities.