Normally, when a character ends up as the recipient of superpowers, the most common bearing it has on their nature is a matter of Personality Powers. Sometimes, however, characters find themselves gaining extraordinary powers that fit their job.
Here, a newly superpowered individual finds that their powers are uncannily suited to their current line of work, either proving incredibly useful in their field or simply being thematically appropriate to it.
To be clear, they didn't get powers and apply for a position that suited them; they didn't get their powers from the job; they just woke up one day with powers that were thematically and practically appropriate to their current job.
Unfortunately, given the level of chaos surrounding the lives of superpowered individuals, it's all too common for them to end up losing the jobs their powers were appropriate to, either due to being fired for circumstances beyond their control, resigning to pursue a more glamorous career as a superhero/villain, or even having their workplace destroyed in the emergence of their powers. And in some especially ironic cases, the powers seem based more on their previous career, especially if it was their dream job.
As for what superpowers fit the job, a few common examples can be found below:
Popular superpowers for the currently employed
- Actors: Voluntary Shapeshifting.
- Artists: Art Initiates Life.
- Athletes: Super-Strength, Super-Speed, or Super-Toughness.
- Authors: Rewriting Reality.
- Botanists and gardeners: Phytokinesis, Photosynthesis
- Con Artist: Mind control, Illusionism.
- Construction workers: Super-Strength.
- Dancers: Super-Reflexes, Voluntary Shapeshifting, Magic Dance.
- Electricians: Electrokinesis.
- Engineers and mechanics: Technopathy.
- Firefighters: Hydrokinesis, Pyrokinesis
- Forest rangers and zoologists: Animorphism, Animalistic Abilities, Animal Talk
- IT workers and hackers: Virtual-Reality Warper
- Marine biologists and oceanographers: Underwater Breathing
- Medical professionals: Healing Hands, Biomanipulation, X-Ray Vision
- Phony Psychic: Real psychic powers.
- Professional gamblers: Winds of Destiny, Change!, telepathy.
- Psychiatrists: Telepathy, empathy, or mind control.
- Secret agents: Invisibility, Voluntary Shapeshifting.
- SFX experts: Illusionism.
- Soldiers: Super-Strength, Super-Toughness, Healing Factor, Resurrective Immortality.
- Stage Magician: Literal Functional Magic, Psychic Powers, Illusionism.
- Thieves: Invisibility.
In the case of soldiers, police, and other potentially dangerous jobs, this may involve a Death-Activated Superpower, a Defence Mechanism Superpower, or a Traumatic Superpower Awakening.
Subtrope of With Great Power Comes Great Perks. Compare Power Profit Potential for when superhumans look for ways to monetize their powers, and Position of Literal Power for jobs or offices that bestow a supernatural power directly.
Contrast Personality Powers.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- In Let's Eat A Pie In The Sky
: Tougo is a young artist who suddenly develops the ability to create animals and objects by drawing them.
- Undead Unluck has an incredibly cruel inverted case, where the world is watched over by a Jerkass God that specifically grants Negators their powers at the exact moment that it would be the most traumatic for them. To make matters worse, even the voluntary-activation powers will first manifest with Power Incontinence, facilitating the misery no matter what. Rip, a surgeon, has Unrepair: causes damage that cannot be repaired and wounds that cannot be healed. While normally he can choose when and how long the "repairing" will be negated, he gained and was forced to use this power in the middle of performing a surgery meant to save his childhood friend.
Comic Books
- Batman:
- The first Clayface was Basil Karlo, a disgraced horror actor turned murderer; thanks to double-crossing an entire team of superpowered criminals also named Clayface, he was able to obtain samples of their blood and empower himself with them, granting him incredible shapeshifting powers. For good measure, his showy, dramatic style of shapeshifting fits his overly hammy, scenery-chewing style of acting to a T.
