http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MagikarpPower

And then the Gyarados just eats him. note Just kidding. Mr. Fish is more docile than most dogs.

Magikarp, via via Memetic Mutation "I swear to god, when I evolve, I'm going to kill you all."

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A character, ability, or piece of equipment that seems completely useless at first, but with repeated use and patience can be highly effective later. This can be an item/weapon you need to explicitly power up or even an entire low-level character who gets some really awesome techniques later.

The Trope Namer is Magikarp from Pokémon, a ubiquitous, dim-witted, carp-like Pokémon who only knows the move Splash, which, as the game gleefully informs you, "has no effect". It learns Tackle, the most basic attack in Pokémon, at level 15, and a lucky few have it as an innate skill. In short, it's pathetic... Until you painstakingly grind it up to level 20, at which point it evolves into Gyarados, a sea leviathan ready to wreak vengeance from on high with its own lethal abilities, and can Mega Evolve further to steamroll just about anything that dares to pick a fight with it. Magikarp is based on an old Japanese legend about a carp which manages to swim up a waterfall and becomes a dragon through sheer perseverance.

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Leaked Experience can be very helpful in getting this to the appropriate point without weakening the party or putting the Magikarp Power in danger. Rare Candy may also be a great help. Related to Level Grinding in that the player is forced to drag an entirely useless item or NPC around for level after level, until it becomes useful.

A similar but distinct trope is the Retro Upgrade, where instead of upgrading the Magikarp itself, you earn or upgrade something else which makes the Magikarp much more powerful.

Compare Gathering Steam which likewise starts out pathetic but gains in capability throughout a fight, Elite Tweak, Future Badass, Took a Level in Badass (this trope implemented for a character), Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards (for when wizards are treated as magikarp), Lethal Joke Character (a Joke Character with hidden potential), Evolving Weapon, Evolving Attack, Equipment Upgrade, Difficult, but Awesome (for when a character/faction is set up to make the player a magikarp), and Changing Gameplay Priorities. Contrast Breakable Weapons, What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?, A Taste of Power, and Crutch Character. Can sometimes be heard to ask, "Who's Laughing Now?"

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Examples in Video Games:

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Pokémon

Action Games

Another Century's Episode 2, a mecha action game, gives players the Amon Duule "Stack", a red unit from Heavy Metal L-Gaim. In both the game and the series, the unit is technically a flawed and defective piece of junk, despite having a stupid powerful beam cannon that would make Wing Gundam cry. However, after some minor upgrades and using the unit for a little while, the player can upgrade it into its true form: the L-Gaim Mk. II, the most ridiculously powerful unit that the good guys get in the L-Gaim series, and a very good power unit in ACE 2.

It's easy to mistake the Luna Lens in Boktai as exclusively being for flipping switches, as it has unlimited ammo but doesn't damage or stun enemies. Thing is, if you manage to get the lens up to Level 3 by killing enemies via stage hazards, it gains the ability to stun. Given the game's emphasis on stunning and sneaking by, it suddenly becomes the single most useful lens in your arsenal.

Boktai 2: Solar Boy Django has the bare-handed punch which, in all likelihood you will use for the 14 second span between losing your gun and finding the Gradius sword and never use again. What a lot of people don't realise is that there is no recovery time for the attack; you can damage enemies as quickly as you can mash the B button. If you devote the time to level it up to 99 and raise Django's attack stat sufficiently, it becomes the single most devastating attack in your arsenal despite its low range and non-elemental damage.

Action-Adventure Games

Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin: The game starts you off with a gimped version of the legendary Vampire Killer whip, and it is the weakest whip in the game. However, if you defeat its "memory" (AKA Richter Belmont ) in a Bonus Boss battle, you unlock its true power and turn it into the most powerful whip in the game. The game also features two gag sub-weapons: the pie and paper airplane. They're functionally useless until you level them up to max level, when they suddenly become some of the most powerful subweapons in the game. Interestingly, these are particularly useful in unlocking the full potential of the Vampire Killer, since they're two of the very few weapons Jonathan can use that deal dark damage, which the whip's memory is weak to.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night: The Muramasa. A middling two-handed weapon whose obvious benefit is that it provides an automatic heal whenever an enemy bleeds on Alucard. Less obviously, the sword actually grows in power over time as it absorbs blood... the only limit to its power is the calculation algorithm of the game. However, in the time of actual gameplay, it's far easier to acquire a number of other game breaking weapons before leveling Muramasa to the point of it being of any real value. Players who do manage to power up Muramasa tend to just take advantage of a turbo controller in a specific location while leaving the game running over night. The Sword Familiar. At first his method of attack is to slowly lock onto an enemy, slowly fly to whatever spot they were at (even if they moved), wait, and lazily spin in a circle that does weak contact damage. However level him up to 50 and he becomes an equippable weapon identical to the Alucard Sword but with an attack equal to his current level, and level him up to 70 and he glows blue and starts swiftly flying all over the place slashing hoards of enemies that only get faster and stronger as his level climbs. Get him to level 99 and you can pick between the strongest nominal sword in the game or a ridiculously powerful ally. The Ghost Familiar attacks by clinging to an enemy and repeatedly delivering weak damage, and he'll get slightly more aggressive with each level. This isn't too useful until he reaches level 70 and suddenly each hit restores 8 HP to Alucard. At level 99 this adds up to about 8 free HP per second during boss fights and when battling strong enemies.

