"I am the strongest woman in the world! Well, my world, at least. This one has some... competition."
A character who, while amazing in their own world, is either outclassed or unexceptional in this new one.
They're the iconic superhero in Everytown, America, but now they're in a world where everyone is a Flying Brick. A regional karate champion is knocked out in two hits in an international tournament full of masters. A Grade Skipper advances to a class where they are no longer the best student. They're a genius on Earth, but they get abducted and find that everyone off-world can compute advanced calculus too.
When Everyone Is a Super, no one is.
While Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond has a character go from From Zero to Hero due to the clashing circumstances of the new place they find themselves in, here it's the opposite. With Power Creep in place, a character's skill level is Overshadowed by Awesome when faced against peers and opponents who have normalized the thing that made our main character abnormal. When your hero is an Experienced Protagonist, a good way to create tension for them is to put them in situations where their experience would only help in the most basic ways.
Crossovers are very popular in this regard. Characters who are established as The Ace, the World's Strongest Man, the World's Most Beautiful Woman, or other archetypes defined by being winners in their continuities wind up encountering other characters who have faced foes with similar powers and abilities in their own setting and beaten them.
Sub-Trope of Fish out of Water.
Compare A Hero to His Hometown (local celebrities who're nobody outside their hometown), Always a Bigger Fish (where there is always someone better), Eviler than Thou (where someone "out-bads" the Big Bad), Fake Ultimate Hero (where the hero was never impressive to begin with), Graceful in Their Element (where the factors are environmental), Large Runt (where the comparison is size-based), Not Rare Over There (where a resource is rare in one place and common in another), Power Creep (where new content is always superior), So Last Season (where the way to defeat the last opponent won't work for the next one), Summon Bigger Fish (where you bring in a new threat to defeat the old one), Surrounded by Smart People (where The Smart Guy meets their intellectual peers), Villain Forgot to Level Grind (where the bad guy is easier to beat at a later stage), We Have Those, Too (where special qualities are rendered common), Well-Trained, but Inexperienced (a character is skilled, but lacks street-smarts), and Wrong Context Magic (where a character's abilities break the established rules of the new setting).
Contrast Instant Expert (when a character immediately becomes good at a new skill they acquire), Like a Duck Takes to Water (where a character thrives in their new environment), and Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond (an unexceptional character becomes exceptional in a new setting).
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Dragon Ball:
- This happens to the heroes in the jump from Dragon Ball to Dragon Ball Z. Goku and Piccolo, the strongest fighters on earth, are both significantly weaker than Raditz, the weakest antagonist from outer space by a wide margin. However they push themselves to be the strongest in the universe in the span of about two years when Goku defeats Frieza, emperor of Universe 7, as a Super Saiyan. At that point they became the Bigger Ocean and kept training to hold onto to the title. Almost every other challenge were threats artificially created to fight them (the Androids), instantly received the power to fight them through shortcuts like wishes on the Dragon Balls (Zamasu, Moro, Gas, Granolah), or straight up had to steal the heroes' powers (Cell, Buu, Copy-Vegeta, Goku Black, Moro again).
- Both Shin, the Supreme Kai and Creator God of the Universe, and Babidi, the master of the most terrifying demon Buu, were shocked to find out that the earth Saiyans were far and away stronger than they could've expected. Both Goku and Vegeta outclassed Dabura, the strongest of the dark side of the universe. Goku himself stated if he went all out at Super Saiyan 3 he could've defeated both Fat Buu and Kid Buu. In the filler tournament, Goku also proved himself to be the best warrior in Other World. Meaning of people pure enough to keep their bodies after death, he's the strongest who has ever lived.
- One of the few other times the heroes would discover an outright bigger ocean is when they challenge, and ultimately befriend, Beerus the God of Destruction. Beerus reveals that though they're the strongest mortals in their universe, there's a tier of Gods of Destruction that outclass nearly all mortals, and Angels that outclass all Gods. And there are 11 other universes that may have stronger mortals.
- In the Dragon Ball Super Universe 6 Arc, it's established that the denizens of Universe 6, while holding a lot of similarities to Universe 7, pale in comparison to the Z-Fighters and are taken down easily despite being their universe's best fighters. This is best illustrated when Frost — Universe 6's answer to Frieza — agrees to fight Vegeta unrestrained after holding back, only be defeated with a swift kick from the disgusted Saiyan.
- The Z-Fighters later came out on top of the multiversal Tournament of Power. Goku also tapped into power greater than Jiren, the top individual competitor, in about 40 minutes. So they were already stronger than most of that uncharted ocean Beerus revealed to them to start with. And these are only threats that push them in one-on-ones when they're fighting for glory. If they use their full arsenal including fusion just to win, Gogeta and Vegito are always untouchable. By the end of Dragon Ball Super, the Z-Fighters are the strongest mortals in at least 8 of the 12 Universes, besides constantly level grinding to keep up with a revived Frieza. And they may be in striking distance of God of Destruction tier.
- In Final Fantasy: Unlimited, Lisa Pacifist is a master of the Kigen Arts and would be one of the more powerful people in her own universe, which is mostly based on early 21st Century Earth. In Wonderland, however, Lisa is regularly overpowered and outmatched by the monsters and sorcerers in it.
- GA: Geijutsuka Art Design Class: Defied by Uozumi, the vice-president of Geijutsuka's Art Club. He's noted to be quite a good artist by his middle school teacher, but he is also color blind, and he knows that his skills aren't that great compared to other students who want to build a career out of it. This is why he's in the college prep track instead of the art design class.
- In Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Vi Vid Vivio, Einhard, and their friends attend a tournament with other young mages who also specialize in physical combat. In a complete subversion to usual Tournament Arc tropes, the girls lose early on with only Einhard being able to briefly battle the prodigy champion before being taken out. They are understandably demoralized by this.
