Green Lantern Ring/Sandbox



A nonspecific, intentionally vaguely defined ability of a character. While distinct upgrades in power or the acquisition of new ones isn't rare in a series, the Green Lantern Ring's defined base ability never changes. The user simply gains new insight on it or becomes aware to try something they didn't think of before. The base rule does not change.

Much like its comic book origin, this is convenient to plots because it allows extreme flexibility for the writers without the resulting complaints from fans that they've pulled a new power out of a character's ass. It still has a semblance of rules. However, this also depends on how creative a writer can be about it.

Named after the most famous example of this, the Ring of DC Comics' Green Lantern Corps, which is said to be limited only by the user's willpower and imagination.

Expect Forgot About His Powers to occur on multiple occasions.

Compare Green Rocks (which do this stuff at the whim of the writers, rather than serving a specific character), New Powers as the Plot Demands (for cases where new powers are the result of Ass Pull), Re-Power (for situations when a character has their powerset either expanded upon in a "nonlinear" way, or reimagined entirely from the ground up), Adaptive Ability, Swiss Army Weapon and Adaptive Armor. When a weak-sounding power has this, then it's Heart Is an Awesome Power.

Anime and Manga

 * Although Read or Die's Paper Users tend to specialize, a Paper Master can do virtually anything with paper and the right amount of motivation.
 * In Sailor Moon, while most of the Sailor Senshi have clearly elemental-based powers with relatively predictable effects, the title character's "moon healing" power seems to do whatever the particular episode's plot requires. It is most commonly used to kill a monster or to turn a monster back into its original human or inanimate object form; however, throughout the series, it was also used to turn minor villains good, deflect a flamethrower attack, break a nanorobot launcher implanted into a villain's arm (while leaving said villain intact otherwise), and turn a repentant Big Bad into a child and send her back to her homeworld. This versatile power gets upgraded several times throughout the series, but the only purpose of these upgrades seems to be allowing Sailor Moon to target more powerful enemies.
 * Semantic Superpower: each action is "healing". Healing trauma, healing away the evil influences, healing away implants, healing pure evil eliminates it, etc.
 * This is because Sailor Moon draws her power primarily from the ginzuishou, which is essentially pure magic and the most powerful magical artefact in the universe.
 * Kakeru from Psycho Busters has the power to cycle through possible outcomes of any given situation, and to make the one that fits his needs the most become reality. However, it may only happen when his life is in danger, and will not affect others with the same ability.
 * Kotoha from Yozakura Quartet can conjure up pretty much anything with her voice alone. The uses for this are quite variable, but Kotoha prefers guns. Still, there's quite a lot of variety in that. If she needs More Dakka or a BFG, her voice can handle it.
 * Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure has a tendency to do that too. Especially with Stands such as Gold Experience, Jailhouse Rock or Stone Free, that don't seem that awesome or really interesting in actual combat... at first.
 * The Magic Music in Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch has aspects of this. Other than (somehow) harming their opponents, the songs are able to make fish dance, break out of ice, overfill a magic jar (which the bad guys attempted to use to drain the princesses' power), penetrate headphones, heal an individual from death, somehow return somebody back to the shore (at least perhaps while they are in a Pearl Kingdom), dispel hypnotic trances on others, or even…be just a song.
 * This page wouldn't be complete without a mention of the GN Drives of Mobile Suit Gundam 00. From the very beginning it is revealed the in addition to providing an infinite source of power, the particles produced from the GN drives are capable of disrupting radar and communications, which is just the tip of the iceberg for what these things are really capable of. New attributes of the GN particles are revealed throughout the series all the way up to the final episode. Their uses include making the Gundams flight capable, enhancing the cutting edges of their weapons, enabling beam weapons, Deflector Shields, not to mention
 * Nana of Banana no Nana has the ability to manipulate bananas; as long as she has enough of them, she can make anything she wants. Sleeping bags. A tent. Even swords, shields and cudgels.
 * Urizane in S-Cry-ed has power over watermelons. However, he seems to be able to use them to practically anything he needs.
 * semantic superpower: his power is "do X, with a watermelon".
 * Magical girls in Puella Magi Madoka Magica possess magic which is vaguely defined at best, but their abilities seem to conform to the wish that they made in the first place.