Cave Story: Refuse to trade away your wimpy initial weapon until the near-end of the game, and you'll be able to upgrade it to the almighty Spur. This is partially a reward for honesty, since said wimpy initial weapon technically doesn't belong to you, and you get the upgrade by returning it to its rightful owner. The Bubbline/Bubbler is another example. At level 1, it's similar to the above-mentioned wimpy initial weapon, but slightly less useful. At Level 2, it makes a decent substitute for the Machine Gun — a weapon you can't get if you're going for the Spur. At level 3, it fires a cloud of bubbles as long as you hold down the fire button, which start popping rapidly and firing lightning bolts once you've built up enough... and once you release the fire button, they all pop and fire their lightning bolts at once. This is roughly as potent and deadly as it sounds. The Nemesis is actually an inversion; it starts off as possibly the strongest weapon in the game, but as it levels up, it gets progressively weaker to the point that at the maximum level, it shoots rubber ducks. Did we mention this thing levels up insanely fast?

In The Godfather: The Game, the shotgun is a bit like this. With a two-shot clip size and 12 rounds to spare, 24 at the second level, it's outclassed even in assault situations by the Magnum with six rounds per clip and 36 rounds (60 at level 2) to spare without sacrificing much power at all. Once you throw $450,000 at the right black market merchant to upgrade it to the level 3 "Street Sweeper", it goes up to ten rounds a clip and 100 rounds to spare with an automatic action, compared to the Magnum's level 3 "Python" with 8-80 and semiauto. Unless you are feeling the need to be stylish or are somehow running low, the shotgun is now the way to go.

Cheap crew members in Grand Theft Auto V may seem to be either incompetent or inept at first, but can be of great use either through experience, like in the case of hacker Rickie Lukens and driver Karim Denz, or if used on later missions.

Several weapons in Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams are like this, one of which is the Onimaru, a katana for Jubei. It can be dropped by an early-game enemy, but its attack power is much lower than the other weapons you can get for her at that point. Level it up enough and it gains Attack +100, Normal Attacks +40% (basic physical combos get a major boost to attack power), and Generate Attack Wave (which shoots energy waves with every attack made with the weapon, thus increasing its range). Jubei will then be able to shred through nearly everything you come across and continues to be useful even in the second disc.

Card Games

In Yu-Gi-Oh! Reshef of Destruction, the Winged Dragon of Ra has 0 ATK and DEF when you first receive it. It takes a plot-relevant battle to make it useful. Using an in-game cheat code allows Ra to transform into its strongest form, making it the easiest summonable God Card.

Several cards in Eternal Card Game start out weak, but power up through various means. The Ultimate mechanic as a whole is usually this, letting you buff a unit once for a large amount of power. The Stranger archetype gets exponentially more powerful the more Strangers you have, starting out unimpressive, but able of taking over entire games quickly if you can get out a lot of them.

Many cards in Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft are weak when played but can quickly grow to insane stats. For example, the Questing Adventurer gains 1 attack and 1 HP every time the player plays a card, while the Frothing Berserker gains 1 attack when any minion takes any damage. With a good deck and good luck, they can win the match on the next turn - if they manage to survive past their first turn.

In The Elder Scrolls: Legends some cards can get more powerful depending on circumstances. The Elsweyr Lookout doubles whatever stats she has every time she hits the opposite player.

Blue heroes in Artifact tend to have weaker raw stats, but make up for it by having powerful spell cards. Since your mana pool grows by one point per turn, blue decks become more powerful in the late game, when you have the capacity to use your most powerful spells.

Fighting Games

Hack & Slash

In the first Dungeon Siege, the starting knife is required to get the chicken gun.