- The New 52 incarnation of Karlo was a struggling actor who made a deal with the Penguin in exchange for anything that could improve his career. What he got was a sample of mystical clay that merged with his body and gave Karlo the ability to shape and contort his body in any way he desired, making him a horror movie superstar virtually overnight. Unfortunately, the Penguin soon called in the favour he was owed and began abusing Karlo's powers to commit crimes, gradually driving him insane, inducing a Super-Power Meltdown, ruining his career, and leaving his Shapeshifter Default Form as a giant clay monster.
- Karlo's DC Rebirth incarnation was also an actor and already a big success, only to end up being disfigured in a car accident. In a desperate attempt to keep his career, he began using the banned industrial solvent Renu to reshape his flesh to its former glory, enjoying a renewed career as a result...up until his theft and abuse of Renu was discovered, resulting in a shootout with the cops that ended with Karlo being soaked in the substance, transforming him into the shapeshifting monster Clayface.
- Spider-Man:
- Electro used to be a lineman (an electrician who works on power lines) until he was struck by lightning and gained electrical powers.
- Hydro-man was once a lowly sailor, before a freak accident flung him overboard and gave him supernatural power over water.
- Witchblade: Sara Pezzini is a police detective that gets selected by the Witchblade as his new wielder. With the use of the artifact, she goes from a regular cop to a super-powered vigilante, fighting both regular crime and supernatural threats to the world.
- X-Men: Silver Samurai's little-known mutant power is to generate tachyon energy that can be conducted through metal, letting his sword cut through anything but adamantium. It's not clear how he would have discovered his powers if he wasn't already a swordsman.
Fan Works
- The Director of the Vague Yet Menacing Government Agency: It's strongly implied that the newscaster Cecil is a parautilitarian. Specifically, he's like the radio he operates, randomly tuning in to the thoughts of people who are far away from him (or even dead). Throughout the fic, he spontaneously voices the thoughts of the Hiss, Zachariah Trench, and Broderick Northmoor without even realizing he's doing so. Fortunately for him, he can 'change channels' just as effortlessly.
Jesse: (to Cecil) [I]t was nice to meet you, Voice of Night Vale.
- Moving On: Actor and Class Clown Claude gets Your Mime Makes It Real powers, track team member Alan gets Super-Speed, and star flutist Allegra becomes a Magical Flutist.
Films — Live-Action
- Ghost: A variation. Oda Mae Brown is a Phony Psychic Medium who pretends to commune with the dead. Thanks to an encounter with protagonist ghost Sam, she discovers she has the ability to hear and channel ghosts for real, which attracts tons of real ghosts to start reaching out to her (much to her frustration). Justified, since she comes from a long line of genuine psychic mediums, she just thought the power skipped a generation with her.
- Highlander (1986): Connor MacLeod was a warrior for his clan prior to being killed in battle by the Kurgan and having his latent immortality awakened, making him essentially unkillable by anything short of decapitation. Of course, given that he was exiled from his village soon after, he didn't stay a warrior for long, but flashbacks demonstrate that he occasionally dabbled in mercenary/freedom fighting work in the centuries that followed.
- The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Professional thief Rodney Skinner went out of his way to steal Hawley Griffin's invisibility process and use it on himself, hoping that it'd improve his career. It worked perfectly... but unfortunately for Skinner, being invisible made profiting off his successes a bit difficult, hence why M, after capturing him, has offered Skinner an antidote to the invisibility in return for his loyal service to the League.
- The Old Guard: It's very common for the immortals to have been warriors or soldiers prior to discovering their Healing Factor and Resurrective Immortality; Nicky and Joe started out fighting in the Crusades, Booker was a soldier in Napoleon's army, and Nile was a US Marine on tour in Afghanistan. For good measure, though the need to disguise their immortality has forced all of them to give up on official military service, all of them continue working as mercenaries.
Literature
- Animorphs: In The Ellimist Chronicles, Toomin starts off with no real career except for gaming, specializing in a Life Simulation Game involving godlike control over a virtual environment and pitting different species against each other. Over the course of the story, Toomin is transformed into a godlike being with power over reality, essentially playing his favourite game in real life.