Comic Books

 * Quiz, The Answer and Darwin all hark back to an old Legion of Super-Heroes character, Nemesis Kid, whose power was the ability to develop the powers needed to overcome any foe. The Legion learned to deal with him by overwhelming him with numbers (when he promptly develop the ability to escape via teleporting) or by scaring him into helplessness. Princess Projectra killed him by using her illusion powers on him - which naturally made him immune to illusions. Whereupon she killed him with her bare hands (no powers involved).
 * semantic superpower: survive.
 * The Authority's Engineer (and her predecessor) and the Doctor (and his predecessors) have great big "Do Anything" buttons on their chests. Engineers do it by virtue of having replaced all their blood with nanomachines. The Doctors do it by basically being The Wizards Who Did It(not that wizard).
 * Highlights on the Engineer: Creating several dozen perfect duplicates of herself. Turning the nanites in her blood into a massive shell of molecule-sized blades that would shred anything that came into contact with them into less than dust.
 * Highlights of the Doctor: Turning twenty feet of solid steel into twenty feet of fresh mountain air (Quote: What's the difference?). Holding an entire country in one place while the planet continued on its orbit without it. He once turns masses of superpowered mooks into trees.
 * In the original New Teen Titans comics, the main abilities Raven exhibited were empathy, healing, teleporting, and projecting a raven-shaped "soul self". But these seemed kinda boring, so on the animated Teen Titans, many abilities were added; telekinesis, walking through walls, inhabiting minds, creating shields, creating monsters, banishing people to another dimension, sensing magic... pretty much anything, 'cept when it would make the plot too easy.
 * adaptation-fueled repower to semantic superpower: control shadows.
 * Blue Beetle III, Jaime Reyes, has a Guyver-like armor that acts something like a Green Lantern's ring with the ability to alter its various weapons to suit a given purpose (i.e., changing its energy beams' output to Kryptonite radiation when fighting a Kryptonian). The gag being that the Scarab continues to offer lethal ordinance when Jaime wants to subdue opponents.
 * They probably warmed up for this particular character with Guy Gardner, back when he had his Vuldarian powers. They allowed him to shift shape into any kind of weapon or personal defensive structure he needed; he could manifest a fireproof skin if he needed to run into a burning building, but his powers could do nothing to directly help the person he was running in to save.
 * At one point, the suit gave Jaime three options: The least powerful was lethal. The most powerful had a warning that it had "possible theological implications" if it were to be used. Yeah.
 * This, it should be noted, was for dealing with a group of superpowered illegal immigrants. The Scarab also apparently has weapons for taking on The Spectre, God's Wrath made incarnate, which are pretty much WMD-level. The fact the Scarab is even CAPABLE of giving him options to deal with a Nigh Omnipotent entity that makes the Guardians look like a joke is what's most amazing.
 * the blue beetle has swiss army superpower.
 * The Mother Box of Jack Kirby's New Gods.
 * Quite fitting that the Heterosexual Life Partners of the Lantern can do this too. The Flash(es) uses the Speed Force to justify just about anything. Just take a look at his/their page.
 * Darkseid's Omega Effect is essentially an Eye Beams version of this. The Omega Effect can destroy all but the most powerful and invulnerable beings in the universe with one shot, teleport people to whatever destination Darkseid wills, and resurrect anyone who was previously slain by it when Darkseid has need of them again. In Final Crisis Darkseid unleashed a variant called the "Omega Sanction" against Batman which trapped him in a cycle of reincarnation that slowly turned him into an Omega Bomb that would have wiped out all of time and space when he finally reached the present. Essentially, the Omega Effect can do just about anything Darkseid desires.
 * misuse for ass pull
 * Marvel magic users get this a lot, since Marvel doesn't do as much Magic A Is Magic A as DC and typically uses most of the magic in the situation setup, not the actual battle:
 * Loki pulled off some pretty spectacular things (turning Thor into a frog, surviving decapitation, ect) that often made a reader wonder why he didn't use some of that sort of thing more often. The current WMG guess is that the more complicated stuff takes a little preparation and can't be done on the fly.
 * Loki being really powerful was acknowledged in the new Journey Into Mystery run, and his child self (curretnly the hero of the piece) has very little magic, none of which seems usably in a battle (like casting a ritual spell and such), so that the suspense is still there.
 * Like Loki above, the Scarlet Witch is a lot weaker when she's on the side of good, but still, her powers are currently definded as "do anything you can think of." Drama typically coming from whether or not she thinks of it...
 * scarlet witch supposedly has semantic superpower of "bad luck".
 * Dr. Strange is the "sorcerer supreme" (or was...it's iffy). That means anything he does can and will be handwaved with A Wizard Did It.