In Dynasty Warriors: In the sixth game, the bow moveset shared by Sun Shangxiang and Yue Ying initially seemed dismaying - "They took two of the coolest women in the game and gave them a useless weapon!" However, once you level up that bow and arrow, it's a monster because you can spray tons of arrows into the crowd at once. It's also a bit of a Game-Breaker in that you can snipe from a faraway enough distance that the computer AI generals don't realize they should block your attack. In Dynasty Warriors Online, it's actually part of the mechanics. No weapon ever starts out at full power in the first place. You have to temper weapons so they have better stats. This trope comes in, however, in that tempering only has a limited effect on the stats based on the weapon. If you grind a weapon, you have to use it so many times, you can change the stat spread on a weapon. On some weapons this is needless. On others, like the tonfa, this turns what is otherwise a horribly stated weapon into a competent one, with good combos as well. Speaking of Dynasty Warriors, Fire Emblem Warriors has special character-specific weapons that are pure garbage at first. They have abysmal attack power barely breaking 80 and most averaging 30 which is good until about halfway through the campaign on normal, but the latest updates the game released created "opus" materials which specifically power up certain weapons for certain characters, and change that worthless 30 damage stick into a 700+ damage god-killer. Even the hero weapons rarely boast such power. Coupled with the fact that you'll usually be breaking levels over one hundred at this point, you can practically ignore the weapon triangle and just beat everything to death in seconds.

In the X-Box remake of Ninja Gaiden, the wooden sword is easily the most useless weapon in the game, and takes the most time/money to upgrade fully... but once you do, it becomes the most powerful weapon in the game: the Unlabored Flawlessness.

The Crystal/Big Star weapons in Warriors Orochi 3. Initially they start with low attack power (usually 9 or 10), but at max proficiency they gain a plus 54 attack increase, making them the most powerful weapons in the game, except for a select few 4-star weapons reserved for extremely badass characters.

Platform Games

Roguelikes

Ancient Domains of Mystery: The Farmer class, whose special powers are of very limited use compared to those of other classes. The exception is their final power, gained at level 50, which grants 30% resistance to all corrupting effects - possibly the best power in the game. Necromancers are generally played as wizards whose class power drains their magic, but when they reach level 50 they can come back from the dead. Just getting Mindcrafters through the game relies upon this. They start unable to learn spells, no offensive abilities, awful equipment and may or may not have a damaging magic wand. If they reach level 6, they finally gain Mind Blast. That takes the heat off, but you're still unable to use your powers on undead and unlife, which is why levelling up still further to lvl. 15 is the make-or-break point, as you learn Telekinetic Blast: a physical attack that strikes remotely and never misses.

The Binding of Isaac: Initially, Isaac starts the game with no usable items or accessories to give him a bonus at the start. After beating the game a certain number of times and meeting certain criteria, however, Isaac begins with a D6 which will allow him to reroll unfavorable item drops for a chance at something better, giving him better scope than the other characters for customized powerbuilds. The cube of meat item will initially only act as a shield, blocking attacks against Isaac and inflicting collision damage on enemies. Finding two will allow it to attack enemies in conjunction with Isaac's tear attacks, three will turn it into a Meat Boy pet who will seek and destroy enemies, and four will up meat boy's size and damage. The sequel/Updated Re-release Rebirth adds a Magikarp Character: The Lost . Good news: he can get the items from Devil Rooms for free, and, due to its mechanics, he's gonna get a lot of them . Bad news: one hit and you're out One-Hit Point Wonder . No, we don't mean that he starts with low health, we mean that The Afterbirth+ expansion for Rebirth includes a new active item called "The Void". While it initially doesn't do much on its own, it can "consume" any pedestal item(s) in a room and either provide a random stat boost if it's a passive item or permanently gain its effect if it's an active item (with some exceptions such as single use active items), as a result, the Void gets continually more powerful the more active items it consumes while the user gets more powerful the more passive items it consumes. Depending on what items it absorbs, the Void can easily become the single most powerful active item in the game. The Magikarp Power of the Void is demonstrated nicely through the Afterbirth+ unlockable character Apollyon: a subpar (stat wise) clone of Isaac who starts the game with the Void, before breaking it with good charge management and some luck.

The Neophyte character trait in The Drop invokes this trope, offering increased stat growth rates in exchange for lower starting stats. Greener than a seasick Shra , though you have definite potential. You're not strong yet, but given a few days in the Drop, who knows?