- The Cautious Traveller's Guide To The Wastelands: In the final acts of the novel, Suzuki, the train's cartographer, reveals that due to exposure to the Wastelands that the Trans-Siberian Express travels through, his skin has started displaying maps of the train's route, maps which are capable of changing as the train goes along. Marya's father, a glassmaker, gained glass eyes before he died in the same manner.
- Discworld: The Librarian of Unseen University was originally a normal human wizard before being transformed into an orangutan in a magical accident early in the series. He was briefly saddened by this, until he discovered that his new form came with several benefits that were perfect for his job and passion: having prehensile feet to handle more books, the ability to climb and travel across the bookshelves with ease, and being more-or-less immune to the more eldritch tomes' ability to drive men insane — because the Librarian technically isn't a "man" anymore. These, along with the other benefits of being an orangutan (such as having 300 pounds of muscle to work with and most human existential fears boiling down to "where the next banana will come from"), have made the Librarian oppose and sabotage any attempts to turn him back to normal.
- How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom: Souma gains a magic he dubs "Living Poltergeists", which enables him to remotely manipulate inanimate objects in ways an in-person wielder could. Being an administrator by trade, he mainly uses it to fill out multiple documents at once.
- Parallel World Pharmacy: The central premise of this story involves a doctor dying and being reborn in another world with the magical powers of diagnosis and drug manufacturing.
- Podatek: Monika, a muggle university student, hires herself for a summer job at the SECOND Tax Revenue Agency (which, unbeknownst to Monika, is not the same as the regular and boring Second Tax Revenue Agency of Lublin). One of her first jobs is to assess contact with one of the debtors from the Agency's registry... except that debtor turns out to be the Spirit of Lubelszczyzna. And the back tax she collects is a whole lot of magical energy, revealing in the process Monika as a marsh maiden (or simply rusałka) thanks to the Superpowerful Genetics of her ancestors. After going through a bunch of paperwork to create enough legal loopholes, the Agency decides to hire Monika for good, since her newly gained powers (predominantly Charm Person and Glamour) make her an excellent tax collector. She, on her part, takes like a duck to water the craziness of the magical world and quickly finds various other, mundane utilities to her powers.
- Smoke Eaters: The title refers to a group of humans who are immune to the negative effects of fire, particularly smoke inhalation and heat, which is useful in a future where dragons have returned and are wreaking havoc upon the world. Cole Brannigan, the protagonist of the first book, discovers he's a Smoke Eater after almost forty years as a firefighter, on the verge of retirement.
- The Stormlight Archive: Which Radiant powers someone gets depends on which type of spirit chooses to bond with them. A few Knights Radiant make the connection through their work, knowingly or not:
- The Stump, an orphanage administrator with a Hidden Heart of Gold, somehow became a Truthwatcher without noticing and was subconsciously using her newfound healing powers to help the children in her care.
- Ishnah was already working for an intelligence network when she became a Lightweaver, adding illusions, a Photographic Memory, and a preternatural eye for detail to her repertoire as a Magical Rogue.
- Beryl became a Lightweaver while working as a prostitute. She stays in the job for a while before formally joining the Radiant Orders, using her illusions to become her clients' ideal partner.
- Thursday Next: Thursday investigates literary crime, such as forgery and manuscript theft, in her real world as part of Spec Ops 29; she rediscovers her innate ability to enter fictional narratives in the second volume, which allows her to stop a lost Shakespeare play from being used for political leverage.
- The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar: Henry Sugar is a wealthy, idle playboy whose only "occupation" is trying to make more and more money for himself through various disreputable means, including gambling. One day, he reads a report about a man who taught himself to see through playing cards using advanced yoga techniques, and Henry then spends several years mastering this power himself. He then tries it out at the casino and wins big, but then finds that he has no appetite for spending the money, as he won it through dishonest means. He tosses his banknotes out of the window, attracting a huge crowd, and a policeman tells him that he should have invested the money where it would do some good. He then uses his powers to steal money from casinos to fund orphanages.
- World Customize Creator: The protagonist is an ordinary gamer summoned into a fantasy world, where he gains the power to customize anything he wants, because he had been trying to upgrade his equipment in a video game.