Literature

 * In Xanth, Surprise Golem is another example of this trope. Her magic talent is the ability to use any talent, once. She gets around this by making minor variations on the talent she's using (she flies one time by becoming a winged horse, and then another time by becoming a winged centaur). In addition, it's eventually revealed that she eventually can reuse talents; over the course of several years the ones she's used in the past will "regenerate". But due to a malicious time traveler, she no longer knows about that.
 * And Princess Ida, whose Talent is "the Idea"- anything that she truly believes, she can make real. So when she assures someone that "You'll think of something!" to get out of a jam, theywill think of something that works. As a very small child, she acquires a pet dragon -- by telling him he's the cutest, nicest thing.
 * The limitation to her talent is that the idea must come from someone that does not know her talent. Ida was able to tame the dragon because she didn't know she could do it; unfortunately, it didn't help with Hugo's inability to summon fresh fruit. A few stories have had sidetrips specifically to see her so that a character can be manipulated into saying they believe the mission will be successful.
 * Ida and Ivy are being mixed up here. Ivy was the one that tamed the youthened version of the Gap Dragon and helped Hugo as a child.
 * Princess Ivy and Princesses Melody, Harmony and Rhythm (who are triplets) are also pretty much able to do anything. Ivy can enhance features of things, which is a very versatile skill, while the triplets can make anything come real using music. Other Xanth characters with much more limited talents also show this trope somewhat in that with imagination they can make their talents do new things, this is often used to turn a "useless" talent useful.
 * Yin/Yang, an ancient Magician who could create any magical item-- which in Xanth means anything. And King Trent's talent of turning anything into anything else is also fairly open-ended.
 * Irene's Green Thumb allows her to grow plants at will; well, Xanth has magical plants that can do pretty much anything as long as it's pun-based, so by carrying an assortment of seeds with her she can cause practically any effect.
 * Elsewhere in Piers Anthony-land, Adepts from the Apprentice Adept series can invoke a given spell only once, making it necessary for them to constantly dream up new rhymes and variants. A different Adept (or a lesser magic user of sufficient strength) can re-use a spell which a previous incumbent has employed, so Stile is able to give his son Bane a list of previously-used rhymes. The exceptions are Adepts Translucent, Green, Purple and Tan, who don't use specific spells or constructs, but still fit the general trope.
 * all of these piers Anthony examples are semantic superpower. He likes having one-word names to powers and then figuring out what he can excuse with them. He once had a character whose power was to make a tiny spot appear on the wall. That character could make that spot any colour. So piers Anthony made him able to create a television screen, because that works on the same principle.
 * The titular Lenses of the Lensman series.
 * In The Wheel of Time, characters are constantly discovering new uses for the One Power. Since the Power is the driving force behind existence itself, it can likely be used for any purpose with knowledge of proper weave and the capacity to use it.
 * The Skill from the Realm of the Elderlings novels. It is most often used as a kind of telepathy, but as it turns out it can be used to heal people as well, amongst other things. Even the characters are sometimes surprised by what the Skill can do, because much has been forgotten.
 * Arabian Nights features one of these. Aladdin's djinn. Of course, when the three wishes are done...
 * "Three wishes" is a western invention. The djinni of the lamp and the djinni of the ring had no such limitation.

Live-Action TV

 * This was the premise behind The Greatest American Hero -- Ralph has lost the manual to his keen new super suit, and must figure out how to use it by himself.
 * In one episode we found out that a previous suit user had the manual. And became a Complete Monster until the aliens took the suit back. Now a dying old man, he quotes Lord Acton ("power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.") and wonders of Lord Acton had a super suit as well.
 * Charmed's Billie Jenkins was given the magical power of "projection" which allowed her to do whatever the writers needed her to in a situation, with ill defined limits which inevitably led to massive plot holes.
 * The most prominent one being that the power of Projection was canonically impossible to have prior to Billie showing up.
 * Also possessed by a teenager who had the power of thought projection, and was eventually turned into an Elder, who are themselves incredibly powerful in the Charmed hierarchy.
 * The deflector and propulsion systems in Star Trek can apparently do a lot more than protect the ship and move the ship. The deflector grid cures a new problem every week (probably by reversing the polarity), aided by the Swiss Army deflector dish, and sometimes by the warp engine nacelles.
 * Tachyons.
 * Spock essentially has a Green Lantern Personality: He acquired new skills and attributes throughout the run of ST: TOS, including the Vulcan Neck Pinch and his cultural need to occasionally fight to the death for sex ("Amok Time"); this trait continued in the movie series, in which he flips from a cold utilitarian ("the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one or the few") to a big ol' emo group hugger ("the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many") in the same movie, not to mention the surprising fact, revealed in the next movie, that Vulcans can store their personalities in another person's brain, which had somehow never been mentioned in any previous show, series, or movie, including the one in which Spock ostensibly did this (it is also documented that the hyper-logical Vulcan personality was not defined until several episodes into TOS - early episodes show Spock laughing and joking - essentially making the entire character a Green Lantern Ring).
 * Spock is misused for new powers as the plot demands.
 * Q, when he's on the heroes' side, is this.
 * A classic Twilight Zone episode, "What You Need", involves a street vendor who has an uncanny knack for selling his customers exactly what they need, and a bitter failure of a guy who forces the vendor to sell him "what he needs" (like a leaky pen that drips ink on the name of the winning horse in a horse-race program). Inverted at the end when the vendor gives the guy a pair of shoes with slippery soles, saying, "Those shoes aren't what you need, they're what I need." The guy then lunges angrily at the vendor, only to slip and fall in the street, where he's hit by a car. The vendor knew that the guy was going to try and kill him, so what was needed was a pair of slippery shoes.