Dwarf Fortress: Wrestler dwarves. In general, a raw recruit tends to last a bit longer if they have a weapon to parry the occasional attack. Once they can consistently dodge or block attacks, and have adequate armor, they can easily cripple most enemies with their bare hands. Depending on the version, they can either render the enemy helpless against better-armed comrades, or do all the work themselves tearing enemies to bits. For a literal example in older version, carp. And most other swimming creatures with any decent natural attacks. This came about by accident due to the game's skill- and stat-raising mechanic: skill levels increased by the act of performing the skill, and increasing a skill readily affected the relevant stats. Creatures like carp gained extremely high stats due to constantly training the Swimming skill, which translated into their becoming infamously lethal.

FTL: Faster Than Light: The Carnelian (Crystal Type B) suffers from this. You start out with no weapons, no drones, a three-Crystal crew, and a four-man teleport. Getting through the first sector or two requires more than a little bit of luck, since you have no way of destroying Rebel drones unless you sacrifice a crewmember, which is a spectacularly dumb thing to do. However, if you can keep it flying long enough to get some more crew and some backup weapons to shore up your offense, then it's far and away one of the most powerful ships in the game. The Basilisk (Mantis Type B) also suffers from this, but not as badly as the Carnelian. You start out with two Mantises, two layers of shields, and a Defense Drone and Boarding Drone. While you're better equipped to shrug off enemy attacks, you have to leave your ship on autopilot while you send your Mantises over to fight. Also, Mantises naturally have horribly slow repairing speeds, meaning it's nigh-impossible to get a system running again in the thick of combat. Again, though, if you can get some additional crewmembers (preferably Engi to shore up your repair capacities) and some backup weapons, then you've got a powerhouse.

Hades: The Pierced Butterfly grants bonus damage each time Zagreus clears a room without taking damage. Useless during the early game when the player is still learning the ropes and doesn't know what each new level contains, but a skilled player basing their entire run around it can end up with 20-30%+ bonus damage by the end of a run and it comboes nicely with skills that grant additional damage when at high health. The Lambent Plume is based around speedrunning, granting bonus movement and dodge chance every time a room is cleared under a certain time threshold. Like the Pierced Butterfly, picking the Lambent Plume will define an entire run but will pay off immensely by the end if you can pass 20 or 25 rooms in low time. Poseidon has a pair of Duo Boons that do absolutely nothing on their own, save buffing the power of Boons or Poms of Power you gain afterwards. They require an awkward combination of Gods' Boons that ordinarily do not overlap too well (Poseidon and Dionysus or Aphrodite), but if acquired early on will immensely power up Zagreus. Exagryph, the Adamant Rail, is a weapon based around the power of upgrades you pick up for it from Daedalus Hammers. On its own, it is one of the weakest weapons with a short-ranged and inaccurate main attack and a powerful but slow and finicky special attack. Its upgrades, such as Triple Bomb, Cluster Bomb, Explosive Shot and Triple Shot, are however extremely powerful and drastically boost either the main or special attack.

NetHack: The Tourist character class. They start with a handful of darts for a weapon, a Hawaiian shirt for armor, and a jumble of seemingly-useless tools. Only an experienced player would know that in the endgame, an enchanted cotton shirt is one the rarest and most desirable things there is. They can acquire the Platinum Yendorian Express Card, one of the more powerful artifacts in the game. They also have the greatest selection of weapon skills of any class, and can become proficient in every weapon but clubs (which aren't a good choice for a weapon anyway). Less extreme but still eligible is the Wizard class. It starts with a quarterstaff for a weapon and a piddly little Force Bolt for offense (and one random other spell). By endgame, Wizard is by far the most powerful class in the game. Area effect magic, infinite death spells, instantly mapping dungeon levels, instantly identifying unknown items, teleporting at will... all with nigh-infinite MP because of their quest artifact. Oh, and their first sacrifice gift allows for unlimited, instant, semi-permanent Elbereth. And zaps enemies with status ailments. And blocks curses. And is powerful enough to let Wizards play melee, if they so choose. They also get bonuses to Magic Marker use, hungerless casting, self-healing, no-items-needed levitation, Very Fast speed... you get the picture.

Numerous Pokémon in the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series are like this, only getting tiny stat gains at lower levels, but suddenly getting huge gains after crossing a certain level threshold. For the most part, if a Pokémon seems bad initially, it's going to end up improving greatly sooner or later.

Project Zomboid: Taking a buttload of negative traits on your character gives penalties which can be overcome with enough training. Some of the most severe ones (like Obese) can give you points for traits that give you abilities no amount of training can provide. It's theoretically possible to start out as an obese nerd who literally can't run or fight to save his life, has claustrophobia and gets sick easily, and with enough time, effort and luck, turn him into an unkillable Genius Bruiser. Given the game is already Nintendo Hard, however...

