I Am Not Left-Handed - TV Tropes

Inigo: I admit it: you are better than I am!
Man in Black: Then why are you smiling?
Inigo: Because I know something you don't know.
Man in Black: And what is that?
Inigo: I am not left-handed! [switches the sword to his right hand and starts driving him back]

• In this◊ Brevity comic, a smirking chess player reveals mid-match that "I'm actually right-brained."
• In one Garfield strip, Garfield harasses a leashed dog.

• In Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, both Scrat and Scratte fall off a cliff, and Scrat heroically dives after her in a rescue attempt... only to reveal that this was in fact a trick, as she is actually a flying squirrel who then steals his acorn and glides to safety while Scrat falls.
• A darker version occurs in Justice League vs. Teen Titans. Damian Wayne and Blue Beetle get into a fight and Damian asks who's fighting, him or the Scarab. Beetle replies that he hopes it's him. This wasn't a boast, though — it's a warning as he's restraining the Scarab from taking any kill-shots. Indeed, the moment control was lost, the Scarab takes over and flash-fries part of Damian's face.

• Yureka: In the first chapter, it looks like Team Triple Threat is pretty evenly matched with the monsters they encounter in their Dungeon Crawling. Then they get impatient, and reveal that they were fighting the whole time with their secondary classes, much to their companions' shock. A Curb-Stomp Battle ensues, causing them to lament that they'll never get anywhere if they can't refrain from using their main classes.

• In Embers in the Dusk, the Gods of Chaos launch a massive attack on Avernus, a surviving lab world of the Old Ones, upon learning that Isha is reviving a Slann there, meaning the planet will soon be able to remove the ancient restrictions placed upon it sixty million years ago. However, it turns out all these years, the planet was letting everyone think these restrictions were considerably more strict than the actual case...

• The Dresden Files Tabletop RPG allows players to leave their character's skill proficiencies blank at first and fill them in as the game progresses. They can even roll a skill at a baseline level and later declare that they have proficiency in it, since they might have in-character reasons to hide their strengths.

• Gilgamesh of Fate/stay night is easily capable of defeating any of the Servants simply by raining an endless number of Noble Phantasms down on them. However, he does not subscribe to overkill theory; even though he uses overwhelming force in battle, he could easily use even more, but chooses not to. Most notable is his refusal to bring out Ea, a sword capable of destroying worlds, unless very impressed or in significant danger. Even then he never uses more than a small fraction of Ea's true power, since destroying the planet he's standing on would be a very stupid thing to do.
• In Sharin no Kuni when Kenichi fights Houzuki, he finds out that Houzuki's leg is actually completely fine, and promptly loses the fight as a result.
• Eleonore von Wittenburg, one of Reinhards three commanders, from Dies Irae almost never fights to her fullest extent. Due to her pride she views it as a waste to use anything more than her most basic attacks against an opponent that she doesn't view worthy or that hasn't angered her enough for things such as honor to no longer matter. When Beatrice fights Eleonore in Kei's route, she makes the assumption that she knows of everything that Eleonore can do and that she is unable to use her full strength in the current situation. Eleonore immediately shuts her down by revealing that she had never seen her full might, but that now she is irritated enough with Beatrice that she will actually unleash it. Muspellsheim Lævateinn. An endless, hellish inferno that offers no hope of escape.

• RWBY: Vernal is the Spring Maiden, one of the most powerful entities in the world, capable of summoning incredible Elemental Powers that no one but another Maiden can hope to match. Before her fight with Weiss, her boss Raven tells her not to bother using her powers; Weiss isn't worth it. Vernal wins, but it later turns out this was a Red Herring. Vernal is just a decoy, and Raven the real Spring Maiden; Raven made sure to give that order where everyone could hear it so that they wouldn't question why Vernal wasn't using her powers.
• In DEATH BATTLE!, since these fights are duels to the death, character limitations such as Thou Shalt Not Kill and Willfully Weak are thrown out the window to determine who would win. By doing this, one character's potential could easily skyrocket to surpass their opponents.
• In Pokémon Gold (Fanmade), Whitney's Miltank defeats Gold's team seven consecutive times while using just two of its four moves, Rollout and Stomp. When Gold comes back for an eighth attempt with some new tactics and new Pokémon, Miltank reveals its third move, Attract, which leaves his all-male team too enamored of Miltank to fight back as it flattens them all once again. Then, when Gold comes back with a full, mix-gendered team built specifically for taking Miltank down, Miltank reveals that it can heal itself with Milk Drink. This only prolongs the battle, however, and Gold finally emerges victorious.