- My Hero Academia: The root cause of Katsuki Bakugo's Inferiority Superiority Complex is based around the fact that he was born with an exceptionally powerful Quirk that grants him the power to emit explosions from his hands. As a result, he was seen as the most likely to become a successful Pro Hero compared to his peers. This, combined with the fact that his childhood friend, Izuku Midoriya, was willing to do the same despite having no Quirk of his own, led to Bakugo viewing anyone else striving to equal him as a personal attack. When he finally makes it into U.A., his raw talent is matched against other students who can do the same with their intelligence, strategies, and power. While Bakugo is still exceptional, he doesn't get the same level of reverence that he did in middle school or when he was a child, and much of his blustering is dismissed by his peers (except for Midoriya, who always admired him despite the bullying). His time as the golden child has also proven to stunt his heroic character, as his inability to empathize with others leads to him winning the Entrance Exam with 0 Hero points, the League of Villains kidnapping him in an attempt to recruit him, and later failing the Provisional License Exam because he was docked too many points for yelling at the pretend hostages to "save themselves" which was technically true since they weren't actually injured enough to require outside help (and were in fact docking points from the students who wasted too much time trying to help them while neglecting other more injured "victims"), showing he actually possesses accurate situational crisis awareness but absolutely no tact in handling citizens.
- One Piece: This is a common problem pirate crews face, especially those originating from the Four Blues. Some may rise to become the strongest in their home seas, but upon entering the Grand Line, most will often find themselves being pitted against opponents who are leagues stronger than they are. The Straw Hat Pirates are a prime example of this process. After rising to become the most wanted pirates in East Blue, Luffy and the others arrived in the Grand Line to find enemies that were much stronger than what they faced in East Blue, and the strength of their enemies only increased the further they travelled. After arriving at the end of the first half of the Grand Line, the Straw Hats faced an enemy so strong that Luffy of all people decided that they needed to retreat or else the whole crew would be slaughtered. This was then compounded when during his attempt to save his brother, Luffy witnessed firsthand the gap between himself and the world's most powerful fighters during the Marineford Arc. These events would convince Luffy to have the crew take a two-year hiatus from their journey to train and prepare themselves for what lies ahead in the second half of the Grand Line known as the New World.
- Yu-Gi-Oh! GX: Zane Truesdale suffers from this when he enters the pro leagues in Season 2. In Season 1, Zane was considered The Ace by his peers, being The Perfectionist who duels with respect, was the top graduate of Duel Academy, and had never lost a duel cleanly. He had a solid start in the professional leagues, racking up ten wins before he faces off against Aster Phoenix, another professional duelist. Aster has more skill than an average Duel Academy student though, and Zane's usual One-Hit KO strategies revolving around Cyber End Dragon are countered easily by Aster employing various defensive measures against them, showing that Aster is a new rival for Jaden to not take lightly. This one loss ends up kickstarting a horrendous losing streak for Zane that has him losing sponsors and being defeated by even little-league duelists. Desperate to get any victory, he participates in an underground duel ring that breaks him mentally, making him adopt a far more brutal style of dueling without his previous adherence to respecting his opponents.
Comic Books
- The Darkness: Jackie Estacado can wield the powers of the Darkness, an eldritch entity that grants him immense strength and powers, which makes him practically unmatched on the mortal plane. Then, in a crossover event, he went to Metropolis and faced Superman and lost.
- Grendel: Hunter Rose, the Genius Bruiser Diabolical Mastermind who is the original, 20th-century, Grendel. In his own universe, he's so powerful a Badass Normal that only a superstrong werewolf has a chance of beating him. However, in the crossover miniseries with Batman and The Shadow, he provides a decent challenge to both of them but gets his ass kicked both times, as they're used to fighting high-grade Badass Normal costumed villains.
- The Incredible Hulk: In The Incredible Hulk (1968), during The '80s, when the Hulk was exiled to the extradimensional Crossroads by Doctor Strange, he suffered from this big time. Doctor Strange's banishment spell had one important characteristic: it only sent the Hulk to dimensions in which he couldn't be a great danger to its inhabitants. The result was that the Hulk was sent to lots of dimensions where his great strength was unexceptional as compared to the other denizens. Fortunately, the spell also had a failsafe that whisked the Hulk away from the current dimension he was in if he became too unhappy.
Fan Works
- The Boys: Real Justice: In the universe of The Boys, the Seven are its premier superhero team. However when both they and Billy Butcher and his team crossover into the DC Comics universe, Homelander and the other members of the Seven are on multiple occasions shown that they can't compete with Superman and his Justice League teammates like Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, and Aquaman.
- Code Geass: Paladins of Voltron: The Holy Britannian Empire is the most powerful nation on Earth, and even controls over a third of the planet's surface. But when the Galra arrive, they quickly prove how small the Britannians are by defeating the European Union within a week and conquering the rest of the planet with little effort.
- Code Prime: Knightmare Frames are the most advanced weapons humanity has developed, yet on more than one occasion, they get slaughtered in droves when fighting against Cybertronians due to a combination of superior technology, and additional combat experience.
- Suzaku may be a talented pilot, and the Lancelot is one of the most advanced knightmare frames on the planet, but in his first engagement against Bumblebee, he gets outmatched by the young Autobot, who's had years of experience fighting a war.
- Cornelia pilots a knightmare that's inferior to the Lancelot, but she has more combat experience than Suzaku. But every time she faces off against the Autobots, she loses in almost all of her battles against them, with her first major defeat being against Optimus himself, who was holding back throughout his whole duel with her.
- Kallen is one of the best pilots in the Black Knights, but in her first engagement with a Decepticon, she gets her ass handed to her soundly. Said Decepticon was none other than Airachnid, who's easily one of the most dangerous Deceptions there is, so she never really had a chance against her.
- Helluva Witch: While Belos was a force to be reckoned with on the Boiling Isles due to a mix of the Demon Realm's wild magic and his authority as Emperor, as soon as he finds himself in Hell, he's made into just another sinner bitterly trudging around the Pride Ring blaming others for his own wickedness. When he tries using force in Hell, he finds his head blown off and humiliated by imps (who actually rank beneath him in Hell's hierarchy).