Live-Action TV
- Behind Your Touch: Ye-bun gains the ability to read someone's memories by touching their rear end. While it's hard for her to use them on humans, as a vet, her newfound powers are great for treating pets since she can now fully understand what they're thinking and figure out what's wrong.
- Grimm: In the pilot, Nick is a respected but ordinary police detective until he starts to have visions of monsters around him. Cue his Aunt Marie revealing that the monsters are real and he's just awakened his hereditary powers as a Grimm, enabling him to see and hunt those that prey on humanity.
- Heroes: With a number of the evolved humans in the series only coming into their powers as working adults, this happens on occasion:
- Matt Parkman, an LAPD officer who is struggling to advance to detective, suddenly gains Telepathy, which helps him find a little girl at a murder scene and helps him better investigate crimes (at least until he loses his job).
- Sylar's ability to understand how things work by looking at them is great for a watchmaker... but also causes him to go crazy with Horror Hunger when that power is applied to understanding others' abilities, pushing him to kill in order to look at their brains and steal their powers.
- Adam Monroe was a British mercenary fighting a war in Feudal Japan when he discovered he had the ability to regenerate from all wounds, effectively making him immortal.
- In From the Cold: Anya Petrova was a highly-skilled SVR agent specializing in hand-to-hand combat, infiltration, impersonation, and seduction; however, when a mission gone wrong resulted in her being forced to use the invention she was supposed to be stealing, she was imbued with incredible shapeshifting powers, allowing her to camouflage herself to match her surroundings, transform into anyone she's genetically sampled, and recover from injuries that would put most agents out of commission. It was this that truly made Anya a legend in the intelligence community, leading to her being dubbed "The Whisper". Decades after she's started a new life with a new identity, "Jenny Franklin" still has her powers, eventually leading to her unwillingly coming out of retirement for Chauncey's rogue CIA operation.
- Misfits:
- Vince was a tattoo artist with a long history in the trade, and upon being empowered by the Storm, he now has the ability to instantly supernaturally bestow special tattoos that can control the minds of their owners and even inflict real harm.
- Played for laughs; Brian used to work as a teaboy at a cafe, his routine montage featuring an awful lot of him pouring milk. The Storm imbued him with the remarkably silly power of lactokinesis — literally the ability to control milk and other dairy products. Unfortunately, this power turns out to have more lethal applications than initially suspected...
- Seth used to be a small-time drug pusher with ambitions of being "the ultimate dealer", so the Storm gave him the power to remove the abilities from other powered individuals and give them to anyone of his choosing, allowing Seth a lucrative new business. In much the same way that dealers shouldn't use their own product, Seth can't use the extracted powers for himself, hence his superstrong bodyguard. He even seems capable of enhancing the extracted powers akin to drug dealers aiming for high-purity product, since Nikki's teleportation and Curtis' time travel are much more controllable after Seth gives them to other buyers.
- Peter is an amateur comic-book artist who has gained the ability to control minds simply by drawing comic strips of a particular event.
- Erazer was a veteran graffiti artist prior to the Storm, judging by the tags that keep turning up around the community centre. As his webisode reveals, he has the power to conjure up people, animals, and even entire pocket dimensions simply by spray-painting them into existence.
- Raising Dion: One of the people who got powers from the Aurora Event is Walter Mills, a farmer. He gains Green Thumb abilities, which naturally makes his job as a farmer a whole lot easier, as it assures him a good harvest every year.
Tabletop Games
- Changeling: The Lost: DJ Hamlyn started out as a rock band guitarist and, when that didn't pay the bills, a pest exterminator who serenaded wealthy clients into bed. One of The Fair Folk stole him away for his talents; by the time he escaped, his music was literally magical. He finally became a successful performer, but unfortunately, Arcadia also left him with an addiction that he can only feed by kidnapping people for his Fae mistress.
- Mage: The Ascension:
- Since magic is a much more personal experience than most superpowers, it's not uncommon for Mages to gravitate towards Traditions and Spheres that fit their personality — or their line of work. For example, it's very common for members of the Virtual Adepts to have already been IT professionals or even hackers, and many of them enjoy the power to leap into literal cyberspace.
