Sometimes a character has more power stored inside than they can actually draw out. Sometimes this restriction will be due to a Power Limiter, or often with protagonists they'll have hidden potential they need to unlock.
But sometimes, in theory, they could use their power whenever they want, but in practice, they just...can't. Maybe they're a Sealed Evil in a Can who lost access to their full power due to time spent dormant. Maybe they're a Willing Channeler who can't draw out the full power of their possessor without destroying themselves. Maybe they do have a Power Limiter and are trying to overcome it. Maybe using the power costs energy, and they don't have enough of it.
Whatever the case, a character who is Re-Unlocking Power needs to take measures to gain access to power(s) they should or did already have access to. This sometimes appears as the justification for a mechanic in a video game, like a fighting game character with a powered-up state or a move they can't use at round start.
Can overlap with Power Limiter, when Re-Unlocking Power is the process of removing or overcoming the limiter in question, and Brought Down to Normal when a character's superpowers are sealed rather than completely disabled, drained away, or taken away from them.
Compare:
- Gathering Steam, where a character gets more powerful over the course of a fight, but usually winds down to a lower level after the fact instead of staying at their new peak.
- How Do I Shot Web?, where a character doesn't know how to use their power.
- Power Incontinence, where they can't control the output of their power.
See also Bag of Spilling and Journey of Reclamation. Those tropes relate to when a character has lost their power and must get it back, while this trope is for when a character still has their power in a literal sense, but can't use it at will.
Not to be confused with Forgot About His Powers, for when the power is available but they simply don't use it, or Re-Power, for when a character's old powers are replaced by an entirely new set of abilities.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Bleach: In order to defeat the apotheosized Sosuke Aizen, Ichigo Kurosaki trains for three months in the Dangai to reach an even greater level of power, though he ends up being Brought Down to Normal. Seventeen months later, Ichigo regains an upgraded version of his Soul Reaper powers—nowhere near as powerful as he'd been when he defeated Aizen but still significantly stronger than he'd been pre-Dangai training. During the Thousand-Year Blood War, Ichigo learns that up to then he'd only been fighting with a fraction of his full power and unlocks his full potential, which in the manga Yhwach states is him regaining the power he'd used to defeat Aizen.
- In Season 1 of the anime adaptation of Blue Dragon, the heroes sever their connections to their Shadows as part of the ritual to seal away Zola and Killer Bat, sealing away the Shadows as well in the process and reverting the heroes to normal people. Then Season 2 happens, the heroes are thrust into conflict once more, and Noi restores their links with their Shadows, literally re-unlocking them.
- In Digimon Adventure, unlocking a new, more powerful digivolution usually requires a lot of energy from a Digimon, and thus the first time often leads to the Digimon reverting to their weakest form once they've burned through their energy.
- Dragon Ball Super: After Gohan's potential is unlocked by the Elder Kai and he becomes Ultimate Gohan in Dragon Ball Z, he loses that power by the events of Resurrection 'F' due to slacking on his training, effectively re-locking his hidden potential. After this gets him beaten within an inch of his life by the resurrected Frieza, Gohan trains to reawaken it in time for the Tournament of Power, and subsequently keeps up his training to maintain it in Super Hero.
- EDENS ZERO: For the first act of the final arc, the main crew has much of their power blocked off after traveling back in time into their younger bodies in Universe Zero, where they retain all their Power Levels and abilities from the three-year Time Skip, but lack the physiology to do much more than what they were capable of by the start of the story. Poseidon Nero teaches Shiki to re-unlock his power by using Overdrive to assume a form that can properly access it, allowing his normal body to adapt, with the rest of his crew following suit off-screen.
- Hellsing: Alucard, the mightiest of all vampires and the Hellsing Agency's attack dog, has his powers constrained by the Control Art Restriction System to make him easier to control. There are four levels of restriction; as each one is released, more of his power is returned to him. Since he's a very loyal attack dog, he's allowed to undo the first three on his own initiative. Only Level Zero, a Godzilla Threshold that lets him off the leash entirely, requires his master's approval.
- Jujutsu Kaisen: Ryomen Sukuna, long feared for his status as the impenetrable King of Curses, has thankfully left the human world, leaving 20 Cursed Objects — his fingers — as a parting gift. Yuji Itadori, the vessel of Sukuna, ends up reawakening him by eating one of his Fingers. By consuming all 20 Fingers, Itadori unwillingly grants Sukuna all of his power back. The majority of the series is spent as various malicious forces try to put a fully powered Sukuna under their control.