- Hunters of Justice: At the beginning of the story, Salem, the most powerful being on Remnant, is curb-stomped by Braniac when he invades her planet with the intent of "preserving" it like he has with so many others, and the only reason she survived is because of her immortality. Later on, when she arrives on Earth, she gets a visit from Ares, who plainly spells out that she's nowhere near the most powerful being on her new planet, let alone the rest of the universe, and the Spectre, who crushes her heart and admits that the only reason he isn't killing her is that he's not the person meant to end her life. The whole encounter rattles her, and when they're gone, she's forced to accept that she can no longer expect to be top dog anymore.
- The Infinite Loops: One thing that certain loopers struggle to adapt to is the idea that, while in their home universe, they're top dog, the multiverse contains beings not only far older but also far stronger and experienced than newer loopers could ever dream of being.
- The Odds Were Never In My Favour: The European Magical Tournament is this for Hogwarts candidates Cedric Diggory and Geoffery Hopper even more than the canon Triwizard Tournament was for Harry. They are good students and spellcasters who perform admirably throughout the qualifying trials to enter the tournament, but their qualifying trials were so easy compared to the other schools that they are grossly outclassed by many witches and wizards who have greater power than them without even trying hard.
- In the Superman/Warhammer 40,000 Crossover, Stars of Hope, this is what the Chaos Gods are subjected to and forced to acknowledge. Once Superman arrives in their universe, they seemingly gain all knowledge of who he is, what he is, and more importantly, just what kind of world his home reality is. And it's not even the only separate reality in the Overvoid, a letter left by Mr. Mxyzptlk reveals that the Xeelee Universe is canon to this fic too, so yes, definitely not the only verse or the worse one out there. So while the Chaos Gods are still dangerous and powerful, they're not as special as they initially believed. Ahzek even makes a similar comparison when Tzeentch explains it all to him. Calling the Warp a single drop in a vast ocean.
- The Victors Project:
- One of the many District 6 tributes to share the name Chevy over the decades of Games is voted into the First Quarter Quell and confidently expects to win the Games due to his experience in the drug gangs, but he forgets that, in addition to Career volunteers, the kinds of people who tend to get voted into the arena include tough, mean kids who fight dirty and, in some cases, had months to guess that they'd be voted into the arena and took that time to prepare for it. Chevy is not the Victor the trumpets sound for that year.
- Lyme asks to take the tribute trials without the preceding years of Career training, proclaiming that her athletic ability and wilderness survival skills are more than adequate. Boudicca has no confidence in this and tells Lyme that the only other two kids who she ever let take the trials without preceding training both thought they were strong and determined enough due to hard life in the quarries and an abusive household, respectively, but neither became a tribute and one was broken badly enough to commit suicide after the trials.
- Zigzagged in With This Ring during the future glimpses where the protagonist has been trapped in the world of Gate. Once hostilities calm down, the Sanderan Empire learns that although they are top of the heap on their own world, they are centuries behind every nation on Earth. However, they are so far behind that Japan doesn't mind sharing the basics of things like gunpowder since that isn't remotely enough to make the Empire a threat — especially when the gate is likely to close soon. As a result, the Sanderans look forward to the prospect of equipping their armies with primitive guns and cannons, which would not allow them to compete on Earth, but will make them unstoppable amongst their neighbours.
Diabo: As much as it burns my pride to admit it, we are to them as those early barbarians were to our ancestors.
- Strange Potter
: While many wizards of Harry Potter are powerful, it’s quickly made clear that this is only within the scope of their secluded society. Once MCU Dr. Strange and his sorcerers get involved, they find themselves outclassed easily by the knowledge and magic they wield, as well as the technology and combat skills like those of the Avengers. Harry states that had Voldemort attempted to take over the muggle world, he’d have received a massive curb stomp in retaliation. Blaise also explicitly points out that Dr. Strange; “Makes Albus Dumbledore look like a squib!” The man himself is horrified as just how powerful Thor and Wanda are, and even Natasha would’ve killed him by putting a knife into the wall next to his head before he could even react.
Films — Live-Action
- The Axe: Bruno is a successful engineer and manager with fifteen years of experience. After being downsized, he spends two years failing to get hired over all the other downsized people with even more experience who are out to find new jobs in the industry. He solves this problem by murdering every unemployed middle manager with a better resumé than his.
- Bloodfist: In the second movie, John (the third-rated heavyweight contender in the world) and Bobby (an Army Rangers unnamed combat teacher) both put up fantastic fights against the Super Soldiers they are pitted against, but their styles of combat aren't the best to use against drug-enhanced, far more murderous people with greater resistance to pain than some of the other fighters who hold their own better.
- In Can't Hardly Wait, Trip McNeely, a Huntington alumnus and former Big Man on Campus, explains to jock Mike Dexter (who has just dumped his long-term girlfriend Amanda in anticipation of scoring with girls in college) that college is not like high school; popular jocks like them are a "dime a dozen" and college girls overlook them, leaving them to falter.
- Drop Dead Gorgeous: Amber's excellent tap dancing skills ultimately make her the winner of her small-town beauty pageant and take her to compete at the state level, where she is left daunted and stunned to realize how much more effort, training, and skill all the other contestants are capable of. She does win, but only because of a massive Disqualification-Induced Victory.
- I Know What You Did Last Summer: Helen was the high school beauty queen who went to New York after graduating to become an actress, only to find it's full of high school beauty queens and she no longer stands out. Between that and the guilt of having helped conceal a murder, she's home again within a year.
- Ice Princess: Gen Harwood is a sensational skater, but her friends are better, and she resents how her Stage Mom pushes her to sacrifice her social life competing for events that she's not good enough to win anyway.
- Legally Blonde: At UCLA, Elle was the beloved sorority president with a hot boyfriend she was sure she was going to marry. Once she arrives at Harvard Law to win him back, she is completely out of her element, where no one takes her seriously and she gets thrown out of class the first day. She eventually overcomes this, not only winning a huge case her first year but becoming the class-elected speaker two years later.
