Attack Its Weak Point - TV Tropes

"Oh gee, I wonder where I should shoot 'im. I mean, this could take all of my accumulated gamer skills over the years, oh geez, could it be, ah, the giant glowing blue fuck-me light on his forehead!?"

• An essential part of chess strategy is identifying and attacking weaknesses in your opponent's position. Said weaknesses can take many forms (weak squares, weak pawns, exposed king, overloaded pieces, etc.) Of course there are times when the opponent's position doesn't have any weaknesses, in which case you first have to create some.

• Popeye, whenever he had to fight Brutus, noted that all he really had to do was hit him in his "glass jaw" and instantly knock him out. He also once lamented that it's ruined many a good fight between the two.
• One The Far Side comic has two bow-wielding caveman studying an enormous mammoth lying dead with its feet in the air and the shaft of a single small arrow poking out of a random spot on its anatomy. One of them comments "We should write that spot down."

• Justified in Appleseed Alpha. The Land Battleship is a prototype that wasn't completed because the war ended, so there's a missing section of armour that Deunan Knute uses to get inside it.
• Beowulf (2007)
  • Beowulf kills the sea serpents by stabbing them in their large eye.
  • Beowulf's men attempt to hack Grendel's head off or stab him in the balls, but Grendel has a hard head and no testicles. Then when Beowulf realises that loud noises hurt Grendel's large exposed ear drum, he starts bellowing as loudly as he can and smashes it bloody with his fist to take most of the fight out of Grendel.
  • Averted with Grendel's mother—Beowulf is warned to keep her on land, away from the water from which she draws her power, but he gets Distracted by the Sexy.
  • Finally, he reaches through a chink in the dragon's armor and pulls out its heart. Now that is badass. He knows this because of a speech from Hrothgar about dragon-slaying.
• Princess Mononoke: Near the start of the film, Ashitaka slays a demon-god by shooting arrows into its glowing eyes.

• Dragons almost always have a weak spot on their neck or chest; this goes back at least as far as Fafnir. In turn, bathing in Fafnir's blood rendered Sigurd/Siegfried invulnerable. Apart from a spot on his shoulder where a leaf had stuck to him. Woe to The Dragonslayer who attempts this tactic on an Eastern dragon, however — touching the "reversed scale" on their neck drives one into an Unstoppable Rage, usually making it harder to kill.
• The Greek hero Achilles was invulnerable everywhere but his heel (where his mom Thetis had been holding him while dunking him in the River Styx).
• Celtic Mythology: Once The Fianna were battling an arracht with skin so tough that was impervious to even their magical weapons. Using his Thumb of Knowledge, their leader Fionn Mac Cumhaill learns that the creature's invulnerability came with a major drawback: there was a weak spot behind its ear so sensitive that a single blow would kill it. Armed with this knowledge, Fionn climbed onto the monster's shoulder and drove his dagger The Blade of Victory into the weakspot which, sure enough, slew the arracht.
• There is actually a whole class of legendary heroes who achieved invulnerability by almost but not quite total immersion or exposure to something except for one small spot. Achilles had his heels and Siegfried had his shoulder. The Persian Esfandyar had his eyes closed while bathing in a pool of invulnerability and the Indian Duryodhana, after bathing in the Ganges, protected his groin from his mother's gaze, which was the very thing that gave him invulnerability. You can probably guess how well that worked out for any of them.

• In Metroid Prime Pinball, the fastest way to defeat the Omega Pirate is to activate Missile mode, fire directly at its shoulders and kneecaps, and then strike it directly with the ball as it attempts to recover in the nearby Phazon.
• The AMP Suit in Avatar is vulnerable on a single target between its legs.
• In The Pinball of the Dead, all of the Bosses are only vulnerable in a single spot.
• Stranger Things: The Demogorgon's mouth is its weakness. It's difficult to get the ball inside it, but doing so is generally more valuable than shooting it normally.

• Destroy the Godmodder: When Hostiles were first created in the second game, their immense power was supposed to be balanced out that they would all have a weak point, which when discovered, could be used to take them down with relative ease. However, this mechanic was eventually dropped as the game progressed.