- My Hero Academia: After inheriting the power of One For All, Izuku Midoriya initially lacks the control to use it at anything other than full strength, and the resilience to actually use it at all without shattering his own bones in the process. He eventually learns to safely use One For All at 10% of its full potential, and as the series progresses he slowly learns how to draw out more and more of the power at his disposal.
- Naruto: Kurama is considered the most powerful Tailed Beast, but Naruto Uzumaki as Kurama's host can't control all that power whenever he wants. Thus, Naruto continuously unlocking more potential is essentially him learning to draw out more and more of Kurama's strength over time.
- Onegai My Melody: Both the Melody Violin and Melody Guitar each require a higher competent skill to liberate their energy. Keiichi was more talented at the violin, and succeeds in doing so, becoming darker and edgier in the process, getting darker hair and red eyes. This is however subverted for Jun, as his guitar skills still sucked at the time he was given the Melody Guitar, but gradually improve, especially from being on a competition, giving him a new design with many demonic features.
Comic Books
- DC Comics:
- Justice League of America: In Justice League (2018), the World Forger sees fit to get rid of Superman by trapping him in the Dark Sector of the Sixth Dimension, on a dead planet far from any stars to draw power from, withering him into a decrepit living husk. Supes makes a last-ditch jump toward the one source of light he can see, but moving through the Sixth Dimension bombards him with hallucinatory visions that lead him astray, sapping his mind and body even more. Just then, Batman reaches out to Clark from worlds away, turning those visions from a hindrance into a guiding light that leads him to the star he was after, and many others. Superman regains his full strength by flying through several suns in succession, then flies through several more to power up further, enough to take out the World Forger in a single Megaton Punch.
- Superman: During Reign of the Supermen, Superman's powers are heavily weakened due to his solar reserves being sapped by a combination of his death and the Eradicator using it to recharge himself. During the final fight with the Cyborg Superman, the Cyborg attempts to douse Superman in the Kryptonite fuel that powers Engine City. The Eradicator jumps in front of him and is blasted by the fuel and somehow filters it, allowing Superman to regain his full power. As it turns out later, this supercharged his powers to a dangerous level.
Fan Works
- The Awakening of a Magus: Once he comes into his Magus abilities, Harry has access to an incredible amount of raw power as the most powerful wizard in history. However, between his young age, his lack of training, and the physical strain such powerful magic produces, Harry needs time before he can use the full extent of his powers safely, let alone face Voldemort.
Films — Animated
- Moana: Maui is a demi-god who can change into various animal forms with the help of his magical fishhook. In his last adventure, he lost this fishhook and got stranded on an island for over a thousand years. After he recovers it, his first transformations are less than successful. It takes him a while to relearn how to use its power.
Literature
- The Asterisk War: Ayato Amagiri's sister Haruka put a Power Limiter on him as a child to cap his unnaturally huge supply of mana and prana until he could learn to control it properly. He broke one layer of the seal by brute force almost immediately, and over the course of the series, he gradually unlocks his full power by meeting the conditions that Haruka set.
- I May Be a Guild Receptionist, But I'll Solo Any Boss to Clock Out on Time: The dark god Silha uses three Dia skills when confronted by the Silver Sword and Alina: Dia Storm (a spear), Dia Judge (a Storm of Blades), and Dia Drain (a Power Copying mirror). After Silha's demise, Shelley inspects his core and finds out it's covered in Dia skill sigils, so many that its normally-transparent surface looks pitch-black. She concludes that a dark god needs to devour human souls to fuel his own skills, making mass sacrifices necessary to regain his full strength, and the reason he only used three skills is because he had only eaten three souls — two of Rufus' unidentified party members plus Rufus himself.
- Old Kingdom: Mogget is a Free Magic spirit of terrifying power who's been bound in the shape of a cat and compelled to serve the Abhorsen bloodline. In dire emergencies, the Abhorsen can uncollar him to release his full strength, but they have only a short window to get the collar back on before he becomes completely uncontrollable.
- Reign of the Seven Spellblades: Discussed in the Side of Fire prequel volume, as protagonist Alvin Godfrey has a disability that makes it initially impossible to cast any spells. Once he breaks through it and casts a fire spell so powerful it burns his own arm, Professor Gilchrist theorizes that a childhood magic tutor probably became frightened of his power output and botched an attempt to put a Power Limiter on him. Godfrey has to gradually learn to control his firepower over the course of the book, and has managed to get full control of it by the time the main series kicks off, and only gets stronger from there.