• Darths & Droids pays tribute to the Trope Namer when Pete manages to have Rey escape the convoluted grappling rules the DM inflicted on her... by insisting that Rey is actually left-handed. Truth in Television as Daisy Ridley is left-handed in real life.
• In Dragon Mango, the elf Eclair wears a heavy iron armor breastplate. Iron usually causes them massive pain; Eclair turns out to be wearing it purely for the weight and pain handicaps.
• In El Goonish Shive, when Elliot fights Tara, the best he can do is to keep one step ahead of her so she can't land a killing blow. Later, when it's revealed that an Immortal has been manipulating her all along, she tells it take a hike by showing off a bit of her true power. At that moment Elliot realized she was holding back a lot during their fight.
• Experimental Comic Kotone: Another inverted example with Konstantin, who is left-handed and holds back by using their right.
• Nyarai from Furry Fight Chronicles fights the first half of the Masato Match using traditional wrestling with her own personal spin. However, she's actually a Kick Chick who's a lot stronger when she pulverizes her opponents with her legs.
• In Girl Genius pulled by Tarvek. First Violetta notices that he indeed was paying attention at the martial arts training. Later...

  Tarvek: I'm sorry, Violetta — as my days of needing the family to underestimate me appears to be over — I will no longer require your assistance in this particular charade.

• The God of High School: Jin Mo-Ri's power level is estimated at level six when he first enters the tournament. That is, until he actually uses his legs to attack, which more than doubles his power level to 13. Furthermore, the judges revealed to be holding back by not using their special abilities.
• Gunnerkrigg Court has a training example, in sparring between Parley (who is a good fencer) and S13. They dance a little, then Parley tells to stop holding back... to a robot going extreme parkour merely to move around quickly. She also chose a much heavier blade. The next round ends before it starts and even when she's ready it doesn't take long. Of course, then Parley uses her talents fully, and she isn't constrained by the sword's inertia much when blinking around.
• In Juathuur, Rowasu considers his sword a handicap. Notice that two opponents tried to disarm him. More specifically, once the sword is no longer in his hand, the hand itself becomes a weapon.
• Invoked in Leif & Thorn when a trainee beats Thorn in a sword fight, and an instructor uses this to deflate his ego. As Thorn says later, though, ever since his dominant arm was severely injured, he actually fights better with the sword in his non-dominant hand.
• In No Rest for the Wicked, Ricardo tells the princess it would have been over much more quickly if he had use of his right hand -- though, unusually, he doesn't show it, because his right arm's in a sling.
• One-Punch Man: Saitama takes this trope leaps and bounds beyond most. Most of the time, every threat he finds, he can trounce without putting an ounce of effort. And then the really powerful villains show up, start thrashing the entire league of superheroes, and he decides he'll get slightly serious about it. And that is when the near-apocalyptic punches start coming out. Woe betide anyone he actually has to punch twice.
• This female frost giant in The Order of the Stick stops holding back once her male companion is dead.
• In Aster and Phoebe's spar in Chapter 2 of Star Impact, Puck devises a Crazy Enough to Work strategy for the former for the third and final round: she'll only punch with her right arm. This takes advantage of the fact that Phoebe tends to commit to combinations, so this gives a setup for Aster to eventually hammer her with her left when she least expects it, heavily staggering her right before the closing bell.
• In Tower of God, during the Workshop Battle, Rak goes around being shrunk to a small size until he meets someone in need of real beating up and returns to his normal three metres. (Only then is it even explained how he got shrunk again — it's something people who are too tall to fit indoors can get a permission to magically do.)
• Airstrike of Wake of the Clash, is seen struggling during the Chapter 1 heist against her rival, The Hourglass, who has no known superpowers. It has been mentioned by the author that Airstrike will often pull her punches against Hourglass to make their escapades more entertaining to onlookers.
• Weak Hero:
  • Gerard struggles in his fight against Seongmok until he pulls out a card he's been keeping close to his chest; he doesn't fight with his feet because it's his specialty, but because he made a promise not to use his fists for a year. With that year expired, he effortlessly pummels Seongmok into unconsciousness.
  • Alex is an unintentional example, as even he didn't realise that he's left-handed until a kindly stranger at the gym points it out to him. When he changes his stance to adjust for it, he realises how much more natural it feels.

