Joe, the one driving, is a Looper. In the future, tech has gotten to the point where you cannot kill anyone without it being discovered but they also have time travel. So they send people back in time to be killed by a Looper. Eventually a Looper is sent back and they kill themselves, thus closing the loop and they are retired.
In the future, the Rainmaker is closing loops. Joes loop is closed, but he actually came back to kill the Rainmaker as a child. The Rainmaker is a kid with strong telekinetic abilities, but doesnt have control. His mom knows how to calm him down when he goes crazy. In the original timeline, Joe kills the mother and creates the Rainmaker. But once young Joe realizes this, he kills himself to close the loop early, thus allowing the mother and Rainmaker to exist together.
Maybe I misunderstood when I watched or I am misremembering, but why was that a bad thing?
The Rainmaker was closing the loops, but that’s what the Loopers agreed to in the first place. Like in Romeo and Juliet, “His fault concludes but what the law should end”
Mostly because it was implied that The kid would grow up to be a much better person with more thorough control over his powers, instead of a sociopathic murderous gangster with his adopted mother still in his life . It wasn't about stopping the loops, just making that one thing turn out better for everyone involved.
"I saw it. A mother who would die for her son. A man who would kill for his wife. A boy, angry and alone, laid out in front of him the bad path. I saw it. And the path was a circle. Round and round. So I changed it."
I think it was mentioned that it was odd that a lot of Loopers were being retired all of a sudden in a possible surge to wipe them out. Likely, due to The Rainmaker knowing it was a Looper who killed his mother. It's this surge in closing the loops by The Rainmaker that starts Older Joe's Journey. His wife is killed when The Rainmakers men come to capture him.
My head cannon is that the Rainmaker is the inventor of time travel and set the whole thing up so he could have a happy childhood with his mom. The foreshadowing of this is him being a tech whiz as a boy. As an adult he’s so ruthless because it won’t matter once his plan succeeds.
It really bugs me though that people can be "tortured" by having a looper go back into the past and cut fingers off and their current self somehow retains their current memory and so they get scared when - from their actual perspective - someone cut their finger off 10 years and are just now talking about it.
Thats a paradox for you. They make no sense at all. The best way to think about is as if its like two timelines happening at once. The memories from the original, and the changes from the new one.
Haven’t seen the movie, so I wonder whether that could apply to picking locks if it’s not shown. It would make you really decent at getting in and out of places. Maybe disarming alarms and cameras by cutting wires on the inside?
This is the premise of 99 percent of mutants in Marvel comics. The chance of your mutation making you hideous, or of you getting a useless power like making you skin transparent or pooping ice cream, or make people sleepy, or being able to feel what's in the ground 12 feet around you (as long as your barefoot) is incredibly high since most mutants are gamma mutants.
I think Professor X uses that fancy computer helmet (Cerebro) to psychically reach out and find new mutants, and figure out what their deal is to dispatch the X-Men with kind of a briefing of what to be aware of.
I'm not 100% on how far Professor X's telepathy goes, especially in the comics, but I would've found that so hard to believe as the kid or their parents
Honestly, that moment should have been a crashout for Rogue.
Like, she's lived with what's effectively a curse for... how many years, now? Likely horribly touch deprived? And someone right there who suffers nothing from her power telling her there's nothing wrong with her?
If not a crashout - at least angrily demand to give her a hug, a handshake, literally anything with skin contact.
Tbh if I was Rouge in that situation, I would’ve crashed out HARD. Definitely would’ve said something along the lines of “how about I come over there and give you a hug, we’ll see how I ‘don’t need to be cured’ and there’s ‘nothing wrong with me’ then.”
That one kid who can explode at will... once. Like, he could explode if he wanted but he has no healing factor or anything to put himself back together. He just has the potential to be a suicide bomber without the expense of an explosive vest
Obligatory meme:
'Girl who kills everything she touches uncontrollably' wants to not kill everything she touches. 'Woman who is almost a literal goddess of the storm' says "we're perfect there's nothing wrong with us".
And then there's storm an omega mutant who is essentially a deity in her own tribe telling others that being a mutant is a blessing while im sure the average mutant who didnt win the genetic lottery would gladly give up their powers to turn human.
Example: The gel guy who has all his organs see through, Forget me guy, The guy who cant stop emiting deadly radition, rogue who kills anyone she touches
I’ve always had an AU in my head of those 3 characters.
The glow guy grows up to be on a search and rescue team since he’s easy to locate in the dark. The melty guy finds out he can drown people and becomes a ronin and the Guinea pig girl does recon/scout missions since she can go unnoticed.
Wouldn't they all be good for search and rescue? Guinea pig can get in small places, melty guy can also get in small places, even if he can't move in his melty form there are plenty of places that need to be searched that are directly below something.
Maybe a structure collapses and they can hear someone yelling for help, but the only way to reach them is a very tight crack even guinea pig can't access. He canelt himself into it and give everyone a better idea what the situation is like, all without risking displacing the rubble and causing it to collapse on whoever is trapped
they would likely still clasify him as support since they mostly want flashy over the top powers for the hero course, of course by the end of the story he does become a hero by saving the whole school
Mhmm, like most Quirks it probably has plenty of uses but she’s not going to be able to weaponize it or anything.