- Saintess Summons Skeletons: Sofia uses a dangerous sacrificial ritual to transform into the apostle of a shunned god, a Daughter of Sorrow, greatly increasing her physical and magical strength. Her body is fast and strong enough to Wall Jump several hundred meters up, with claws and tail and 360° vision, regains mana rapidly just by breathing, and has five special skills that can alter probabilities and even wind back time. However, since she did that inside a trial simulation, it would normally cease to apply afterward — but Sorrow likes what she saw, and offers a middle ground, allowing Sofia to briefly regain her apostle form when her mana runs out, in exchange for a level debt (all her XP gains are garnished by the System until fully paid).
- The Sunlit Man: The protagonist is on the hunt for a cure for his "Torment", a Restraining Bolt on his soul that paralyzes him whenever he tries to fight. When he works out how to drain the Torment's Soul Power into a Sunheart, temporarily disabling it, his true capabilities as a One-Man Army Magic Knight reemerge.
Live-Action TV
- Heroes: After Hiro failed to save Charlie, he had a Heroic BSoD and his powers started failing. He is convinced that the legendary sword of Takezo Kensei is the key to getting his powers to work again. The sword works as Hiro expected, but only because of the placebo effect.
- Kamen Rider Gavv: Shoma's uncle Dente creates the Gochipod, a special container that can house up to 100 Gochizo at once, allowing Shoma to access his Over (and eventually Master) form. However, he has to manually birth that many Gochizos after every use of the Gochipod to keep it topped up, meaning he has to re-unlock that Super Mode every time he wishes to use it.
- Journey to the West (1996): Season 2's arc against the Long Armed-Ape peaks with Sun Wukong losing a battle and, in exchange for his mentor Sanzhang and his fellow pilgrims' lives, eventually giving in to the Long Armed-Ape's demands — that he will be stripped of his powers and banished back to Mount Huaguo, while the Long Armed Ape takes over Sun Wukong's position among the pilgrims. It leads to the arc's second half, Wukong recovering from his Heroic RRoD and trying to regain his powers for a rematch.
- Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: Downplayed with Tommy's time as the Green Ranger. To prevent Rita from taking the Green Ranger powers, Tommy passes the Dragon Coin to Jason, allowing him to draw on its power with his own. However, when Goldar puts the Rangers in a Sadistic Choice, forcing them to surrender their Power Coins, Jason reveals he still has the Dragon Coin, leading to the Rangers recruiting Tommy and Zordon using his power to recharge Tommy's power. However, this instead grants him an Hour of Power which lasts until Season 2 where he finally loses his powers.
Podcasts
- Acquisitions Incorporated: In the spin-off series The "C" Team, two members of the Player Party, Rosie and K'thriss, are formerly level 10 adventurers who start over at Character Level 1. While K'thriss has actually been Depowered by his eldritch patron (for reasons that remain a mystery throughout the series), Rosie is, in fact, merely Obfuscating Stupidity and can switch to her level 10 alter ego, The Queenpin "Mother Night", and back as the situation requires (mostly whenever her player is invited to guest-star in the main, "A-Team" series).
Tabletop Games
- Mummy: The Curse: Unlike other Splats in the Chronicles of Darkness, who have to build up their core "power stat" with experience, Mummies awaken with their Sekhem score at the maximum and slowly lose it over time. When it hits zero, they fall into torpor until they're reawakened by their Cult's summons, an intruder in their tomb, or an astrological conjunction. Justified in that Sekhem is cosmic Life Energy that they can wield but not produce, being dead.
Video Games
- Assassin's Creed I: Altair is a fully-trained Assassin at the start of the game, but after a botched mission, his authorization to use most of the Assassins' weapons and tools is revoked, and he effectively has to work his way back up the ranks to re-earn both the items and the right to use them. This frames the Equipment-Based Progression of the game.
- BlazBlue: Central Fiction: Susano'o has eight Drive moves, seven of which start off sealed, and he has to use each one to unseal the next in succession. Once all eight moves are unsealed, the cycle repeats, this time using each Drive move to further power up the next in line.
- Hector of Castlevania: Curse of Darkness was one of two Devil Forgemasters serving under Dracula, whose powers were once said to even rival that of Death's. However, Dracula's callous nature against humanity caused Hector to abandon his post and renounce his powers, ultimately leading to Dracula's death. His fellow Forgemaster, Isaac, swore vengeance, and three years later lured Hector to an abandoned castle after he had Hector's wife burnt at the stake. While hunting for Isaac, Hector comes across an inert Innocent Devil and, in order to get his vengeance on Issac, deems it necessary to reawaken his Devil Forgery.
- In Destiny 2's original Red War campaign, the player Guardian had to relearn the powers that they had already had beforehand prior to the Red War through the Shards of the Traveler. This would re-unlock all of the (Light) subclasses except the already unlocked Sentinel, Dawnblade, and Arcstrider.