• The Dark Eye: All dragons have some spot on their bodies where their armor is thinner and more easily breached. These vary between different species and between individuals of the same species, but they're typically at the base of the neck, on the underbelly, or at the base of their wings.
• Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition Deities and Demigods Cyclopedia. In the Melnibonean Mythos section, the demon lord Pyaray can't lose his last ten Hit Points (and be killed) until the diamond-hard pulsing blue gem in his head is crushed.
• It's the only way to beat armoured opponents and bigger monsters in The Witcher: Game of Imagination. Dragons are extremely hard to take down, since the only body parts that can be effectively attacked are their eyes and the insides of their mouths. The skill Knowledge: Monsters is dedicated to figuring out the weak points of the monsters your character is facing.
• Earthdawn supplement Earthdawn Companion. The Show Armor Flaw talent causes flaws in a target's armor to glow so that opponents can attack the weak spot(s) with a better chance of inflicting an Armor-Defeating hit.
• Gamma World adventure GW1 The Legion of Gold. There's an amoeboid monster almost a kilometer wide in a lake. Its body can withstand 1,000 Hit Points of damage, but its nucleus can only take 50 Hit Points before it is killed. The catch: the nucleus is in the center of the lake under 150 meters of water.
• Hero System has the Find Weakness talent. Taking a phase to use this ability will allow the user to reduce the protection level of a target by half. If you continue to take more time sussing out the weak spot, the target's protection will keep halving for as long as you take time watching the weak spot.
• Middle-Earth Role Playing: Dragons are normally covered in impenetrable armor, which leaves only three parts of their bodies vulnerable to damage— their eyes and a single spot where scales do not develop, referred to as their birth spot and believed to be a punishment from Eru.
• New World of Darkness:
  • Beast: The Primordial: This is one of the Anathemas that a Hero may place on one of the titular Beasts. If successfully placed, this Anathema forces the Beast to manifest a vulnerable spot which cannot be protected by any armor the Beast may possess and which amplifies the damage from any attack that hits it.
  • Princess: The Hopeful: Defied. While the Barrier Jacket Charm may be signaled by the Princess wearing visible armor while Transformed, the Charm actually works by making the Princess's Transformed body and Regalia iron-hard, with no weak points.
• This is essentially Parse's power in Sentinels of the Multiverse. She's not very strong, but she can see the weak points and flaws in people snd objects and defeat them by attacking those. Notably, seeing an enemy that has no weak points causes her to have a quite literal Heroic BSoD.

• The "Tank Ride" at Action Park had tanks with giant targets on their backside.
• In Men in Black: Alien Attack at Universal Studios, the vehicles have a "fusion exhaust port" that you're supposed to hit when it's revealed that the vehicle next to you is actually filled with aliens disguised as humans.

• DEATH BATTLE!:
  • Luke Skywalker invokes this by exploiting Harry Potter's scar as a shatterpoint.
  • While Link's known for doing this, it's absent in his battle with Cloud, though it's understandable. Z-targeting still makes an appearance and Link uses it to block Cloud's Omnislash.
  • This actually works against Wonder Woman during her battle with Rogue. Wonder Woman's combat training taught her to strike the weak points of the human body, including the face, the only part of Rogue uncovered. This in turn allowed Rogue to absorb some of Wonder Woman's power and temporarily stun her, giving Rogue an opportunity to absorb even more of Wonder Woman's abilities and give Rogue enough power to defeat her.
  • Tommy and Saba try this in their fight against Gundam Epyon only to find out that it doesn't work on Power Rangers logic and giant green circle on it's chest is just a decoration.
  • In "Sauron vs. The Lich King", both combatants had an artifact of power (the One Ring and Frostmourne respectively) that, if destroyed, would weaken them to the point of defeat. This plays a factor in Sauron's victory, as the One Ring is a much more subtle target on his hand compared to Frostmourne which Arthas uses as a weapon.
• DSBT InsaniT:
  • In 'Untamed and Uncut', Monster Andy attempts to go after Tyrannomon's exposed underbelly while Monster Bill and Monster Martha restrain it, but Tyrannomon manages to grab him.
  • Cell's weakpoint is his brain-like nucleus.
• RWBY: Even after taking out its shields, the thick armor of the Colossus makes it difficult for Ruby and the others to actually damage it. Oscar notices that the missile launcher and the rotating Dust cylinder share the same chamber, suggesting that a sniper shot would be able to blow up the arm cannon. When Cordovin spots what Ruby is trying to do, she protects the missile launcher by closing it back inside the arm cannon. Ruby unexpectedly decides to charge inside the cannon itself, and Jaune immediately figures out what she's doing: because of what Oscar said, the missiles and Dust will be stored together inside the arm cannon, making them extremely vulnerable to a well-placed shot — but only if the shot is taken from inside the cannon itself. This time, the plan works and the arm cannon is rendered inoperable; the extra weight caused by the damage it sustains makes it impossible for Cordovin to move the robot without first severing the entire arm.