Religion And Mythology

 * One Lakota story involves two brothers who killed Uncegila and got her heart. As long as they performed certain ceremonies, which she made more complicated each day, they got anything they wanted.
 * Prayer and worship are often treated like this by evangelists of many religions, who commonly approach a troubled nonbeliever with the claim that their deities will solve the problem of the day upon conversion. Nevermind that the deities are supposed to be the ones in control and have purposes of their own.
 * Nonreligious mystic practices and fringe sciences are also often touted by their adherents as being able to solve a wide variety of problems.

Tabletop Games

 * In Hero System the Variable Power Pool ability is designed for this. Game Masters are cautioned to be wary of allowing it, as it is notoriously easy to abuse.
 * In GURPS Modular Abilities (Cosmic Power) serves this purpose. As with the above example, can be very easily abusible.
 * Wild Talents has the Variable Effect extra. Slap it on a power quality and you can, with a successful roll, redistribute some or all of your dice in that quality to another power with the same quality--e.g. cast fireballs or daggers, raise protective shields or boost your Dodge skill, fly or heal or shoot webbing at foes. The main limit is that variable effects ten to be really expensive and have smaller pools than dedicated powers. The easiest way to make such powers manageable is to have a theme, such as sorcery or gadgeteering.
 * The spells Wish and Miracle in Dungeons and Dragons are pretty much what they sound like. Miracle is slightly more limited than Wish, in that you don't so much cast one as request one of a god, who won't do anything against their nature. But it also has the advantage that a modest request can be free, while a Wish always costs 5000 experience points (minimum). As for the limitations of the spells, they do have some simple mechanical effects (duplicating other spells, creating a certain amount of wealth or a magic item, rewinding time slightly, traveling anywhere in the multiverse) that are considered the "standard" uses. These aren't actually the limits of the spells, merely the ones with the most predictable effects. Players are encouraged to think up more interesting (and powerful) ones, but this give the DM carte blanche to become a genie of the Literal Genie or Jackass Genie varieties in order to keep things interesting.

Web Original

 * Loophole of the Whateley Universe seems to be able to make or reverse engineer anything, at least so far in the stories.