Wayward Souls: The Adventurer starts of weak, with only shortsword, a lantern that forces you to stand still, and a stun amulet that only deal minimal damage. However with emberforge upgrades, he can get increased healing from floors/fountain, has a lantern that deals great damage, and a fast moving powerful projectile.

Eastern RPG

Massively Multiplayer Online RPG

Puzzle Games

Puzzle Quest: In Puzzle Quest: Challenge Of The Warlords, the Broken Shield you receive at the beginning of the game becomes obsolete almost immediately. But if you complete all of the Great Machine subquests, it is transformed into the powerful Shield of Albion, which can potentially make you immune to any spell using Yellow Mana . In Puzzle Quest 2, the Templar's first offensive spell Shield Bash becomes stronger as the Templar's defense increases. Improving defense will eventually make Shield Bash the Templar's most efficient and powerful means of inflicting damage.



Racing Games

In Shift 2: Unleashed The Toyota Supra starts as a C-rank retro car. Then you can install the Lexus LFA engine and tune it up to an eye-watering 230mph(370kph) or outright insane 277mph(446kph) for you Speedhunters. It has decent handling to boot! Just watch out for the torque steer.

The FEISAR Prototype is this in Wipeout 2048. The vehicle is unique in that it starts off slow, but with each speed pad boost, the speed is permanently increased until it collides with a wall or completes a lap.

Real-Time Strategy

Turn-Based Strategy

First-Person Shooter

Third-Person Shooter

Dark Forces Saga: Jedi Outcast: Force Lightning and Force Grip start off very weak when you first get them, with Lightning barely doing any damage to enemies, and Grip only being able to stun enemies for a few seconds. At their highest level, you can clear out entire rooms with Lightning, and use Grip to fling enemies off of ledges and disarm them, which is useful for quickly ending lightsaber duels. Jedi Academy: Force Rage. It makes you stronger while eating your health and making you more vulnerable to damage for a few seconds after it ends. At level 1, health drain is HUGE and your strength increase is... not. It doesn't last very long, and the time spent doing the activation pose does count, and you can take damage during it. When it ends, and all or most of the enemies you were trying to use it against are all still there, you. Will. Die. So why invest in it? Because Force Rage 3 is another story. You'll hand out epic beatdowns and hardly notice the drawbacks.

In Dead Space: Your starting weapon, the plasma cutter. Upgrading it improves it so much that it's entirely feasible to use no other weapon for the duration of the game. There's even an achievement for doing this. The Pulse Rifle chews up ammunition FAST, does barely any damage, and has a ridiculously small hit area. If you upgrade it though, it can become an incredibly accurate and ammo-economic limb remover from over 100 meters.

The Grinder in Red Faction: Guerilla is somewhat like this; when you first get it it's Awesome, but Impractical with a slow fire rate and shots that sometimes aren't an instant kill (on hard at least), after getting the explosive upgrade (which between the higher damage, splash damage and building and vehicle damaging capabilities makes it FAR more versatile) and the fast shot upgrade (which fixes the weapons biggest flaw) it becomes a good all-round combat weapon.

Resident Evil 4: The Handcannon, which can't even be purchased until you've beaten the game at least once, and whose ammo is incredibly rare, making it pretty much a paperweight once you own it. Spending a ridiculous amount of money to upgrade it, however, gives it infinite ammo and a firepower rating that lets you one-hit-kill pretty much everything in the game. The only problem is you get access to it so late in the game and after so many proofs of prowess, it's at best a Bragging Rights Reward. The 9mm handgun you begin the game with is arguably the weakest firearm in the game. However, once you max it out it becomes five times more likely to get a critical headshot which, so long as you hit enemies in the head, virtually turns into a one-hit-mook-killing machine. Same with the shotgun found in Pueblo which, while far from useless is still swiftly outclassed by better weapons. Max it out and it gains the unique attribute which ignores pellet dispersion and averts Short-Range Shotgun: now if only so much as a single pellet fired hits an enemy at any distance, they take the same damage they'd take if hit by the entire blast at point-blank range. Suddenly the thing is able to floor entire crowds with a single-shot, something no weapon other than the rocket launcher or a grenade is capable of doing, and can easily blow multiple heads off per shot which is something no other weapon can do.



Western RPG

Final Fantasy

Other Video Games

Other Examples:

Anime and Manga

Board Games

In Chess, the ubiquitous and slow-moving pawn can be promoted to a stronger piece (usually the queen) if allowed to move all the way to the other side of the board.