- The "Gambler" template started off as ordinary Professional Gamblers before Awakening and being inducted into the Euthanatos. As a master of the Euthanatos' key Sphere of Entropy, he now has the power to control probability, allowing him to continue their work as professional gamblers on an even bigger scale.
- The "Shapeshifter" had a long career of fitting in and doing whatever her parents and society expected of her, from classical dance to yuppie executive work. However, after awakening to her powers with the help of a Verbena Lifeweaver, she is now a master of using the Life Sphere to shapeshift, allowing her to blend in literally anywhere... and for good measure, she harnesses her magic through dance.
- Vampire: The Masquerade:
- Numerous Clans look for potential recruits with personal traits or professions that suit the Clan stereotype, often leaving the new Childer with Disciplines that benefit their work. For example, the Toreador commonly recruit both artists and socialites, gifting them with the Disciplines of Auspex and Presence, allowing the former type to appreciate beauty and the latter to enthrall everyone around them.
- The Banu Haqim's Warrior Caste frequently recruits individuals who have military experience, especially in black ops work; these individuals find their skills in combat, stealth, and assassination all benefitting from the Clan Disciplines of Celerity, Obfuscate, and Quietus.
- The "Bogeyman" character template was a professional kidnapper, making a living by stealthily abducting the loved ones of wealthy criminals and ransoming them for exorbitant sums, up until one of his “targets” Embraced him into the Banu Haqim Warrior Caste. He now does the same work as before, except this time on fellow vampires and now with the benefit of Obfuscate.
- The character template "Cleaner" was a one-man Cleanup Crew with a gift for disposing of bodies and erasing evidence in record time. After being recruited and Embraced by the Banu Haqim, he found that the Discipline of Obfuscate suited his career down to the ground.
- The Brujah commonly Embrace rebels and radicals, some of whom have military experience and may have literally fought in revolutions. As such, the Disciplines of Celerity and Potence suit the more martial breed of Brujah.
- The "Pugilist" template was a boxer before being accidentally Embraced, and continues his career in the ring despite the difficulties of living a public life as a vampire, finding Potence and Celebrity a boon — provided he uses them subtly.
- Gangrel are devoted to the wild and will occasionally select their would-be childer from people who already have some kind of personal or professional attachment to the natural world, including hermits, park rangers, or even eco-terrorists — in other words, people who greatly appreciate the benefits of Animalism and Protean.
- The "Field Biologist" started out as a relatively famous scientist studying wolves in the wild. After being Embraced and tested at length, he found himself with the power to literally speak to wolves, command them if necessary, and even transform into them.
- The "Drilling Rig Technician" was Embraced by one of the Mariner Gangrel, giving him oceanic-themed shapeshifting that makes him perfectly at home in the waters around the offshore drilling rig where he was working at the time of his Embrace. As such, he's still working there, albeit on the night shift.
- The Ravnos template "SFX artist" was a professional special effects designer prior to his Embrace, and he proved so good at it that he was able to ward off a gang of vampires that attacked his workplace by tricking them into thinking they were fighting Mages. The Ravnos he'd unwittingly saved was so impressed that she Embraced him, giving him the power to project his own special effects at will through the Chimerstry Discipline.
- Setite character template "Psychiatrist" was a dedicated mental health professional who sincerely wanted to help people... and now that he's been Embraced into the Followers of Set, he now has the power of Dominate, allowing him to literally change people's minds. It's just that now his idea of helping people involves encouraging them to give into their darkest desires.
- The "Superspy" template was a covert operative snapped up by the Followers of Set and now takes great delight in the fact that he can now take his career all the way into the realms of James Bond thanks to the Disciplines of Obfuscate and Dominate.
- Though the Tzimisce clan is extremely varied in their potential Childer, they like Embracing individuals with some form of scholarly or scientific background, making them well-suited to the Disciplines of Auspex and Vicissitude.