• Atop the Fourth Wall: On the subject of Linkara's magic gun a.k.a. Margaret, she has been holding back her full strength most of the time. There are a couple of sneak peeks of it in the Silent Hill: Dead/Alive and Silent Hill: The Grinning Man reviews, but we don't really properly see the gun cut loose until Star Wars 3D #1.
• The New Adventures of Captain S: In the final showdown between Captain S and the Game Genie, Captain S seems to have the Genie's number before the Genie proclaimed "We're not *snort* left-handed." and proceeded to transform into his true form.
• In Noob, Gaea is a notable hoarder of both money and precious items and a Dirty Coward when it comes to combat. However, if she's cornered into combat and has her mind set on winning, she does NOT consider her most powerful items to be Too Awesome to Use.
• Suburban Knights: After failing to do any damage to Malachite using their costumed weapons (which makes sense since they were mostly just props) everyone abandons their "characters" (Lupa stops acting princessy, Linkara starts using his magic gun, Angry Joe gets out his weapon arsenal, etc.) It still doesn't work though since Malachite is a dark mage while everyone else is mostly un-powered nerds.

• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender:
    • In "Zuko Alone", Zuko hides his firebending throughout the episode in order to conceal that he's from the Fire Nation, until he gets into a fight with an earthbender who forces him to stop holding back. This backfires on him, when the very people he was protecting and risking his life for treat him like dirt afterwards and run him out of town, albeit understandably, seeing as Zuko's father is leading the army that's been oppressing them and aside from his one stray good deed they've only ever been mistreated by the Fire Nation before.
    • Later it's reversed when Zuko's staying undercover in Ba Sing Se, capital of the Earth Kingdom, and he's attacked by Jet who's trying to unmask him as a firebender. Jet assumed he could force Zuko to defend himself with his firebending, but instead Zuko shows he's a skilled swordsman, and doesn't need bending to win a fight.
  • The Legend of Korra:
    • "When Extremes Meet": Tarrlok resorts to bloodbending when he runs out of water.
    • "The Ultimatum": Ming-Hua does her best impression of Doc Ock.
• Ben 10: Omniverse: Later on in the series, Ben gains complete control over Alien X, meaning he can use all of the transformation's reality, space, and time-warping powers on command without having to deliberate with its other two personalities first. However, Ben still doesn't feel comfortable wielding all that power arbitrarily so he still avoids using Alien X unless it's absolutely necessary. When facing the brainwashed Plumbers' Helpers, who he wanted to incapacitate without hurting, he turns into Alien X and effortlessly pins them to the wall.
• In The Backyardigans: International Super Spy, their James Bond homage, this sort of exchange is used when Pablo reveals to the Lady in Pink that he's not ticklish, and thus her Tickle Torture device won't work on him.
• Blue Eye Samurai
  • In the first episode we see the protagonist Mizu wearing weights to strengthen her body as part of her Training Montage when she was young. Near the end of the episode she is locked in a duel with Taigen who unlike everyone else is giving her serious trouble. Just when Taigen thinks he's won, Mizu takes off the weights and wipes the floor with him.
  • A flashback shows that Mizu was once married to a former samurai. A scene has him getting fruit from a tree for his new bride by throwing a knife. She invites Mizu to have a go, but playing the role of a proper Japanese wife she fumbles the throw. However when her husband later betrays her, Mizu kills him instantly with a knife thrown into his eye.
• DC Animated Universe:
  • Justice League:
    • The moment when Flash surpasses any speed ever achieved by a human being in order to whup Brainiac-Luthor's ass in the Unlimited episode "Divided We Fall". The episode practically gave the character an immediate boost from the goofy, comic relief of the League to an absolute badass in a few seconds. And to show how serious he was, we learn that going that deep into the Speed Force runs the risk of not coming back.
    • At various times it is made very clear that The Flash, much like Superman, can cause a lot of collateral damage if he isn't careful. As for the above example, it's implied that he was approaching the speed of light and you can see cars flipping and distant windows shattering just from how fast he is moving. He outright doesn't use his ability to phase through solid material, because it can cause explosions or instant destruction.
    • Superman lets himself get beaten up a lot because of this; he will fight using all of his powers, and he's beaten many times, but either because somebody broke out the kryptonite or because he's holding back early on and for some reason can't go back to being right-handed. Case in point: when he unknowingly fights Wonder Woman, he has to stop fighting, period, once he realizes it's her and is badly beaten up because of that. However, he frequently talks about the reasons he does this. At one point, he says that every hit he takes is one less hit his teammates has to. This especially comes to proof when Superman fights Darkseid in the series finale. After getting beat down, Superman gives a "No More Holding Back" Speech:

      Superman: I feel like I live in a world made of cardboard. Always taking constant care not to break something, to break someone. Never allowing myself to lose control even for a moment, or someone could die. But you can take it, can'tcha, big man? What we have here is a rare opportunity for me to cut loose and show you just how powerful I really am.

    • He then turns the tables and lets loose on Darkseid, knowing that he won't be killed right off, and easily kicks Darkseid's ass, sending him flying through several buildings to the other side of the city and then bashing him back down to the ground. Unfortunately, Darkseid then does this as well. Realizing he's outmatched physically, he switches to his technological superiority and instantly defeats Superman.
  • In the Superman: The Animated Series episode "Knight Time", when Superman is posing as Batman after Bruce Wayne disappears, he's forced to hold back as he fights Bane, but after Bane is led to think he's won, Superman stops holding back. It's both hilarious and awesome at the same time.
  • In "Where There's Smoke", after Volcana starts blasting Superman with a barrage of Fireballs, she then brags, "And that was with my left hand" before blasting an even more powerful fireball at him.
• In Doug, Doug is playing baseball but plays horrible until Patty notices he favors his left hand and realizes he's a lefty. Once Doug swings left-handed, he actually plays competently. This is ironically the opposite of the name of this article.
• Grojband quotes this trope almost word for word when Corey dukes it out with a pirate captain in "The Pirate Lounge For Me".
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998): In the episode "Members Only", the Powerpuff Girls individually compete in a series of tests in order to join a league of male superheroes. Bubbles competes in a speed race against E-Male. As she keeps pace with him:

  Bubbles: Um, am I supposed to keep up or is one of us supposed to win?
  E-Male: Well, one of us should definitely win, Cherie.
  Bubbles: Oh, okay. 'Bye! [turns on the afterburners and zooms way ahead, eventually winning]

• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: In "Ties That Bind", Catra tricks Glimmer into using up her magical energy, leaving her powerless when other members of the Evil Horde arrive. However, Glimmer, having realised what Catra was up to, reveals she was exaggerating how drained she was, taking Catra by surprise and using her magic to rescue Bow and give Catra a well-deserved sucker punch.
• The Simpsons: Marge Simpson, of all people, invokes this trope in the Vancouver Olympics episode. Her arm is sprained in the second-last match and is about to give up. Then, Homer notices her skill with her other arm, which Marge remembers is actually her dominant one. (This is also a literal inversion of the trope name: Marge is left-handed, but has been using her right hand all her life in order to fit in.)
• SpongeBob SquarePants has an example where he gets a splinter in his thumb while working and is trying to hide it in order to avoid being sent home for injury on the job. When he sees it's hindering his ability to flip Krabby Patties, SpongeBob switches the spatula to his other hand and reveals that he's ambidextrous (able to use both his right and left hand).
• Star Trek: Lower Decks: "Mugato, Gumato": At the beginning, Boimler and Rutherford are confident of faring better than usual in their anbo-jytsu match with Mariner, as they've been training hard since the last match, and snarkily tell her to "take off the kid gloves". It turns out that she's been going easy on them but is now excited to get in "a real workout", and proceeds to wipe the floor with both of them.
• Star Wars: Clone Wars: General Grievous at the end. You thought he was tough with two arms? Well, turns out he has four.
• An unspoken example occurs in WordGirl when Becky wants to bond with her father, she hijacks a TV station and broadcasts a message to the entire city. In the message she calmly picks up a metal girder and then begins twisting and crushing it together. Capping it off by saying that if any villains want to cause trouble today, don't. Presumably no one really knows how powerful she is, so Word Girl just decided to make it clear to her rogues gallery that she can destroy them any time she wants.