- The Quick and the Dead: The first man to volunteer for the quick-draw contest is Gutzon, a self-proclaimed "Swedish champion" gunfighter. In Arizona, this gets him roundly laughed at, but he's accepted into the competition anyway. He's also the first competitor knocked out, courtesy of the Kid, who asks to the crowd afterwards: "Am I just that fast... or is Sweden a very slow place?"
- In The Shawshank Redemption, Brooks is a deeply tragic example. He is an Old Convict who has been in prison for fifty years. As the prison librarian and for a long time the only one who has gone to college, as well as for being a Nice Guy in general, he is very respected by the rest of the inmates. When he is paroled, he is given a menial job at a convenience store and gets no respect from anyone. It leads to him killing himself, unable to adjust to the modern world. Even before his parole, Red understands his situation:
Red: In here he's an important man, an educated man. Out there he's nothin'. A used-up con with arthritis in both hands. Probably couldn't get a library card if he tried.
- Spider-Man: No Way Home:
- Otto Octavius is an absolutely brilliant scientist to the standards of any world, but he comes from a world that was more mundane than the Marvel Cinematic Universe, two decades in the past at that. As such, the new world he finds himself in is rife with geniuses that develop technology similar to or better than Otto's own. The Iron Spider's nanotech rather easily overrides the operating system of his tentacles and at the end of the film, he marvels at the pocketwatch-sized Arc Reactor, which is more or less a perfected, safer alternative to his own nuclear fusion device.
- In fact, all the villains that appear in No Way Home fit this trope in the MCU. In their own universes, they were incredibly dangerous threats, due to being the only known superhumans in worlds which were fairly grounded in reality. In the much more advanced and mystical universe they find themselves in, the villains are out of their depth to varying degrees and struggle to adapt. Tellingly, they all end up captured and restrained halfway through the movie thanks to the magic of Doctor Strange and are only able to fully run amok once MCU Peter lets them out in an attempt to cure them and prevent their deaths.
- Step Up: The Mob spends the fourth film becoming a social media street-dancing sensation before heading out to make a living as commercial dancers. The next movie has them jaded as they compete with dozens of other skilled, well-motivated, and well-hyped dancing groups who flock to even the smallest audition.
- Top Gun: Maverick: All of the new mission candidates are Ace Pilots with distinguished records, but Maverick shows all of them up during training exercises and Payback (perhaps the second-most confident of the group) never even qualifies for the mission.
Literature
- Ivan Krylov has a fable called "The Ant", where the titular character is famous in his anthill for being both incredibly strong and a brave fighter, but when he attempts to go out and impress humans, no one notices him.
- Catching Fire: Invoked by President Snow after Katniss and Peeta win the 74th Hunger Games through a mixture of skill, luck, and social engineering but then prove to be a threat to his regime. He makes the 75th Hunger Games an all-Victors event so they'll be going back into an arena full of experienced killers who, on average, are more cold-blooded, better-trained in combat, and experienced at playing crowds than Katniss and Peeta, who are at a disadvantage for much of the Games and only survive because half of the other Victor-tributes are actively helping keep them alive and bring Snow down.
- Ex-Heroes: The Unbreakables are super-strong Super Soldiers who form an impressive military unit, but once they go from nearly fighting actual superheroes to working alongside them, they are mostly reduced to glorified sentries and The Cavalry.
- A rare positive example in The Footfalls of Chess Horses. Tyupa is a Child Prodigy who is a victim of Greatness Mistaken for Failure at his school, bullied by students and teachers as hopelessly stupid and lazy. One of the nicknames he gets is Smart Alec. Then, after he is transferred to a specialized school with a focus on physics and maths, he finally finds academic challenges and fulfillment, while the nickname Smart Alec is forgotten, "probably because", as the narration remarks, "there are plenty of smart alecs around".
- In The Great Divorce, several damned souls refuse to enter Heaven in good part because they refuse to accept that in Heaven, everyone is great and famous.
- George MacDonald tells the narrator about a man called Sir Archibald who in his life was interested in nothing except survival. However, since in Heaven, by definition, everyone has already survived, Sir Archibald didn't stay there, as there was nobody for him to instruct.
- An apostate bishop who used to be very popular on Earth mainly refuses Heaven because he has stopped believing in one, but he also prefers giving talks in the Theological Society in Hell and feeling himself important to repenting and realizing he has put the talents he is so proud of to bad use.
- A painter is very disheartened when told that everyone, not just the great painters, is famous in Heaven. When informed he is utterly forgotten on Earth, he leaves back for Hell immediately.
- Holmes on the Range: World's Greatest Sleuth has the Amlingmeyer Brothers participate in the eponymous detective tournament and struggle to keep up with contestants who have years more of detective experience, intellectual brilliance, and more confidence than them, which is best shown by how they come in second-to-last during the first round after still doing a decent job of quickly solving the clue they get. They do ultimately improve, but its also notable that many of their competitors are at a disadvantage due to things like King Brady delaying his efforts by working through a proxy body double, M. Valmont being given clues in badly-written French, and Boothby Greene not being a real detective in the first place.
- John Putnam Thatcher: In Going for the Gold, Olympic downhill skier Dick Noyes may be capable of some Big Damn Heroes during a Race Against the Clock, but, while better than most skiers in the world, he is also the second slowest downhill skier (at least in non-emergency situations) in his event and has no illusions about this.
Dick Noyes was the lowliest member of the low-ranked American downhill team ... For the others, the 1980 Winter Olympics would be a victory only if they brought home a medal or broke a world record. For Dick Noyes, the victory was being there.
- Overlord: The biggest flaw in Zesshi Zetsumei's Blood Knight and Challenge Seeker tendencies. Word of God states that she was the "Overlord of the New World" before Ainz and Nazarick's arrival, being a high Level 80 character in a world where being Level 30 is considered Legendary, with the only ones who could give Zesshi a challenge and defeat her are the Level 90+ Dragon Lords. Unsurprisingly, Zesshi is incredibly bored in her very first appearance in Volume 4, as nothing can truly challenge her, and the only times where she experiences loss is the constant and sometimes fatal beatings from her Abusive Mom as "training". By the time she goes up against Nazarick for the first time in Volume 16, specifically Mare, she gets a brutal wake-up call with all of her attacks and spells being No-Sell’d by the young dark elf, and soon suffers A Taste of Defeat by the end of it.