- "The Fallen Surgeon" was an incredibly gifted doctor who fell on hard times and was hired by a crime syndicate to surgically transform a stable of runaways and vagrants into the performers for highly illegal porn films. When the Sabbat raided her underground studio, her employers were executed, but the Fallen Surgeon's work was so impressive that the Tzimisce Embraced her on the spot; now the Discipline of Vicissitude gives her the power to alter flesh and bone without using a scalpel.
- The "Monster Maker" was a university researcher in genetics turned Mad Scientist, noted for his obsession with monsters. After following the trail of Clan Tzimisce all the way into Romania and being Embraced by one of them, he can (and often does) use Vicissitude to create monsters of his own.
- The "Tattoo Artist" was, as the name implies, a veteran tattooist with years of experience and an artistic devotion to the trade. After being tested and recruited by a Tzimisce fan of her work, she is now continuing her trade, but now as a Mad Artist working for the Sabbat and using Vicissitude in place of a needle.
- The "Star, Fucker" was a failed actor, a Celebrity Impersonator, and a porn performer before contracting HIV, hitting the Despair Event Horizon, getting roped into taking part in the snuff film scene, and accidentally getting the Sabbat's attention. Now, as a Tzimisce, Vicissitude gives him the ability to essentially shape himself into any celebrity he can possibly imagine, to the point that his profile pic looks like Tom Cruise.
Video Games
- Alan Wake: Alan, a bestselling author, is given Rewriting Reality abilities due to exposure to the Dark Presence residing within Cauldron Lake; while he's forced to write a horror story in an attempt to get the Dark Presence to free itself, Art Initiates Life is unarguably a very suitable power set for a tortured author such as himself.
- Second Sight: Prior to the events of the game, John Vattic was a parapsychologist, specializing in debunking Phony Psychics. However, as he discovers, he's actually a latent psychic himself, his power first noticeably manifesting as the ability to see invisible psychic phenomena like projections.
- The Secret World:
- Madame Roget worked as a Phony Psychic for many years in Kingsmouth prior to the start of the game. However, when the Fog arrives, she finds herself in the awkward position of developing very real psychic powers: she now experiences visions of the future, can perceive auras in other people, and can even see through the eyes of others, hence why she serves as one of the player's allies and questgivers in Kingsmouth.
- Theodore Wicker used to be a human demonologist, gifted in the study and use of magic, but otherwise not intrinsically powered. However, after growing increasingly obsessed with the notion that Hell used to be a paradise, he used a series of irreversible rituals to alter himself so that he could survive in the Hell Dimensions. As a result, the mortal demonologist was transformed into a unique being with the nature and powers of a real demon, allowing him to command demons through shared empathy rather than magic.
- Sunless Sea: In one ending to The Sigil-Ridden Navigator's Loyalty Mission, he gains improved game stats and the power to chart a course through Blood Magic rather than mundane navigation. He's also not really the Sigil-Ridden Navigator anymore but the Runic Magic animating his hollowed-out body, but your Captain presumably doesn't mind, having hollowed him out themself.
He does not come on deck anymore... he can feel the pull of the sea under his skin. He sees its changes like storms on the horizon.
Webcomics
- Paradigm Shift: Kate McAllister is an athletic, pro-active Chicago PD officer and already one of the more competent detectives. She's trying to crack the case of particularly brutal serial killings — only to get attacked by the killer when arriving at the site in the middle of the murder. The killer is revealed to be a werewolf, and Kate barely survives the attack, but gets turned as a result... which makes her job of finding the feral wolf all the easier when she can simply sniff him out, while the newly gained Healing Factor allows her to shrug off fatal wounds as if nothing, so getting physical isn't a problem either. And in general, her newly-gained abilities and powers work with her pre-existing skillset and job requirements. It's coming to terms with her wild nature that's a struggle, and she also starts to display Cowboy Cop antics thanks to getting overconfident in her Nigh-Invulnerability.
Web Original
- Skill Takers World Domination ~ Building a Slave Harem from Scratch: Yuuto Konoe's Ability Looting (Skill Taker) allows him to steal the skills of others, born from his martial arts style of copying other styles' techniques he practiced in life.