There are numerous examples in the Shogi (Japanese chess) family. In Tenjiku Shogi, there's the Drunken Elephant, which can promote into, essentially, a second king, allowing you to survive your first king's death, and the Water Buffalo, which promotes into a Fire Demon, insanely useful because of its ability that allows it to capture a ton of enemy pieces in one move. There's also the Deva in Tai Shogi, which can only move one space in certain directions, but promotes into the Teaching King, which, depending on how you interpret the rules, can move as a Free King (a chess Queen) and with 3-step Lion power. (Lion power normally allows a piece to make two separate one-step moves, each counting as a move in its own right, in one turn. In this case, three.) Pawns don't get a lot of love though.

In Chinese Chess, the soldier can only move vertically much like pawns in Chess. Once it crosses the "river" into enemy territory it can move and capture pieces horizontally as well.

Comic Books

Wonder Man is mostly known as a 'brick' type character, with super strength and durability, but little else going for him compared to many of his teammates on The Avengers such as Thor and The Vision. However, in one Guardians of the Galaxy storyline, it was revealed that his unique physiology not only made him immortal but increased his power over time, so that a millennium into the future he was one of the most powerful heroes in the universe.

Thor himself also qualifies, currently being in the mid-point of his evolution - when he was younger he didn't have access to Mjolnir or many of his more exotic powers, being essentially another brick-type character, and in the future he is destined to inherit the reality-warping powers of his father Odin.

Superman, in his Post-Crisis incarnation, can also be considered an example, as the longer he lives exposed to Earth's yellow sun, the more powerful he gets. In the early years after COIE he was unable to fly faster than light and struggled with moving large asteroids, but could easily move planets and even stars and cross galaxies in minutes after a decade or so of sunlight exposure.

One Fantastic Four story featured a future version of The Thing, who had lived for thousands of years, with his body constantly becoming stronger. He easily defeated his past self.

Bruce Banner. In human form he's just a nerdy human scientist with no obvious special abilities and a near phobia of losing his temper... and with good reason.

Fanfiction

Film

Magikarp itself appears in Detective Pikachu, with the titular Pikachu deliberately trying to invoke the trope by tormenting the Magikarp and trying to get it to evolve so it can deal with a rampaging Charizard. Of course, when it finally does evolve, it immediately targets Pikachu.

Literature

Release That Witch: Many magic powers with limited applications end up being quite powerful as they evolve. For instance, Maggie's ability to turn into birds ends up making her quite deadly once it evolves and gives her the ability to turn into massive deadly bird monsters as well.

Mythology

Tabletop Games

Webcomics

Web Original

Western Animation

Yu-Gi-Oh!

Yu-Gi-Oh!: Longtime players may remember Maha Vailo, a Level 4 monster with mediocre stats (1550 ATK/1400 DEF). On its own, it was useless, but its special ability allows it to gain an extra 500 ATK for every equip card given to it. A simple Malevolent Nuzzler or Horn of the Unicorn (both of which provide a 700 ATK boost) now boost Maha's ATK by 1200, and the fun doesn't stop there. With the right equips, it could have an ATK over 4000, and easily be strong enough to take out more than half the opponent's life points in a single shot. Bear in mind that this is a game where most high-end monsters have ATK power in the range of 2500-3000. The strongest it can get? Five Monsters out including itself (easy using Scapegoat), three United We Stand, two Mage Power, and Luminous Spark. That would give it 22550 ATK - for comparison, Five-Headed Dragon, the physically strongest Monster out there, has 5000, and starting Life Points is 8000.

It now has a Spiritual Successor in Morphtronic Videon (1000 ATK/1000 DEF), which gets 800 per equip card when in attack postion. Using the above cards, it can get 23500 ATK.

Armed Protector Dragon also gains 500 ATK for each equip card on it and prevent equip cards from being destroyed.

For a similar effect that lets you use cards other than equip cards to power it up, and also includes your opponent's cards, you can use Jester Lord, which gains 1000 ATK for every spell and trap card on the field, and it starts off with 0 ATK, making it potentially even stronger than Maha Vailo or Morphtronic Videon. That is up to 10,000 ATK, plus any effects from equip cards if you used them. The downside is that there can't be any other monsters on the field.

Armed Samurai - Ben Kei gets an additional attack for every equip card you put on him. With, say, Mage Power and Axe of Despair, he'll hit three times for 2500, very nearly enough to completely oneshot a player. Yes, there have been decks built around disabling your opponents magic and traps for a turn, then summoning this guy with three equip cards and winning the game.

Mataza the Zapper - An effect monster card with a pretty dainty 1300 ATK and even worse DEF. The catch? He can attack TWICE during the battle phase. Helloooo equip cards! Plus, he is immune from having his control switched, so you can't use cards like Enemy Controller on him and works effortlessly into any warrior based deck.