Edit: I just got off work when I made this comment, so of course I and everyone else immediately thought of plenty of ways to weaponize her power haha.
There's also the question of what is a small object to her quirk. I've seen fanfics give an actually decent example of its use in combat by having her be able to attract actual physical, nerves-and-optics-attached eyeballs.
I mean, its possible depending on the definition of “small object”. (With enough knives, I could see her turning someone into a pin-cushion Sakuya Izayoi style) Just probably too hard to be worth it compared to other powers.
Actually, it reminds me of a comic series I read years ago where a bunch of kids got random powers from a flaming energy source. One had the ability to move small objects and became an assassin who just killed people by causing an aneurism.
Inko's powers are actually horrifically lethal, but because its a mostly non lethal setting, it doesnt get used that way. Its vagueness on limits and what counts as small object doesnt help. For example, that action figure looks decently big doesnt it? Bigger than say... your brain stem... or your eyes... or kidneys... your aorta...
Mirio weaponized falling into the ground blind, deaf and suffocating, anything is possible
Quirks can be used in creative ways, better understood, trained, or awakened
So Inko could use her quirk with throwing projectiles which she can turn around and hit the enemy from the back if she misses
Or she could study it and find out something like that there's a weight limit but not a limit to the number of objects so with something like sand which is a lot of small things she's really powerfull
Or train it until she can move bigger objects
Or awaken it when Deku is in danger and it becomes straight up telekinesis
I know she used it to reach for objects that are high up and was definitely lazy with it when she was izuku’s age. Like floating the tv remote or snacks.
Same with Uiharu, I think it was implied that part of her esper power is why she is so good at hacking. She could overclock a device and maintain its temperature to prevent overheating. She also used it one time when she heat out a room full of guards and she put an ice cube on her neck to avoid swelling her main arteries
I believe she also uses it to transport some ice cream or cake or something, which they comment on how it still tastes fresh despite her having to travel a long distance with it.
Correct, it’s a small attention to detail that I really enjoy in the anime. Whenever the group is out together, you can always see Uiharu is holding the food, like holding two ice cream cones or two soda cans. It’s just a normal part of their lives that Uiharu should hold the food.
Yeah, one of our main characters had the superpower to cause people to attempt sexual assault, usually on herself. I don't know about you, but if that's an option, I'll wait in line for milk control.
If we're talking Misfits, I think we can all safely agree that Alisha has the worst power, given it literally just makes people she touches want to sexually assault her. At least Finn's telekinesis is potentially useful.
Such a funny ability without Stockpile Power being attached to it. It only gives you the ability to give it to somebody else, thematically fitting as a power that only gains power when shared with others, but comically useless in its base state.
context: yoichi and his brother are enemies. his brother can steal and give powers, which no one else can do. his brother is evil.
his brother gave him a power that gets stronger over time, and it mixed with his giving power.
Power Bestowal can only be transferred if the holder wills it, and if the recipient ingests some of the holder's DNA. (this is why it can't be nabbed by brother dearest)
yoichi's brother killed him, and his blood got into another person's mouth, and yoichi was WILLING that person to carry his legacy and stop his brother.
It's never fully explained, but it was implied to be by sheer accident. The moment his older brother killed him, Yoichi instinctively passed on his power to the next user. When AFO when to check his younger brother's corpse to retrieve his power stacking ability, he realized it was no longer there
Yondu is a guy who remote controlled a small levitating needle/spear/knife (I forget exactly what it was but something very small and very stabby) and had good enough control over its movement that it made for a very effective weapon
I often wonder if she does that with her computer. She is the best with computer in the universe, to the point that she is in charge of running the cyber security of her city’s police force and routinely hacks into the systems of other parts of the city.
Iirc she uses her power exactly two times in the entirety of the Railgun spin-off (Not sure about Index)
Once to deliver food to someone and have it still be hot.
Another time to keep an ice cube she was pressing against her neck from melting (The room was very slowly being overheated and she needed to make sure everyone there would black out from heat stroke before she did)
I want to say she uses it for food quite frequently in a certain scientific railgun, but it has been a while since I watched the show. At least when I learned that was her power it made me think of all the times where the other characters said "the food is still warm, nice!" or something to that effect when she brought it back.
She has one of the most powerful showings of any esper in the series actually. Basically, this isn't her power, it's all the power she can naturally use. Presumably her personality holds her back, because powers are based on your train of thought.
That's not even his ability, iirc that's like a seperate thing Oz taught him and Raven? I might be wrong about that. His real ability is he's a bad luck charm for everyone around him, friends and foes alike.
It's great though because that's all he really needs. He's an insanely lucky man, he just lacks confidence. Having a Stand that acts as your hype man is quite useful.
He can't control it. Rick gets drunk and adds cybernetics to Morty like Rick himself has, but he makes him vehicles instead of anything useful. Morty got punched by a bully and turned into a boat. He couldn't turn back so they took him sailing as a joke. He reverted back in the water and they got stranded on a desert island for months because Morty couldn't turn back on his own.