- Return of the Runebound Professor: Having reached tier 7, Alister expects to be the top of the heap, stronger than anyone else in the Arbalest Empire, to be treated as a god, and see the noble houses quail before him. He's startled to be immediately confronted by someone much stronger, pinned down when he tries to resist, and told that tier 7 isn't as rare as he believed, it's just that he's no longer allowed to remain in the Empire.
Garina: Once you get to a point where you aren't a complete waste, it's time to move on so you don't squish the playground on accident.
- The Harry Turtledove story "The Road Not Taken" features different parties doing this to each other in two ways: humanity has just mastered the ability to send crewed ships across the solar system (over a period of years) when an alien invasion fleet takes the same journey in a matter of days. Once the aliens land, it turns out they only have black powder weapons, which are obsolete next to a 21st-century Earth arsenal.
- Zigzagged in Son of Interflux when talented young artist Simon finally begins attending art classes with other kids. His work gets criticized more than most of his classmates', but he also thinks that the Living Legend teacher seems especially intrigued by it. He ends up placing fairly low at the big competition, only for his teacher to tell him that this is because his work is too brilliant for ordinary judges to appreciate and that he is the best student in the class by far.
- Star Wars: A recurring theme in both the new Expanded Universe and Legends, such as the X-Wing Series and Amara Kel's Guide to TIE Pilot Survival (Probably) , is that new squadrons of fighter pilots are all made up of very good fliers for them to get there in the first place, but once they get there, some of them are below average for the group, lack the insight and humility to know this right away, and risk dying on one of their first missions unless they learn better.
- Tales of Kaimere: Cenozic mammals brought from Earth to Kaimere have to deal with this when it comes to the descendants of non-avian dinosaurs that came million of years later. Mammals had the opportunity to grow big and diversify after the K-T extinction, leading to apex predators like big cats and bear-dogs and large herbivores like chalicotheres and proboscidians. However, the Dinosaurs that can breed faster and, especially in the case of Saurischians with their airsacs, get bigger on less food were able to outmatch them.
- Big cats are currently the top predators in much of the world. But against both the robust megaraptors that are at least 20 times bigger along with vassal predators like giant terror birds and sub-adult monarchs, they are the equivalent of mesopredators.
- Chalicotheres were initially brought to Kaimere to replace the large titanosaurs lost in the Dynastic Extinction as forest gardeners. But in the Known World, the small Titanosaurs were able to reach their size on less food and repopulate faster. And that was before large armored titanosaurs from Kairul arrived, making the chalicotheres extinct in Ni'Kar and Arvel save for a relic in the arid far west of Arvel and, ironically, a Kairulan Chalicothere called the Glanos that followed the hard-to-digest Hauze Grass.
- That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime: Rimuru Tempest runs into this realization soon after being named chancellor of the Jura Forest. Upon his reincarnation as a slime inside the Sealed Cave and being named by True Dragon Veldora, he was already an A Rank monster capable of fighting and absorbing just about any monster inside of the cave, and once he got out into the Jura Forest itself, he quickly amassed the loyalty of various inhabitants and gaining new powers from absorbing other weaker but skill-wise diverse monsters. After he defeated and absorbed the Orc Disaster, a monster well on the way to becoming a Demon Lord, he himself was already twice as strong as the minimum power requirement to call himself one and the strongest being in the Jura Forest. The thing is, twice as strong the minimum requirement or not, that's still not an insurmountable threat to the other nations of the world who have champions capable of fighting on that level, and "self-proclaimed" Demon Lords are often either killed off by any of the existing current ten Demon Lords simply as a way of "newbie crushing" to the point the human nations often expect it to happen before they have to worry about anything. When Milim Nava, contender for the title of strongest Demon Lord, shows up to see what all the fuss about this slime is, Great Sage all but tells Rimuru she's so much stronger than him he would never defeat her in a fight. He has to use honey and her flighty nature to get in her good graces instead. Rimuru later goes up against the Demon Lord-level threat Charbydis and can only break even with the beast despite having his whole nation of Tempest backing him up before Milim one-shots it with a single restrained attack. The tipping point comes when Tempest comes under attack by the Kingdom of Falmuth through the machinations of several other parties and he himself is unable to help in the initial attack because he is attacked and nearly killed by the Saint Hinata Sakaguchi, who despite being a human is strong enough to have killed two Demon Lord tier fighters when she herself was in a comparatively weaker state. These events, coupled with the desire to revive those killed in Falmuth's attack, is what motivates Rimuru's decision to undergo the ascension to become a True Demon Lord by slaughtering and taking the souls of the Falmuth army and take his seat at the table of the Demon Lords as an equal, as only with that level of power and respect he'll be able to make his dreams of a peaceful nation possible.
Live-Action TV
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer: In "Witch," Buffy figures that her role as head cheerleader at her old high school will make it easy for her to audition for an opening on the Sunnydale cheer squad, only to find some of the other applicants talking about coaches they have preparing them for the tryouts.
- Castle (2009): In "The Dead Pool", Alex Conrad is a Genre Savvy mystery writer with a promising future as a writer and maybe a detective, but the older writers he wants to hang out with are quick to tell him when his thinking is unoriginal and less insightful than he imagines.
- Cold Case: In "Shuffle, Ball, Change," Grant is a talented wrestler, but seeing how good the other candidates in the Junior Olympic program are freaks him out enough to fake an injury to quit.
- Gilmore Girls: Zig-Zagged with Rory Gilmore.
- In the first season, Rory is beloved in Stars Hollow and a star student at the public high school, getting into the prestigious Chilton in spite of being raised by a single mom in a small town. But Rory struggles at first with the new workload and commute, as well as the one-sided rivalry with Paris Geller, getting her first D and having a meltdown when she misses a test due to her car getting hit by a deer. Once she adjusts, however, she manages to be in the top 3% of the class. By her senior year, she becomes valedictorian.