- Deus Ex:
- Deus Ex: Human Revolution: Because of the traumatic circumstances under which he was augmented as well as the sheer amount of augmentation, Adam Jensen's more advanced augs must be activated slowly using Praxis, using either XP or Praxis Kits. The Missing Link DLC has Jensen's augs be deactivated when he is captured and tortured by Belltower, and he spends a large part of the mission with only his most basic leg and arm augs before the more advanced ones can be reactivated.
- Deus Ex: Mankind Divided: After receiving A Taste of Power during the mission in Dubai, Jensen's augs are deactivated when he is caught in the Ruzicka Station bombing, needing him to reactivate them. On the plus side, he discovers several experimental augs, though these can be as dangerous to him as to his enemies.
- Dragon Ball FighterZ: Gohan (Adult) starts the fight in his Ultimate Gohan form, but is still not at his full power, and needs to reach it by using his Potential Unleashed super to level up. At level 7, he's one of the best characters in the game, but the player has to invest 7 bars of ki to get him there.
- The Elder Scrolls: In Morrowind and Oblivion, those born under the birthsign of the Atronach have the unique disability that they can't generate their own magicka. They can be great mages thanks to their high magicka capacity and ability to absorb magic, but they need an external power source in order to cast any spells.
- Final Fantasy:
- Rydia from Final Fantasy IV is a talented mage and summoner, but loses the ability to cast fire magic due to the trauma of watching her village being burned down early in the game. She eventually agrees to try casting a fire spell when the party's progress is impeded by a giant wall of ice that they need her to melt, after which she's able to use fire magic without any issues.
- Near the end of Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, Midgardsormr seals away the Warrior's access to the Blessing of Light to see if they're truly worthy of Hydaelyn's blessing or if they've only scraped by because of Her favor. Because of this, the Warrior of Light is Brought Down to Badass and isn't able to muster the aether to strike down Nabriales without Moenbryda's sacrifice. Over the course of Heavensward, their feats of heroism gradually loosen the seal on the Blessing, culminating in the base story's climax when it's fully unlocked while battling Lahabrea, letting the Warrior overpower him and Igeyorhm despite nearly dying to him at the Praetorium.
- Also in XIV, after Zenos comes back from his first death, the power of Shinryu remains a part of him, but he cannot transform into it at will. When he shows up as Shinryu at the finale of Endwalker, he states he devoured the Mothercrystal's remaining aether to "reclaim the form of the dragon".
- In The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night, after Spyro's defeat of Cynder at the end of the first game, he finds himself unable to use his elemental powers (they're referred to as being "dormant" within him), possibly due to the strain it had taken for him to use Aether breath in the fight. During the course of The Eternal Night, he reawakens his ability to use each element.
- Metroid: Other M: Unlike most games in the Metroid series, Samus doesn't start with a Bag of Spilling that makes her lose all her powers, forcing her to go on a scavenger hunt to get them back (which is not what this trope is about). What she does have is a restriction imposed by Adam, since she's on a rescue mission and he doesn't want her to inflict extreme collateral damage, thus most of her abilities are locked until he authorizes their use. Notably, in the original Japanese version, Samus traversing a lava area without her Varia Suit upgrade active is her own decision to prove a point to Adam how stupid some of the restrictions are.
- Monster Hunter Wilds: In your first combat encounter with the White Wraith, Guardian Arkveld, it has a severely limited moveset—pretty much exclusively physical attacks with the addition of creating Wylk crystal formations. In the rematch, while it starts off much more aggressive, it's still purely a brawler—until the fight advances to the third and final area, where it breaks into a large cocoon and completely devours the Guardian inside, gaining access to the true Arkveld's Dragon-element abilities from the surge of energy.
- Neptunia: The CPUs' power levels are tied to their "shares", i.e. the level of belief that their nation's citizens have in them. A recurring plot point is for one or more of the CPUs to have their shares almost wiped out by something or other, forcing them to find a way to regain the people's faith before they're strong enough to tackle the current threat. The third and fourth games, for example, both begin with Neptune being transported to an alternate dimension, which naturally resets her shares to zero because nobody in that new dimension knows who she is.
- In the first half of Portal 2, Chell and Wheatley dethrone GLaDOS, placing her consciousness in a potato battery while implanting Wheatley into her body. With Wheatley now in control, it quickly becomes clear that it was a very, very bad idea, forcing Chell and PotatOS to return things to how they once were and put GLaDOS back in control.
- Samurai Shodown: Yoshitora Tokugawa has seven swords, with a special move assigned to each one. He has to land a hit with his first six sword specials at least once each to unlock the seventh sword, Yūchoka, which is practically an instant win condition.
- Science Girls!: Exponential Explosion is an inversion. Multiple levels of the skill can be used, but using a higher level locks away the Mana-cheaper lower levels for that fight.
- Super Robot Wars T: This is a plot point in regards to the cast of Mobile Fighter G Gundam. The game acts as a sort of Post-Script Season for them, taking place some time after the defeat of the Devil Gundam. However, the Shuffle Alliance (Domon, Sai, Algo, George, and Chibodee) are all unable to access their powered-up "Hyper" modes when they're encountered. It's explained that after the Devil Gundam was destroyed, the fact that their victory had apparently done nothing to dispel the fugue of the Twilight Era disillusioned them enough that their minds were no longer able to access the state of calm needed to achieve them. Domon is further crippled by his relationship with Rain going through a rough spot, lampshaded by both friend and foe: it's kind of hard to come to terms with having relationship problems with your childhood sweetheart-turned-girlfriend after confessing your feelings for her live on-air to the entire Earth Sphere. Regaining their drive is a large part of their storyline throughout the game.
- Tales of the Abyss has this as a plot point with party member Jade Curtis. The first time he joins your party, he's level 45, while Luke and Tear (your other party members) are probably closer to level 5. After getting hit with a Fon Slot Seal, however, Jade's powers are weakened, referenced by his level dropping and being unable to use a wide variety of spells. It actually takes him a while to undo said seal, which just so happens to equal the amount of time the player takes to actually get him to that level.
- Tekken: After being betrayed by Heihachi at the end of Tekken 3, Jin unlearns the Mishima-ryu fighting style and replaces it with Kyokushin karate out of hatred for his bloodline. He reawakens it in his final battle with Kazuya in Tekken 8 to match his father blow-for-blow, then unleashes Kazama-style martial arts he learned from Jun but never used, and finally combines both of the former with his Kyokushin to overwhelm Kazuya.
- Valheim: A dead character wakes up naked, at minimum health, and with lowered skill levels. However, build pieces and food recipes they learned stay with them, so while they still have to find the materials, they can get back to their previous tier with relative ease even if starting from a brand-new world.
Web Animation
- Fools Gold: Into the Bellowing Wilds: Xanu is an artificial god whose power and consciousness was splintered over 2,000 years before the events of the series when his power crystal was broken. While he was able to use his powers to some degree through those who hosted his crystals, especially Sips, when he finally regains a body of his own he finds he has to relearn how to not only use his powers, but how to even move normally.
Webcomics
- El Goonish Shive: Happens from the 2021 "Balance" storyline onward. After magic's not-change, spells that used to be modified automatically to the caster's need, are now manual. This means that users have weaker "standard" versions of their more complex spells (like Elliott's Chearleadra spell or Nanase's Fox spell), but they can modify them by playing with their parameters. However, it takes effort and practice to learn which settings are best for a given goal.
- The Order of the Stick: Roy learns the Spellsplinter Maneuver but, due to the RPG Mechanics 'Verse, has to spend a Feat on it to be able to use it. ("It don't mean a thing if you ain't paid for that swing," his teacher says.) Four hundred strips later, he successfully uses it in combat, indicating he's leveled up and taken it as a feat.
- Our Little Adventure: When Maxo's patron god rejects him for misconduct, he retains his Class and Level as a Cleric in the RPG Mechanics 'Verse but loses access to all his supernatural powers. Rather than seek atonement, he just signs up with a different god, which brings everything back online with a few minor changes. Several other gods try to recruit him in the interim: apostate clerics are a hot commodity for that precise reason.
Web Videos
- Critical Role: Campaign Two: After warlock Fjord rejects his patron Uk'otoa and drops his pact weapon into lava, he loses his warlock abilities temporarily. Once he makes a new pact with the Wildmother as a paladin, he regains and retains his warlock abilities alongside new paladin abilities.
Western Animation
- Avatar: The Last Airbender: A lightning strike from Azula leaves a scar on Aang's back that blocks his seventh chakra, preventing him from accessing the Avatar State until Ozai slams Aang's back against a rock during the final battle.
- In Castlevania: Nocturne, Richter was able to freely wield magic as a child, but the trauma of watching his mother's murder sealed this ability, leaving him reliant on his skills with weapons. He only regains his ability to wield magic when he confronts and overcomes said trauma, unleashing his full potential and making him a much more formidable vampire hunter.
- Invincible (2021): In "Atom Eve", it's revealed that there are mental blocks that prevent Eve from using the full extent of her matter manipulation powers, which are unlocked through forms of mental trauma.