Similarly, there's the combo with Chimeratech Overdragon, which is a Fusion Monster with ATK equal to 800 times the number of Fusion Materials. This can be combined with a card that lets you discard, from your deck, the Fusion Materials for one monster, and another card that lets you remove from your discard pile the Materials for a Fusion Monster and Summon it. Then you can use a card (Limiter Removal) and double Chimeratech's ATK, possibly leading to something along the lines of a 36000 ATK monster that can attack 20 monsters each turn.

Chimeratech Overdragon is not the only monster whose power is determined by how many cards are used to summon it. There also are Chimeratech Fortressdragon, Cyber Eltanin, Megarock Dragon, Evil Dragon Ananta, Worm Zero, Starduston, Kasha, Grandora The Dragon of Destruction, Prometheus King of the Shadows, and more.

The LV monsters generally start as something like a LV 3 1000 ATK monster, when conditions (Ranging from as simple as surviving until the next turn to directly attacking your opponents life points) are fulfilled they level up, bringing out the next level, until they reach their final forms, with 2700 ATK or more and powerful effects such as negating all Magic cards or destroying all your opponents monsters by discarding a single card. The highest levels were required to be summoned by effect (mostly) so you could often just skip the lowest stage by playing the middle one first.

Batteryman AA is a monster that for every Batteryman AA on the same side of the field, they all gain 1000 ATK each if they are all in ATK position and 1000 DEF each if they are all in DEF position. If you manage to three of them on the field, you can use the spell card Short Circuit to destroy all cards on the opponents side of the field, allowing you to attack the opponent directly and deal 9000 points of damage to kill them in one turn.

A number of cards gain ATK for number of cards either in the Graveyard or banished, meaning that long games can turn them into downright absurd powerhouses. The most notorious of this gang is likely Gren Maju Da Eiza, who earned a fair amount of infamy when the late-2010s metagame featured a lot of cards that banished as a cost en masse; a simple Pot of Desires could bring up Gren Maju from 0 ATK to 4000.

Another great one is The Calculator, whose ATK is determined by the levels of the monsters on your side of the field. On its own, it only has 600 ATK but with the support of a single high level monster, its attack shoots up to around 3000 or more, and with several high level monsters it can go over 10,000 and beyond. The Fortune Lady cards, Greed Quasar, and Montage Dragon also have ATKs determined by either their own or other monster's levels and can get very powerful. There also is a similar card called The Calibrator, which gains 300 ATK times the total rank of all monsters on your side of the field. This is much more difficult to get up to the same ridiculous amount of ATK that The Calculator can have since only Xyz monsters have ranks, so it compensates for this by starting with 1500 ATK on its own.

The Great Moth series is famous for being a bit too Magikarp. First, summon the pathetically weak Petit Moth (a caterpillar with Kuriboh-level stats), then equip it with Cocoon of Evolution, turning it into a somewhat poor Stone Wall. From then on, you need to keep the Moth protected as long as possible, so you can use it as Tribute once a certain number of turns have passed. Two turns nets you the completely useless Larvae Moth, four nets you the respectable (for its time) Great Moth, and six bestows upon you the Perfectly Ultimate Great Moth, the strongest Insect in the game by ATK. Unfortunately, the sheer difficulty of keeping any Monster alive for six turns, as well as the fact that PUGM is basically a highly vulnerable beatstick, means that the whole archetype was considered Awesome, but Impractical even when it was new, and time has not been kind to it. However, this archetype may have become somewhat more useful again with the release of the cards Parasite Paranoid and Super Cocoon of Evolution, which can allow Perfectly Ultimate Great Moth to be summoned a whole lot faster, although they can also be used with other insect monsters.

A non-monster example was Broken Bamboo Sword. This Equip Spell did absolutely nothing to the monster it was equipped to, and a lot of players wondered what Konami was thinking. Then in the next two sets, they released Golden Bamboo Sword and Soul Absorbing Bamboo Sword, Spell Cards that required Broken Bamboo Sword to use. They don't make Broken Bamboo Sword a particularly great card, but it does make it Not Completely Useless.

There are a lot of cards in the game which exist to boost the powers of low-Level Normal Monsters. One example is Sword of The Soul Eater, which can only be equipped to a level 3 or lower Normal Monster and allows you to boost it's ATK by 1000 for each other Normal Monster you sacrifice when you activate it.

Mokey Mokey is a very weak and harmless looking monster, but the card Mokey Mokey Smackdown raises its ATK to 3000, the same as a Blue-Eyes White Dragon.