- At Yale in Season 4, Rory again initially struggles with adjustment of not being the big fish, this time due to being away from home on top of the college workload. After getting a D in a class and being recommended to drop said class, she feels like a failure and falls back on her married ex-boyfriend Dean for comfort.
- In Season 5, she initially seems to do great in her internship with the Stamford Gazette, subverting the previous trend. Double subverted when Mitchum Huntzberger tells her she hasn't "got it" as a journalist based on her internship performance, though it's unclear whether this was Tough Love or Kick the Dog due to Rory dating his son.
- Glee: Rachel and Mercedes are clearly the most talented singers in the New Directions and are able to help rocket the club to its first Nationals victory in years by their senior year, but after they graduate school they find themselves floundering.
- Mercedes heads to L.A. to make it as a singer, and while she's able to coast off of viral fame from one of her high school performances she can't handle her image-obsessed manager and fires him; when she manages to get a new label a few years later she still has to accept that she's an up-and-coming artist and doesn't have any star-power to fall back on.
- Rachel is accepted to NYADA, a prestigious performing arts school in New York that's very difficult to get into. She quickly finds herself surrounded by people of equal drive and talent, and has no more teachers willing to cut her slack because she's not as special here as she was back in Lima. Even when she manages to land a starring role in a revival of Funny Girl, her attempt at chasing more fame backfires on her and she's told that girls like her are a dime a dozen in that town. Sure enough, a few more mistakes have her running back to Lima with nothing to show for it and it takes her several years to rebuild both her reputation and her professionalism in order to make it.
- Growing Pains:
- Seasons 3-6 have this be a recurring theme with Mike, who has a lot of raw acting talent from the occasional amateur play from high school onward and eventually a TV guest role or two. This keeps making him confident enough to go to auditions where he finds out that there are far more qualified and talented people than him filling up the line and desperate to get a part. A particularly poignant moment that helps end Mike's acting dreams is when he finds the star of one of his favorite old shows in that desperate situation.
- Subverted in "Homecoming Queen," where valedictorian and Extracurricular Enthusiast Carol feels she is being put into this position after being propelled out of her clique comfort zone and being nominated for Homecoming Queen along with a bunch of popular girls. However, as one of them points out to her, she actually outclasses them from a certain perspective, and everyone else is as nervous and unsure of themselves as she is, and none of them are really far ahead of the others in beauty, popularity, or other Homecoming Queen attributes.
- Jeremiah: Wasteland Warlord Theo starts out as the leader of an organized, gun-totting gang that preserved some valuable infrastructure, runs a mid-sized town with a thriving marketplace, and has techies building an electric generator. After her Heel–Face Turn, she is more of The Friend Nobody Likes at Thunder Mountain than a respected shot-caller (at least until she proves herself under new circumstances) due to how her new ally has running water, scores of military weapons, a lot more manpower, and more potential allies in dozens of groups from across the country who have done things like build fish farms and hydroelectric generators, grow lots of crops, have a Ye Olde Nuclear Silo nearby, or have got cars working again.
- The Phil Silvers Show: In one episode, Bilko gets a particularly hunky new platoon member to audition for a Tarzan movie, hoping to ride the guy's coattails to wealth and fame, only for the other auditioning bodybuilders to be even beefier, to the point where the judge calls Bilko's subordinate "Skinny."
- In the premiere of the third season of Resident Alien, Max's friend Sahar reveals that she has tested into a prestigious gifted school in California. She is Put on a Bus for most of the season due to a scheduling conflict with her actress. When she returns in the penultimate episode of the season, she asks Harry Vanderspeigle to not tell Max that she's back yet. She explains that she quit the gifted school, that she was only average there, that all the other students there were older and smarter and she had never been average before.
- In the third season of Son of a Critch, Fox's older brother Silver is finally expelled from St. Bridget's, having gotten too old to continue attending a middle school. Unable to find placement in a high school or secure employment, he ends up trying to parlay his years of experience as St. Bridget's worst bully into some sort of criminal venture but ends up in jail because it turns out that it's a lot harder to intimidate a cop than it is to intimidate teachers or kids.
- Star Trek: The Next Generation:
- In "First Contact", Chancellor Durken is the leader of the One World Order on Malcor III and used to think he was as high up as one could get. Then his First Contact with the crew of the Enterprise showed him that there were actually many other more advanced civilizations than his out there in the cosmos. He's a lot more humble about it than usual.
Durken: I go home each night to a loving wife and two beautiful daughters. We eat the evening meal together as a family. I think that's important, and they always ask me if I've had a good day.
Picard: And how will you answer them tonight, Chancellor?
Durken: I will have to say: This morning, I was the leader of the universe as I know it. This afternoon, I'm only a voice in a chorus — but I think it was a good day. - The Federation as a whole believes they are prepared to explore deep space after they emerged as the dominant power in the Alpha Quadrant following a series of wars with the Klingons, eventually integrating them. However, the Enterprise-D's first day on the job sees them encounter a Reality Warper known as Q who taunts them that they are not ready in the slightest, yet they proceed. A while later, Q comes back to warn them again, and this time, when Picard rebuffs this information, Q flings them deep into the Delta Quadrant, bringing them face-to-face with the Borg, who very quickly knock Picard off his high horse and force the Federation to reevaluate their position as pacifist explorers now knowing what's out there.
Picard: Perhaps what we most needed was a kick in our complacency to prepare us for what lies ahead.
- In "First Contact", Chancellor Durken is the leader of the One World Order on Malcor III and used to think he was as high up as one could get. Then his First Contact with the crew of the Enterprise showed him that there were actually many other more advanced civilizations than his out there in the cosmos. He's a lot more humble about it than usual.
- Stargate SG-1: Discussed in "Prodigy" when Sam attributes Cadet Jennifer Hailey's acting out to disillusionment with her future Air Force career: among other things, she makes a snide remark about Hailey probably being a straight-A student in high school, only to then come to the Air Force Academy where everybody else was also a straight-A student.
