Weaksauce Weakness: Difference between revisions

'''Sheldon''': Only the modern Green Lantern is vulnerable to yellow.

'''Leonard''': Golden Age Green Lantern was vulnerable to wood.

 

Being a [[Superhero]] ain't easy. Most of the original [[Flying Brick]]s have the good [[Achilles' Heel|Achilles heels]] covered, and the pharmacy is even out of [[Psycho Serum]] to give you a cheap [[Backstory]] gimmick to explain your powers.

 

Related to [[Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?]]. See also [[Weakened by the Light]], [[Kryptonite Factor]] and [[Easily-Thwarted Alien Invasion]] (where [[Bizarre Alien Biology]] is probably to blame). If played for laughs, the one so harmed may [[Fight Off the Kryptonite]]. In extreme cases, the character will defend themselves from the weakness with a [[Cross-Melting Aura]]. For the inversion, of being at risk from a ''lack'' of something see: [[Phlebotinum Muncher]].

 

== Fiction in General ==

* Vampires, the badass creatures of the night who always want to suck your blood, tend to have a ''lot'' of weaknesses. Popular tradition holds that you're fine as long as you stay in the sunlight, have some garlic, stay inside your house and refuse to let them in, or even wield a simple cross.

* Almost every [[Green Lantern]] from [[The Silver Age of Comic Books]] onward had yellow as his main weakness. Any criminal could waltz past him by wearing a yellow suit and stealing only gold, and shoot yellow painted bullets from gold plated guns. There have been various explanations such as programming bugs or a deliberately-induced [[Fantastic Fragility]], but the currently-accepted explanation is a combination of yellow representing fear, the enemy of the [[Heroic Willpower]] energy the Lanterns wield, and the fact that a yellow fear monster had been imprisoned in the Central Battery, tainting the power source. The weakness can now be recognized and overcome, and adaptations tend to downplay it into almost nothing.

** More recently, [[Frank Miller]] parodied the ''hell'' out of this in ''[[All-Star Batman and Robin The Boy Wonder]]''. Before confronting Green Lantern, Batman and Robin paint an entire house, and everything in it, yellow. Then they put on yellow costumes. Then they paint their exposed faces yellow. When GL comes over, Batman goes so far as to offer him a nice refreshing glass of lemonade, while Robin eats some lemon ice cream. Hal was not amused. Readers were.

*** This was parodied in the ''[[Justice League]]'' [[The Golden Age of Comic Books|Golden Age]] [[Affectionate Parody]] episode "Legends", with his [[Captain Ersatz|stand-in version]] "Green Guardsman", who had a weakness to aluminum. Either way, you've got a superhero who could appear on the news after having been beaten to death with a baseball bat—and considering that one of his foes was the Sportsmaster, who ''did'' wield a baseball bat... it's pretty darned weaksauce.

*** It didn't hurt that wood, while very common when Alan Scott first hit the scene, had become rarer in civilization by the time [[The Silver Age of Comic Books]] hit. Villains in [[The DCU]] tend to decorate in metal, plastic, and [[Zeerust]] by then, which means even less to block that strange ring with.

*** This actually becomes a problem for him in the Elseworlds story ''[[Kingdom Come]]''. Like most of the other original heroes, [[Green Lantern]] Alan Scott's powers have progressed to a ludicrous level - he keeps watch over the Earth in a massive emerald [[Space Station]], constructed himself a suit of impressive armor, and carries around a sword made out of pure energy - all from his power ring. None of it helps very much against [[Green Arrow]] in the final battle, since this Oliver Queen's arrows are made out of wood.

*** This was the main reason that Solomon Grundy was such a threat to Alan. Being drowned, soaked in and resurrected in a swamp, his body was filled and covered with plant matter, rendering the ring all but useless in directly affecting Grundy ([[Swamp Thing]] even explained that Solomon Grundy was now a plant-based elemental of sorts like he was).

** The [[Elseworlds]] story ''Superman/Batman Generations'' [[Hand Wave|Handwaves]] the odd Green Lantern weaknesses by having the Guardians explain that all weaknesses are mentally-imposed. Alan was weak to wood because a thug surprised him with a baseball bat and he ''assumed'' the ring didn't work against wood, while Hal was told that the rings were ineffective against yellow and thus added the weakness himself. Kyle, who gets his ring without hearing the explanation, lacks any weaknesses. (This is not, to be clear, how it actually works in continuity.)

** One Green Lantern story subverts this, however. A yellow robot attacks the Justice League. GL responds by picking up mud from a nearby swamp and dropping it over the robot's body, completely coating it. With the yellow hidden, he quite easily rips it open.

** This was a very situational weakness, as sometimes Hal's constructs interacted with Sinestro's yellow ones, creating a blue haze that negated both. Other times, Lanterns responded by using variations of [[Car Fu]] with whatever they could throw at an opponent, or even remembering that an opaque construct around a target meant only green light got through—and turning any yellow inside the construct into green due to reflective properties of the color yellow.

** And then there's the Blue Lanterns, who are incredibly powerful even by Green Lantern standards, but can't use anything but the bare minimum of their powers unless a Green Lantern is in the vicinity.

** [[Fridge Logic|Isn't green partly yellow?]]

** According to [[Word of God]] from [[Greg Weisman]], Green Lanterns in ''[[Young Justice (animation)|Young Justice]]'' ''do not'' have a weakness to yellow and original Green Lantern Alan Scott did not have a weakness to wood either.

* One version of Ocean Master, [[Aquaman]]'s arch nemesis, gets his powers from a magical trident he traded his soul for, and when he isn't holding it he feels intense pain. Even [[The Joker]] says that this is a pretty Weaksauce Weakness: