[The Lone Ranger]

Well, there is that.

On the flip side, writers often ignore a character's well-established abilities, just to make the situation seem more threatening. Like the character in question would somehow forget that (s)he can easily deal with this sort of situation.


In the Marvel Universe, Thor is probably the biggest victim of this. Thor has been shown to be so powerful that he can literally shatter a moon with one blow of Mjolnir; he has been shown to be capable of absorbing virtually limitless amounts of energy projected at him (including absorbing all the force of nuclear explosions without breaking a sweat); he has been shown to be so tough that he can stand at ground zero of a nuclear blast and not even get his hair mussed. And as the God of Thunder, he has been depicted as having complete control over the electromagnetic force, one of the four fundamental forces of nature. (In an encounter with Magneto, Magneto bragged that he was one of the most powerful beings in existence, and could beat even a god. Thor calmly pointed out that as the God of Thunder -- and lightning -- he didn't manipulate electromagnetic fields, he controlled them. And so he simply shut down Magneto's abilities.)

In short, when the writers remember his established abilities, Thor should only be challenged by Cosmic-level entities. But for some reason, mere Earthly villains sometimes give him a real run for the money. The writers sometimes hand-wave this by having Thor claim that he only ever uses a small fraction of his true power when on Earth, because if he ever used his full power, he could literally devastate the Earth. Still, it seems like a real cop-out.


Probably the biggest DC Universe victim of this is the Flash. Honestly, given his established abilities, if he were written at all "realistically," not even Superman would stand a snowball's chance in Hell against him. Indeed, it was actually a plot point in a couple of Justice League episodes that if Flash ever came close to using his abilities to their full potential, he'd be essentially unstoppable.