- The Wire: Stringer Bell, the business and money-laundering brain of the Barksdale drug empire, is the best money-maker on the streets of Baltimore, but once he tries to venture into legitimate businesses such as real estate, he can't understand the workings of the boardroom world and loses a fortune due to con jobs and bureaucratic red tape.
- Young Sheldon: Child Prodigy Sheldon Cooper is the smartest student in his small town, eventually attending East Texas University while barely a teen. But when he spends a summer in Heidelberg, Germany, he finds that other students are more advanced than he is, and is even called a dummkopf by his teacher. What's more, his tutor is no older than he is and has several honors to her credit.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons: The Epic Level Handbook suggests that the player characters could surpass the level cap, then travel to other realms, worlds, or dimensions and find out that they're far from the first to become Epic-level. The interdimensional city of Union has several epic organizations, including even the City Guards.
- In Exalted, the Dragon-Blooded are what remains of a huge corps of superhumans, the rest of whom were rendered extinct, driven into exile in the wilderness, or magically veiled from everyone else in existence. They are also the weakest of said superhumans, and — though that 'weakness' is a very relative term — must contend with immortal gods who remember the other Exalted and know Dragon-Blooded aren't that special in the grand scheme of things. Oh, and since the Dragon-Blooded founded a religious dogma based on killing other Exalted on sight, they start any encounter with the latter on very shaky ground.
- Mage: The Awakening: Many powerful mages don't pursue Archmastery for fear of this. If someone is a veteran Master of magic and a leader in Magical Society, they're in the upper echelon of the world they know. As soon as they become an Archmaster and transcend the physical world, they land on the bottom rung of a cosmos-spanning supernatural cold war against gods, Eldritch Abominations, and worse.
Theatre
- In the Heights: Nina grew up an intelligent girl whose family and neighbors all swore would go on to do great things. When she received a prestigious scholarship to Stanford, they treated her as The One Who Made It Out. Unfortunately, when she actually got to Stanford, she struggled to balance her grades, financial responsibilities, and mental health and dropped out of school, something she's ashamed to admit when she returns home. By the end of the play, however, she's more sure of herself and decides to return to school in the fall.
- Legally Blonde: Discussed multiple times.
- As in the film, Elle was the golden girl at UCLA, as the pretty, popular sorority president with a 4.0 GPA (in fashion merchandising) and a hot boyfriend. At Harvard Law, her looks don't matter as everyone thinks she's a joke. While she works hard to overcome this and even obtains a coveted internship from Callahan, his sexual harassment sends her spiraling enough to consider dropping out to go, "back where I'm known, back in my own very small pond", but is convinced to stay by Vivian. In this version, she not only wins the case but becomes valedictorian instead of class speaker in spite of her starting out with middling grades.
- Warner, likewise, has subtle notes of this, as he reminisces with Elle in "Serious (Reprise)" about missing being the big man on campus at UCLA, saying "we were like gods back then". Warner, while he gets one of the coveted internship positions, eventually drops out to be a model, showing he missed the attention.
- Minor characters Enid Hoops and Aaron Schultz are introduced in "The Harvard Variations" as ambitious overachievers, with Enid being a former Peace Corp activist who has led many successful humanitarian efforts and Aaron being an award-winning, rich software developer. They get schooled hard by Professor Callahan in "Blood in the Water", showing that law school is a whole different beast. Enid, for her part, manages to secure one of the coveted internship positions, but Aaron disappears into the background.
Video Games
- Final Fantasy XIV: While Orcus is a powerful unchained voidsent inhabiting the body of the greatest reaper to have ever lived, he picks a fight with the Warrior of Light, who regularly slays gods and has beaten at least one sovereign of the void by the time they face him. Notably, the Warrior takes him down mostly alone rather than with a party, only getting Drusilla's help in the latter half of the fight. Orcus then dies with little fanfare as Drusilla takes her revenge on him. Instead, his defeat serves more as proof that the Warrior of Light has come into their own as a reaper.
- Guardian Tales: Valencia is legitimately a very strong and skilled warrior, but she's nowhere near as powerful as she thinks she is. When she proclaimed that she was the strongest fighter in all of Demon World and set out on a journey to prove it, she beat most fighters so effortlessly that it outright bored her. Her ego was severely deflated when she had back-to-back encounters with Old Erina and the Other Knight which proved she had a long way to go to be a real world-class fighter.
- Honkai: Star Rail: Welt Yang came from the world of Honkai Impact 3rd. He was one of the "Herrschers", the "harbingers of Honkai" who are meant to be Apocalypse Maidens but managed to conquer the Honkai influence and use his power to protect humanity; specifically, his power as "Herrscher of Reason" is to recreate anything he can understand with his mind. Back in his homeworld, he was hailed as one of its greatest and most experienced heroes; however, in the setting of Star Rail, the cosmology steps up to cover more worlds, as well as the universe-level powers such as the "Aeons". While Welt is still quite powerful, he's no longer unique or exceptional compared to the many other beings in the universe.
- The Legend of Zelda:
- In The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Midna was a step above others in the Twilight Realm due to her possession of a piece of the Fused Shadow. When the villain Zant was given a fraction of Ganondorf's power, he quickly took control of the Twilight Realm and forced Midna to rely on Link and Princess Zelda for help. When Midna tries to take Ganondorf on with the full power of the Fused Shadow, he effortlessly curb-stomps her and crushes the artifact with one hand.
- The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, it is revealed that the new incarnation of Ganondorf, of all people, was this. He started out as a powerful Magic Knight of the Gerudo Desert, quickly rising to prominence as their King. But when he tried to launch an assault on Hyrule with a swarm of Molduga, they were quickly wiped out by the combined forces of Zelda, Rauru, and Sonia. After ruefully conceding that brute force would not be enough against Hyrule, he swore false allegiance to the kingdom before assassinating Sonia and stealing her Secret Stone to become the Demon King.
- Project × Zone: In chapter 13, Riela is hesitant to display her Valkyria form to the other heroes, since her status as a One-Woman Army in her home series means even her allies are terrified of her. She does transform after some encouragement but is surprised when the rest of the team reacts with mild surprise at best. She may be the strongest being in her world, but in the context of this Massively Multiplayer Crossover, her powers are nothing special.
