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Fan Works - TV Tropes

  • ️Sat Apr 05 2025
  • Adventures of a Line Hopper: As in Doctor Who, a Dalek's eyestalk is its weakest point due to being connected to its biological body. In Something, both Adam's army and the future Slayers manage to get the better of the Daleks by hitting their eyestalks with projectile weapons, although the Slayers must aim at the right angle to do so since their weapons are crossbows.
  • A Darker Path:
    • Hatchet Face's skin is very tough — but it's also flexible, which means it's not shielding his nerves. Atropos hammers his skull until he's dizzy, then uses a carefully placed strike to paralyse his diaphragm and leaves him to suffocate.
    • One of Nilbog's creatures is covered in bulletproof bony plates. Atropos kills it by shooting it in the mouth.
  • This comes up in Fractured (SovereignGFC), a Mass Effect/Star Wars/Borderlands crossover and its sequel, Origins.
    • Revenant (a gigantic Star Dreadnaught) is subjected to a weak point-targeting assault by smart villains in the first work. While it's not specified what they're hitting, it's made plenty clear that analysis of captured blueprints enabled them to do some precise ordinance delivery. (Sound familiar?)
    • In the sequel, it's noted that the Mooks of the Alien Invasion have specific targetable areas that should be filled with lead. As the invaders are Flood, shoot the pink tentacle-thing that is the actual Infection Form For Massive Damage.
  • Here Comes the New Boss: Needler's power highlights weaknesses, like nerve clusters. Since it doesn't have any visible tells, merely looking like training and skill, Elpis is able to use it freely. She gets anomalous results from sparring with Glory Girl, whose forcefield apparently has no weak points at all — but when a solid hit knocks the field down, Needler's power promptly kicks in and shows the regular human weak points for the few seconds until the field recovers.
  • Played oddly straight in Mega Man fanfic Whispers in Time: the previous Curb-Stomp Battle left Bass and Proto Man to attempt suicidal attacks on the awakened Zero...who has mostly shrugged them off by the time he comes to kill Mega Man and his successor. The half-healed chest-wound amounts to a weak spot that allows Rock to bring down the Red Ripper, albeit at the cost of his own life.
  • Interestingly, played straight in Zero's Shock. Jack is attacking a giant golem, and so Derflinger advises him to attack its core. However, there are problems: there's no real guarantee that the core is even there. And if there is one, then there might be a chance that it explodes on destruction.

    "If it has one. Usually a sphere of some kind. Mostly stones with runes on them, squiggly little things like the one on the back of your hand. Some of the time. I think. Saw a few that had just a smiley face and a name on them. One of them just had a rude word on it! But anyway, find the core, partner! You might need to do some searching, though, since sometimes there are more than one core, sometimes there aren't even any! Most fun of all, some of them blow up! But one thing's for sure; the best thing is to go for the core, partner!"

  • In Kill or Be Killed, Yoona has a weak point of her stomach, which gets attacked three times, the first being when a glass shard is thrown at it, turning it into a weak point.
  • Last Child of Krypton: When Shinji was fighting Sachiel, he heard Rei whispering: “Destroy the red core”. He started to punch the core right away until it cracked.
  • To explain how humanity can actually fight giant robots in the Transformers Film Series, the series Black Crayons uses this as an explanation. Cybertronians' armor can protect them from large blasts large-scale attacks, but small enough weapons can slip in between sections of their armor to get at the more delicate circuitry underneath. Mikaela causes some serious damage to Laserbeak by stabbing him with a screwdriver, getting under the armor of one of his wings, and Annabelle causes similar damage- adjusting based on the relative size of both weapon and Cybertronian- when she hits Sentinel in the ankle with a piece of reinforcing bar.
  • Project Riribirth: Riri Williams uses her suit's sensors to analyze a very large enemy and observe that it is vulnerable in a few key areas.
  • Skip in Xendra proves himself immune to most forms of damage (including Slayer punches and gunfire) due to his armor until Buffy wraps chains around her hand as makeshift brass knuckles, and even then he's tough as hell. But when he tries to take Wesley hostage after Buffy's ripped the metal ring in his chin out, Wesley shoots him several times through his chin to finally kill the demon. Afterwards, he shoots Skip through the eye just to be sure.
  • In Takamachi Nanoha of 2814, the Invaders can be destroyed completely by attacking its core. However, finding the core by itself is no easy task.
  • In Hellsister Trilogy, Galactic Golem's only weak point is the energy white starburst on his forehead, but hitting it will result in a humongous explosion. Supergirl, Power Girl and Superboy get around this by wrapping the Golem up in their indestructible capes before Supergirl punches their forehead. Her blow sets off a chain reaction but their capes contain the blast.