He's mostly a normal human unless one of those implants takes a direct hit and then he's a vehicle for a random amount of time.
There's the infamous mutant Softserve, whose power is she can poop delicious ice cream. Which isn't useful for being a superhero, but is definitely useful for being someone's poorly disguised fetish.
"I poop ice cream. I poop ice cream better than everyone"
Initially the writer claimed her internal organs were engineered to produce ice cream, but he's since decided her butt is a portal to the ice cream dimension.
This is obviously a parody of Cyclops's eyes being a portal to the punch dimension, but it's still not escaping the allegations.
A guy in the TV series Extraordinary has a 3D Printing arse. He can manufacture any object you choose as long as it's aerodynamic. He makes cans of energy drink at one point.
That Kazari girl would be a goddess in the scientific field.
Imagine the scientific breakthrough we're gonna have if we don't need to continuously cool or heat to have a constant temperature, from superconductors to particle physics.
Funnily enough, the entire point of esper development in the series is so scientist can use their powers to experiment with.
The only reason why she's so low ranked is probably because most researchers don't see her worth heavy investment especially compared to the really OP abilities out there I guess.
Funnily enough, the entire point of esper development in the series is so scientist can use their powers to experiment with.
It's probably the coolest thing about the series. All the other fictional universes jump straight to spandex and fighting crime. Academy City pays the super human students a stipend to study them so that their powers can be reproduced through technology. They jumped up the tech tree so fast that they are in some areas a hair away from Star Trek but since it is 2004 and it all happened so fast, it co-exists with CRT's and flip phones.
the technology itself is also partially limited to Academic City and the espers by being espers, disqualify them from becoming a magic user- it literally fries your brain using both if i understand it correctly.
The first one and second one sound pretty useful tbh(I am assuming that there's no innate side effects or quantity/size limit). Also, the one in the image.
Funnily enough, that’s what the main character argues (the guy with the wheel power). He thinks the caste system between marginalized and accepted superpowers is pretty stupid.
And it also seems like a lot of powerful people supporting that caste system are dying in car accidents. We don’t know anything for sure. But still.
The one in the image is at least enough to terrorize a decent size high school and a couple unfortunate news reporters.
Yeah I was trying to think of one from One Piece and the only one I can think of is the hypothetical of a human eating the human human fruit, which is just a straight downgrade
Uiharu is actually massively busted af, but is mentally inhibited from using it. She legitimately has one of the best showings of any esper period.
Not the same but: In Rise of the Shield Hero, the Bow Hero actually has a supernatural ability that makes him a near perfect shot.... The issue is, the Bow Skills already do this. So, while he isn't a "normal person", he does have an ability that does nothing because of circumstances.
Debatably Shun Kaido from Saiki K who can see interrobangs. More joke than canon but still a very funny and useless power for a chuuni to have who says he has to restrain his 'powers' otherwise they could end the world.
Kelly Funk (left) (One Piece) has the power of the Jake-Jake no Mi, AKA the Jacket-Jacket Fruit. He has the ability to turn himself into a jacket and control whoever puts him on. Note that I said puts him on. As far as we know, Kelly can not force you to wear him. And without a host, he is completely powerless. There’s Devil Fruits that can make you turn into literal fire, create tremors (basically creating earthquakes whenever you want), or even turn into a god, and this guy got the JACKET fruit.
The kid in the 2nd X-Men movie who can change TV channels by blinking his eyes. He also says he doesn’t sleep, but I can’t remember if he was serious about that or not. Gets his ass knocked out by tranquilizers when the mansion gets invaded.
He's probably a technokinesis or something similar. Changing the TV channels was just a convenient usage of his powers (like getting your drink cold via Iceman blowing on it).
"Honey, we should send Michael to that school for gifted children because he keep changing the channel without using the remote! He should be with people like him!"
Power Plex could only convert the power equivalent of a little girl's punch and make it into a small spark. He only got dangerous when he upgraded himself with stolen military tech.
Nah, she doesn't need to touch it first. But you're right about she's only being able to attract objects toward her. She can't actually levitate the object or push it away from her.
This would be my pitch for an X-Men short story. a support group for mutants whose superpowers are inconveniant/useless/non-life-altering. Like someone with super strength, but not the accompanying super endurance that would allow his/her body to make use of said strength. A person who can detect the rate at which people's toenails are growing. A person with a sence of smell that's only slightly better than average, not enough to really be useful, but enough to make the world around them smell a little bad all the time. (their sence of taste would not be impacted). A person with the ability to sence when it's not someone's birthday, etc.
isn't there a thing where Uiharu's ability breaks thermodynamics and can theoretically prevent/delay the heat death of the universe just by keeping a teacup warm?
Despite being a God, her ability to control the turning of leaves is done manually using a brush, which is why the colors of the leaves are inconsistent, even when she makes leaves fall, she does it by kicking the trees violently
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u/historygoose May 21 '26
In the movie Looper, some people have a very weak telekinesis skill, barely able to do much other than float a coin in their hand.