• 8-Bit Theater:
  • Fighter gives us a basic rundown of this trope:

    Fighter: Oh, well weaknesses are bad. Except on bosses where you have to shoot at the core 'cause the rest of it is pure invincibility. It makes you wonder why they built a core at all, gave it no protection, and then put it where it would be exposed to intergalactic gunfire.

  • The trope is used more directly in an early comic, where attacking a monster with its weakness of fire causes it to explode spectacularly.
• Magical Mina flips the buglike Armor living spell over on its back and stabs it several times in various joints on its underbelly to get it to yield and gain its powers. Perhaps a reference to Genji: Days Of The Blade, though she was only supposed to flip it over to win.
• El Goonish Shive: The Goo's weak point is its demon nuclei which is the size of a marble. Everything else is merely a shell for the nuclei and thus replaceable.
• Gunnerkrigg Court: The S model robots are shown to have red on/off buttons on their heads, making them not much of a threat.
• Heartcore: The demons have two weakpoints: their brain, and their Heartcore. The destruction of either or removal of the latter are the only ways to kill a demon.
• Just a Goblin: The Forest Guardian's turtle-like shell makes it difficult to make a frontal attack, but Nog's size allows him to slide under it and slice its softer underbelly. After Gubble stuns it with a punch, Nog is then able to stab it in the neck to kill it.
• MS Paint Masterpieces hilariously referenced it. While the comic usually has Mega Man finishing off the Robot Masters with their weaknesses, at one point a heavily damaged Mega Man, riding in a stolen walker is confronted by Quick Man. After a little taunting from the latter, Mega Man makes the walker kick Quick Man in the crotch, while he mutters to himself, "I hope...that was...his weakness..."
• Willa stabs the Titan in its weak spot in Latchkey Kingdom, causing a huge spurt of black blood. Unfortunately, the Titan is just so huge and tough that it can shrug it off, then it flicks Willa into the distance.
• Penny Arcade:
• The DEMONHEAD MOBSTER KINGPIN from Problem Sleuth, after suffering the heroes' devastating Triple Truffle Shuffle Scuffle Comb Rave Attack: "DMK's NETHER-REGIONAL VULNERABULB blooms, briefly exposing his WEAK SPOT." And in a later panel: "The CRATE comes back down and clocks the WEAK SPOT for massive damage."
• Ebbirnoth of Schlock Mercenary has a degree in "xenokillology", a course of study he put together to better be able to kill things. Turns out to mostly be A Degree in Useless: the main weak point of almost everything is "being shot a lot".
• Sluggy Freelance:
  • Discussed at length when Torg and Sasha face a giant monster. Sasha recommends using their one bazooka shot to hit it in the eye. Torg has different ideas...

    Torg: The big eye is too obvious a weak spot! You'll be wasting our one shot! You've got to look for a more difficult target!... Ah-ha! There's markings on one of its teeth that resembles a bull's-eye!
    Sasha: You want me to shoot it in the tooth?!?

  • Aylee's giant crab form is only vulnerable on her "gummi worm neck," which she's fully capable of retracting to within her Nigh-Invulnerable shell.
  • Similarly, Chaz states that demon lords like Horribus can only be killed by decapitation or by plunging a magical weapon into their "soul" (which is apparently located somewhere in the middle of their chests).
• Tapiseri Soujourn: Soujourn realizes that Daedalus' weak point is the vents on the sides of his head, and targets them in her attack.
• Tuesday Titans: During her battle with the Autocarrier, Excel manages to punch her way through the machine's armor, leaving its innards exposed. A quick call by Simon to some friendly artillery and one rocket-powered tackle by Excel later, the Autocarrier is scrap metal.
• In Yokoka's Quest, Kalliv suggests that Mao shoots a fireball inside the king centipede's mouth, as its insides would be more vulnerable. Mao's method of doing this is to goad it into biting him using Kalliv as bait, and then cast a fireball inside it.

• Tanks in The Solstice War are treated like they would have been in World War 2: shoot the sides or the back if you can, because the strongest armor is on the face. However, larger guns have better penetration, and characters rightly fear a gun of 100 millimeters bore or larger for its ability to destroy tanks outright.

• Used as a joke in Vaguely Recalling JoJo. Geb hits Magician's Red's weak spot and Avdol gets severely damaged.