    "Who in Sheol was that, K? Blue Frankenstein, or something?" asked Power Girl, rubbing her arms.
    "The Galactic Golem," Kara replied. "He’s an old enemy of Superman’s, an energy being. That white star on his head was his Achilles heel. I just had to gamble that our capes could contain the blast. Thanks, both of you, and I mean that."

  • In Tantabus Mark II, Fluttershy's plan for defeating the dragon involves kicking his throat, due to the softer scales. Fortunately, this is enough to dislodge the metal lodged in its larynx.
  • In Of White Trees and Blue Roses, Ned beats Robert in a duel by pricking his neck armor.
  • The Wyrmspawn in The Dark Lords Ascendant has incredibly dense defenses to the point of taking only Scratch Damage from Sailor Saturn's Silence Glaive, and is able to nullify all magic attacks to boot. However, its wings and the inside of its mouth aren't as heavily armored, allowing Saturn and Ryouga to deal meaningful damage to it.
  • Sublight Drive:
    • Upon hearing that the Jedi general Rees Alrix is skilled at intuiting and exploiting holes in her enemies' formation, Bonteri decides that the best approach is to use Battle Order Three, which has a well-known counter. That way, at least they'll know what they're dealing with.

      Bonteri: If we use a complicated formation, she might know our weakness before we do. But a standard formation…

    • After studying and probing Alrix's capabilities at greater length, he realises that she can't predict the future, she can only see current vulnerabilities. She always waits for the fleet's formation to settle into something static before she pounces. Thus, his chosen tactic to defeat her is deliberate chaos, with individual commanders only being told "follow the ship in front of you" and then led around in a great circle, weak points appearing and disappearing too quickly for Alrix to act on them. It works, paralysing Alrix's abilities, until Rain is close enough, judges the time is right, and has portions of the fleet lash out at specific targets, annihilating them before Alrix can assemble a counter. It's actually a meta-example, attacking Alrix's weak point: she never studied tactics or strategy, she just relied on her Force abilities, so she's helpless once those are countered.
  • Vow of Nudity: During her time at the Olympics, Spectra sleeps with another athlete named Nimblepuff who reveals she orgasms if someone scratches under her chin, which also activates her powered-up metal form. Spectra later takes advantage of this in the tower-climbing event, scratching under Nimble’s chin while the larger woman is trying to grapple her, turning her to metal and causing her platform to collapse under her weight.
  • Discussed in Wilhuff Tarkin, Hero of the Rebellion, where Tarkin, upon confirming that Galen Erso is working against the Empire like him, flat-out asks him what kind of weakness he put on the Death Star.
  • The Pirate's Soldier: When fighting Mihoshi in her Galaxy Police battle armor, Heero manages to cut some exposed wiring on the back of the head with his combat knife, rendering it powerless. Later, Kiyone brings another one of the same model, and he disables it much easier now that he knows its weak point.
  • Cocoa Mocha's agents in Manehattan's Lone Guardian each possess dragon scale mail, which render them nearly impervious to harm. However, they require magically-enchanted chest pieces to keep their wearers from being subject to the laws of physics. After Leviathan discovers this weakness, she begins targeting them specifically to end her fights quickly.
  • The Chaotic Masters: During the fight with the transformed Jackie Oakes in Chapter 24, the heroes are only able to defeat him by targeting the spot on his chest representing his connection to the power of the amulet of Anubis.