Similar to Mokey Mokey, Skull Servant is a very weak monster, but has several cards that make it devastating when used with it. Skull Servant is one of the oldest cards in the game and its devastating support cards with not released until much later. The game company probably released these cards just to be funny. The main one is King of the Skull Servants, which starts with 0 ATK, but gains 1000 ATK for every Skull Servant, King of the Skull Servants, or any monster whose name is treated as Skull Servant in the grave yard.

Winged Kuriboh also is weak by itself but has several devastating cards to support it, including a very powerful One-Winged Angel form, Winged Kuriboh LV 10.

Dark Flare Knight is a Fusion Monster that actually has less ATK than one of the monsters needed to summon it, its only advantage in battle is a weak defensive ability. But when it is destroyed, it goes One-Winged Angel and becomes the devastating Mirage Knight.

Ma'at starts out with 0 ATK but by correctly guessing the top three cards on your deck (there are some cards that let you see what they are), her ATK can increase to up to 3000 and add the cards you correctly guessed to you hand.

Yubel has 0 ATK but strong defensive abilities. Its One-Winged Angel forms, known as Terror Incarnate and The Ultimate Nightmare also have 0 ATK but their abilities very powerful.

Satellite Cannon starts with 0 ATK but its ATK increases greatly with each turn and it can't be destroyed by low level monsters, although its ATK goes back to 0 each time it attacks.

Unformed Void can gain ATK equal to the total ATK of your opponents Xyz monsters, once per turn, up to three times.

Raging Flame Sprite, Mucus Yolk, and Drill Barnicle can attack the opponent directly and gain 1000 ATK each time they do damage. Mucus Yolk is even more this, since it has 0 ATK, meaning it needs an equip to do damage at all.

Aitsu and Soitsu are extremely weak but gain high ATK when united with their partners Koitsu and Doitsu respectively, who also are extremely weak on their own.

Possibly the most well known example are the Exodia cards. Individually the five main Exodia cards are weak but if you get all five in your hand, you automatically win. If you manage to get all five in your graveyard, you can summon Exodia Necros, which is extremely difficult to kill and gets stronger every turn. There also is another card called Exodius the Ultimate Forbidden Lord, which starts out with 0 ATK but rapidly gets stronger with every attack and can also cause you to automatically win if you use it with with the other Exodia cards. There also is another form called The Legendary Exodia Incarnate which is mechanically almost the opposite of Exodius. It gains 1000 ATK for every piece of Exodia already in the grave, but it returns one to your hand at the end of each turn so it gets weaker, but helps you get all the pieces in your hands, and if it is destroyed while you have pieces of Exodia in your hand, you can draw a card for each one.

During the Grand Prix arc in Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's anime, Team Taiyou uses as the absolute ace of their deck a card so common that everyone possesses at least 1 copy of it, but no one bothers using it, due to its extremely hard to fulfill summoning conditions, requiring you to protect a Level 1 Normal Monster for twenty turns. The twist? That common card is literally god-like and unstoppable in case the player is skilled enough to let it hit the field, said in-universe to rival the power of the Egyptian God Cards. This card's name: Zushin the Sleeping Giant. In the card game, Zushin is nearly impossible to beat once it is summoned. It is immune to card effects, and its ATK is always 1000 more than that of the monster it fights with. Pretty much the only relevant cards that can take it down are Kaijus and Utopia the Lightning... which, unfortunately, are run very commonly these days.

Thousand Eyes Idol has 0 ATK and DEF and no special ability. However, it can be fused with Relinquished or a fusion substitute monster, to create Thousand Eyes Restrict, which not only has Reliquished's ability to absorb enemy monsters, but also makes all the opponent's monsters unable to attack or change position.

The trap card Good Goblin Housekeeping works this way. It lets you draw one card, plus one more for each other copy of the card in the graveyard, then sends one card in your hand back to decks. So the first time you use it, it only lets you replace one card in your hand with another, but the second and third time you use it, it lets you draw more cards, increasing your hand advantage. It can get even crazier if you get three copies of it in the grave, then use a card like Mask of Darkness to get one of them back and use it again.

Diabound Kernel starts with only 1800 ATK but gains 600 more every time it attacks. The anime version of Diabound may be one of the most broken monsters ever. Intead of growing stronger every turn, it had the ability to PERMANENTLY copy the abilities of any monster it defeated and grow more and more monstrous with every victory. And by permanently, I mean it doesnt lose copied powers after the duel ends; Dark Bakura used it to defeat Kaiba's Blue-Eyes in a duel so that it would have Blue-Eyes's power when he later used it in the memory world.

As a rule, because monsters themselves are the game's main resource, there's a lot of weak monsters that people use because they can be used as materials for bigger, stronger monsters.

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