Western Animation

 * Beast Boy of Teen Titans has shown that he is capable of turning into any animal that has ever lived, from dinosaurs all the way down to single-celled organisms. Unfortunately, he doesn't really get the full applications of his powers until his Let's Get Dangerous moments, or when the plot otherwise requires it. Though it may just be that he doesn't think to try some of the more fantastic uses of his power. For example, in one episode, he turns into a Tamaranian (read: alien) beast. When Cyborg asks him "How did you know you could do that?", Beast Boy's only response is "Lucky guess!"
 * Raven also qualifies, easily. See the above Comic Books entry.
 * For a villainous example, Brother Blood, who's expansive Psychic Powers allowed for abilities as diverse and mind control and teleportation.
 * Honorary Titan Argent also qualifies, as her alien heritage grants her the power to create energy constructs, just like a GLR. She can also fly.
 * The Superfriends version of the Green Lantern seemed incapable of creating anything not resembling kitchen implements, mainly salad tongs and spatulas.
 * That said, he did use his ring in various, more creative (i.e. ridiculous) ways, the best probably being the time he merged himself and Superman into a single person to survive traveling into a black hole. Several other characters acted as living Green Lantern Rings as well, especially Black Vulcan, who could use his thunderbolts to fly, to blow stuff up, to tie people up (??), and even to travel through time.
 * The Flash in Superfriends could basically solve any problem by running around in a circle, the writers coming up with various pseudo-scientific explanations for him to narrate about why this was fixing things.
 * Superman's heat vision also seemed to be able to anything, including magnetizing an iron gate and turning tin into lead to save him from kryptonite.
 * As lame as they were in Superfriends, the Wonder Twins had pretty broadly defined powers. Jayna could become any animal (and one of her comics incarnations, she could become fictional animals), and Zan could become any form or volume of water. Too bad that Zan insisted on becoming something useless, like a bucket of water when he could have turned into a tidal wave or a golem made of ice. However, in Justice League Unlimited, their Captain Ersatzes Shifter and Downpour had pretty much the same powers, and they knew how to use them; making them into legitimate Badasses. In one scene, Downpour simply turned into "Water" and started to drown a guy simply by floating in the air and surrounding him.
 * Then again, Downpour did try to drown Aquaman. "King of the seas, remember?"
 * In Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers, Shane Gooseman's Series 5 implant is designed to work like this. The implant automatically alters Goose's body to respond to various attacks or hostile environments.
 * The Sword of Omens in Thundercats is usually just used for energy blasts and signaling the other Thundercats, but at various times it has also projected an energy shield, cured magical spells (and one case of technologically-induced invisibility), extended for use as a vaulting pole, flown Lion-O out of a volcano, been used as easy transport by flying Lion-O around, and stabilized a planet's core by recreating its central gyroscope. On the other hand, the number of times it was used as a sword in an actual fight can be counted on one hand.
 * "Sword of Omens, give me sight beyond sight!"
 * Bob's "Glitch" in Re Boot. Which was awesome.
 * Well, it is kind of Exactly What It Says on the Tin, after all.
 * One hilarious example was when he was playing the "guard" in a prison game, armed with a bubble-shooting gun that trapped the prisoners. He is forced over the edge by a couple of game sprites and Dot shoots him to slow his descent, trapping him inside a bubble. He instructs Glitch to become a jackhammer, saw, and other implements in rapid succession, before going "Glitch: pin".
 * Glitch, being sentient, had a Crowning Moment of Awesome. Megabyte is charging at Bob, and Bob, in a panic, yells "Glitch: ANYTHING!!!!" Glitch turns into a street light and lands between Megabyte and Bob, and Megabyte runs head first into it, arms wrapped around it like a Looney Tunes cartoon character.
 * She-Ra's sword served as a Green Lantern Ring.
 * "FOR THE HONOR OF GRAYSKULL...I AM SHE-RA!!!!!!!!"
 * Felix the Cat's Magic Bag of Tricks which turns into anything as long as it's in Felix's possession.

Misuse?
"Granny: "No. I know you. I've always known you. The Count just let you out to torment me, but I've always known you were there. I've fought you every day of my life and you'll get no victory now." She opened her eyes and stared into the blackness. "I knows who you are now, Esmerelda Weatherwax. You don't scare me no more.""
 * Dragonball Z: Ki, life energy, is discovered to be able to fuel new techniques all the time beyond the usual energy waves like the kaio ken (multiply strength), bend reality (Janemba), self-destruction, absorbing energy (Genki-dama), make holes through reality itself (Gotenks), etc.
 * In Yu-Gi-Oh!, every time Marik dueled he would reveal a new ability of the Winged Dragon of Ra that would let him win the duel. Mai manages to summon Ra to her field? She has to recite an ancient chant to control it. Ra is Special Summoned so it has no attack points? Transfers your Life Points to it and power it up. Ra is Special Summoned but you can't power it up enough to beat an enemy monster? Pay 1000 Life Points to destroy it without attacking.
 * Judai in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX acquires mysterious powers in Season Four from . These powers can turn his eyes into different colors, and have been shown to possess many uses, including summoning physical Duel Monsters in the human world, resisting hypnotism, resisting being absorbed into the World of Darkness- basically anything that helps him at that moment in time.
 * Rurouni Kenshin contained some of the most unorthodox appliances of a sword in battle ever to grace anime. In one instance, Kenshin is able to defeat a firebreathing man simply by twirling his sword around like a fan. Writer Nobuhiro Watsuki openly admitted this was quite possibly the most infeasible stunt they pulled in the series.
 * He uses the same technique to repel a swarm of bees in one of the filler episodes of the anime.
 * Not to mention splitting an oncoming cannonball with a backhanded stroke.
 * Or creating a mini-sonic boom by sheathing your sword quickly enough.
 * Any competent witch in Discworld, but especially Granny Weatherwax, can do pretty much anything. Not only thanks to magic, but simply by nature of being so obstinate she can light wood on fire by glaring at it until it spontaneously combusts out of sheer embarrassment. As a witch, she's also incredibly aware of borders, edges, and stories and can manipulate them to her advantage. The only thing that can beat her is her.
 * And not even then.