Web Videos
- Critical Role: Campaign Two: Fjord was a sailor prior to the campaign, rising through the ranks to become first mate and quartermaster. When his ship exploded due to sabotage, knocking him into the ocean, he subconsciously agreed to a warlock pact with U'kotoa in order to survive drowning, though he did not remember making it once he woke up on shore. Among other new magical abilities, the pact eventually gave him the power to control water, which came in handy during seafaring missions with the Mighty Nein, where he used his previous sailing expertise. When he switched allegiance as Paladin of the Wildmother, he took the Oath of Open Sea, which gave him more water-based abilities.
Western Animation
- Aladdin: The Series: As humans, Aziz, Minos, and Fatima were con artists and thieves who moonlighted as a circus troupe. When they tried to steal the sacred Destiny Stone, they were turned into monsters; Aziz, the bumbling stage magician, became a goblin with real magic, Minos, the strongman, became a minotaur, and Fatima, the acrobat, became a harpy; their powers suit perfectly their "jobs", and they started looting Agrabah. Eventually, Fatima and Minos gave up and became humans again, but Aziz was unrepentant and liked his powers. He abused them so much that he ended up dying.
- Batman: The Animated Series: In the two-parter episode "Feat of Clay", Matt Hagen was a popular actor until he was disfigured in a car crash, whereupon Roland Daggett offered him a highly addictive cosmetic called Renuyu that allowed Hagen to reshape his face and resume his acting career. However, accepting this leaves him at Daggett's beck and call, forced to use a combination of Renuyu and his own acting skills to sabotage Daggett's business rivals, and subject to the increasingly negative side-effects of Renuyu. After Hagen fails to kill Lucius Fox and tried to steal Renuyu from the lab, Daggett's men forcefeed him the substance, accidentally transforming him into the shapeshifting supervillain Clayface. For good measure, Hagen discovers the full extent of his powers while musing on his past acting triumphs, shapeshifting into his best roles without even realizing it.
- The Legend of Korra: Zaheer was already the formidable leader of the Red Lotus, an anarchist organization that attempted to kidnap a young Korra 13 years prior to the start of Season 3. Then, he just so happened to be one of a small number of non-benders to get airbending powers after Harmonic Convergence, having previously studied the martial arts techniques of Air Nomads. Taking this as a sign that his path was a righteous one, he was able to break himself and his friends out of their prisons to try to finish what they started.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Unicorns are stated to have a limited pool of spells, all tied to whatever their job or talent is. For example, Rarity, a dressmaker who specializes in incorporating gemstones into her work, has a gem-locating spell. The main exception to this rule is Twilight Sparkle, whose talent is the study and application of magic in and of itself, meaning she can cast a wider array of spells.
- The Spectacular Spider-Man:
- As with his comics incarnation, Electro was an electrician before the Freak Lab Accident that gave him electric powers. Unlike his comics incarnation, becoming a being of energy meant it was impossible for him to live a normal life, making his descent into crime a virtual guarantee.
- Flint Marko was a thief well before he became Sandman. While he was at first ticked about becoming a being made of sand, he quickly realized that his new powers gave him the ability to pull off big jobs single-handedly, without him having to worry about being caught.
- Alex O'Hirn, much like Sandman, was a thief and thug-for-hire before he was put into the Rhino armor. The armor made him capable of taking hits he never could before and gave him the ability to beat up Spider-Man. The biggest problem he has with it is that it doesn't allow him to perspire properly, meaning he can get overheated far too easily.
- Static Shock:
- A number of Bang Babies, such as Hotstreak, Ebon, and the Meta-Breed, were already thieves and gang members before they got their powers, so their powers became a major help in doing more crimes. Justified, since the Big Bang occurred during a huge gang fight.
- A variation; Richie Foley was already Static's confidant and tech guy, but when his latent super-intelligence kicks in in Season 3, his inventions become much more intricate and effective. He uses these to become Static's partner Gear, essentially a more active version of what he already did.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Hamato Yoshi was already a skilled ninja when he came to New York. His mutation into a rat gave him further stealth skills and heightened senses.