Demitri: Nothing rare about it. I could unleash that level of power anytime.
Riela: They don't look too fazed... - Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart: It's implied that beneath the pageantry and robot armies, Emperor Nefarious is no different than Dr. Nefarious, his successes being more a matter of just being in an "easier" universe than his mainstream counterpart. When we're first introduced to him, Emperor Nefarious had conquered most of the galaxy and the rebels are fighting an uphill battle against him, Captain Quantum placing a bug on him more a matter of luck than anything else. When he tries launching his campaign of conquest into Ratchet and Clank's dimension, he is surprised by how much of a fight the native heroes are able to put up with the rebel's help and loses his cool in the process.
- Touhou Project: Sanae Kochiya was raised on Earth. Due to having divine ancestry and power over miracles, she was worshiped as a deity. When she moves to Gensokyo, where deities are a dime a dozen, she finds that most of the locals are much more powerful than her.
Visual Novels
- Masters in Fate/stay night and other Fate works are often powerful or otherwise exceptional Magi. However, Servants, summoned as the basic premise of a Holy Grail War, are some of the strongest beings in human history. For a human to match a Servant requires a lot of preparationexample, compatibility against the Servant's skillsetexample, a ability that is exceptional even by Servant standardsexample, or a combination of these. Most Masters do not have this luxury.
Web Animation
- DEATH BATTLE!:
- Exploited in "Deadpool vs. The Mask". Deadpool had already won two death battlesnote with his Healing Factor making him hard to kill conventionally and lack of a fourth wall making him impossible to trick. However, he's hopelessly outmatched against The Mask, a Reality Warper with limitless powers. The hosts specifically picked this unfair matchup to finally get rid of Deadpool.
- This trope also applies as to why Homelander lost to Omni-Man. In his own universe, Homelander is the most powerful being in existence because all superpowered beings were created from Compound V, and since Homelander is Vought's "Golden Boy", very few other Supes can match him in terms of power. It's because of this lack of challenge that Homelander never felt the need to work on being a fighter. Meanwhile, Omni-Man is a soldier of the Viltrum Empire and had been conquering worlds in its name for centuries before settling on Earth. To quote the creators, "One's a warrior, the other's a bully."
- This trope is also why Jason Voorhees bested Michael Myers. Michael's series never does crossovers and he is uniquely only one of his kind in it. He never had to face another slasher and isn't used to his targets not going down once he lands a hit. Meanwhile Jason not only has far superior endurance to Michael, but had gone against Leatherface, Freddy Krueger, Ash Williams and even himself and clearly learned a bit.
- It's also why Rick lost to the Doctor, this one being somewhat self-inflicted. The Rick's in the Citadel have created the Central Finite Curve to wall off the section of The Multiverse where Rick is the smartest person to exist from everything else. As such there are very few things that can challenge him and he's not used fighting smarter opponents. The Doctor not only is as smart or even smarter than Rick, but has been having adventures not unlike Rick for hundreds of years and has a lot of experience facing opponents of equal or greater intellect and coming on top.
- This trope is part of the reason why Unicron lost to Galactus in their fight. Unicron may be the pinnacle of power in the Transformers universe, but he also hasn't had as many opportunities to fight opponents on his level compared to Galactus who has on multiple occasions fought opponents who are capable of matching him in battle.
Websites
- Hard Drive has a satirical article about the tragic fate of a fighting game enthusiast who's significantly better than all his friends, to the point that he no longer enjoys playing against them — but can't hack it against other competitive players, and never gets beyond preliminaries in any fighting game tournaments.
- Smogon: Some Pokémon which get banned to a higher tier end up completely unviable there. For example, Terapagos dominated SV OU for the brief period it was legal there, but once it was punted to Ubers, it ended up in the D-rank, reserved for the many Ubers Pokémon which have no niche whatsoever in the tier.
Western Animation
- In the Futurama episode "The Duh Vinci Code", it's revealed that Leonardo da Vinci originated from a planet of Human Aliens who are a Proud Scholar Race, the Planet Vinci being described as a giant STEM University. While Farnsworth is excited at first, he quickly grows to hate the inhabitants because while he's an Omnidisciplinary Scientist in the rest of the universe, he's seen as an idiot and is ridiculed by the locals. It's also revealed that da Vinci himself deliberately inverted the trope—he was the stupidest person of all on Vinci, so he fled to Earth, knowing that the lowest-ranking Vincian would be considered Earth's most brilliant mind ever.
- Lola Loud from The Loud House is a dominant force in her local child pageants. However, when she enters her first regional pageant, she becomes afraid of losing because of all the top-tier competitors. After a pep talk from Lori, she decides to compete. And even though she doesn't win, she is glad for the experience. Plus, the others take notice of her.
- Star Wars: The Clone Wars: While General Grievous, a lightsaber wielding Full-Conversion Cyborg may be terrifying individual to face as a regular clone trooper, or a Nightsister, but whenever Grievous goes up against seasoned Jedi like Kit Fisto and Obi-Wan, he's often sent on the retreat.
- A few The Simpsons episodes, such as "The Secret War of Lisa Simpson" and "Bart vs. Lisa vs. The Third Grade" have dealt with Lisa in this capacity. Both episodes have Lisa put into a position where she can leave the second grade to take up something more challenging. However, since Status Quo Is God, the challenge is a little too great for Lisa and she retreats back to the second grade.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003): The Turtles are world-class master martial artists, but when they accidentally qualify for the interdimensional Battle Nexus tournament, they have to go up against some people who are just as tough as they are, with Donatello (admittedly the weakest Turtle by a slight margin) not even making it past the first series of elimination bouts.
- In the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles episode "Revenge of the Triceratons", Donatello (The Smart Guy of the group) begins to feel useless compared to Professor Honeycutt (a space-faring scientist with many years of advanced, interplanetary data to work off of), a problem only made worse when he's "3,000 years behind" on transdimensional concepts in physics by virtue on being from a non-spacefaring world like Earth.
