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Feet of Clay
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This is when a character who is generally held to be incredibly talented is revealed in the end to be totally incompetent. If the incompetent character is on the side of the heroes, this forces the heroes to save the "savior", who is usually an obnoxious example of The Rival, or a phony example of Always Someone Better. Straight-laced heroes usually have to swallow their pride to help this jerk. The Naïve Newcomer may be shocked to find he's not the nice guy everyone thinks he is. Other heroes will squeeze every benefit they can out of it. If the character is an idol in the eyes of the protagonist(s), Broken Pedestal often follows. If the character with the Feet of Clay is a villain, at first he will appear to be all-powerful and frightening, but will turn out to be a coward, a weakling hiding behind illusions, a Harmless Villain, or Too Dumb to Live. This can be subverted if they try and succeed in Becoming the Boast. The name comes from the Biblical book of Daniel, in which King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon dreams of a statue composed of various metals but with feet made of iron mixed with clay. Daniel interprets the statue as the kingdom, with the brittle clay feet representing a weakness that will eventually bring the whole thing down. The villain option tends to appear either in comedy, or in children's TV (with a moral about standing up to bullies). See also The So-Called Coward, Informed Ability, Miles Gloriosus, and Face Your Fears. Contrast Shrouded in Myth. When the character turns out to be just as competent as he is supposed to be, but is also a complete and total Jerkass and not all that heroic at all, it's Warts and All. The inversion of this trope usually falls under Obfuscating Stupidity, as a character believed to be an utter incompetent is really hiding his competency. Not to be confused with Feet of Clay, a Discworld novel about golems with literal clay feet. The villainous option should also not be confused with the Big Bad Wannabe, a villain who looks powerful but proves to be a weakling when compared with the other bigger villains.note Also not to be confused with the accepted meaning of the phrase "feet of clay" in normal English usage: someone who is idolized, but has a hidden ethical flaw - the Discworld novel's title is ironic, since the golem has no ethical flaws. Divided into heroic and villainous examples who have a reputation belied by reality. |
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Captain Hammer in Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, who has Super Strength and all the arrogance to accompany it, but turns tail and runs when Dr. Horrible's Death Ray explodes and makes him feel pain for the first time in his life. Unlike the typical use of the trope, Hammer is a Hero Antagonist and the Downer Ending makes it clear that there's nobody waiting in the wings to back him up. | |
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In The Alamo, Davey Crockett expresses the sentiment that he, himself, is an example of this trope, being propped up by public opinion and overblown stories about his so-called exploits. He's not, but it makes for a poignant moment. | |
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Tales of Legendia: Cashel, one of Vaclav's 3 generals, specializes in illusion magic. When it's revealed that Jay can see through his tricks, he becomes nothing more than a pushover. | |
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Bleach: Don Kanonji plays with this trope. The audience would assume he's a fake, judging by his over-the-top style and the fact that he's using his supposed powers for personal gain, but he really can see ghosts. Unfortunately, he has no idea how to actually get rid of them and, in the episode that introduces him, ends up turning a ghost into a Hollow before Ichigo can stop him. He does mean well, setting up the Karakura Heroes, which at least keeps the kids out of trouble. His main problem is the fact that everything he does is done through a Large Ham filter. He later proves to at least be useful with his negligible reiatsu and saved Tatsuki from Aizen by buying her some time. He also saves Ichigo's ass when Ichigo gets caught dead to rights by that same Hollow while trying to save Kanonji. The look on Ichigo's face after Kanonji's paltry-looking Cannonball says it all. He admits to his Large Ham filter being in place because he is deliberately acting like a children's show protagonist to inspire and entertain his audience. |
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In Dragon Goes House-Hunting, Letty is a weak, cowardly dragon with garbage stats, who can't even fly or breathe fire. But due to a mix of unfortunate hijinks, misunderstanding and exagerated word of mouth, he's hailed as The Flame Dragon King who is able to level an entire kingdom within a few hours, and is intent to take over the world. | |
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Heroes: Hiro Nakamura spends most of the first season going on and on about the legendary samurai Takezo Kensei. After meeting him through a time travel accident we find he's a rude, dishonorable English con-artist who gets his legendary status largely through Hiro's intervention and his Healing Factor. | |
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Darkwing Duck: Gizmoduck (originally from DuckTales (1987)) repeatedly visits Saint Canard for the express purpose of thwarting evildoers, and his sterling reputation as a "super-powered" champion of justice far outshines that of the headline-hogging glory-hound ostensibly starring in this show, but more than once he has gotten himself captured by supervillains and needed Darkwing to rescue him. One episode even had Darkwing attempting to emulate Gizmoduck to even up the egregious disparity in their abilities, asking Gizmoduck to make him his own super-powered gizmo-suit, but in the end the high ferrous metal content of the gizmo-suits turned out to be the very Achilles' Heel that the villain Megavolt exploited to subdue the heroes with his Evil Plan du jour, a giant electromagnet. "Without my suit, I'm nothing!" Gizmoduck groused. Darkwing proved that he was something more, by shedding his gizmo-suit and saving the day. On the other hand, there's also episodes where Darkwing gets in over his head and is forced to admit he needs the help of other heroes, Gizmoduck among them (like Just Us Justice Ducks). |
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Subversion: Aqua Teen Hunger Force often takes a villain revealed to have Feet of Clay, and re-uses them as a Sitcom Arch-Nemesis. You know they're not dangerous, but if you can't get rid of them, they're really annoying... | |
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Captain Amazing in Mystery Men. The titular heroes aren't too good with the helping, though. | |
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Harry Potter: Both Snape and Dumbledore are two of the best wizards in the entire franchise but their incompetence as teenagers lead them to colossally screw up and both are still living with the consequences of what they did. In the former’s case, he got the girl he loved killed. In the latter’s case, he got his sister killed. Although Dumbledore has a much better reputation than Snape ever did as he is an out and out good guy while Snape is a known Death Eater. | |
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"Bowling Paul" from Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. Mac gets some very Jedi-like bowling training from him after seeing all the pictures of him with his bowling trophies. Turns out that he can't bowl at all. He was only in the pictures because the guy next to him in every single one of them won all the trophies, and he was the guy's imaginary friend. | |
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Skyhawk, one of the superpowered defenders of Boston, in the Whateley Universe. He's super-strong and flies, but he's not as strong as he thinks. He tries to be a hero, but in "Ayla and the Birthday Brawl" he nearly gets a roomful of children killed by attacking the villains in a way that lets them see him coming from blocks away. Phase refers to him as 'Skydork'. | |
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In Asura's Wrath, the chapter where Asura and Yasha finally defeat Deus is titled this, for this precise reason. Deus always believed he was the only one who could defeat Vlitra Gohma, and that his extremist methods were the only way to stop the monster. Asura and Yasha crush him and reveal that his methods were doomed to failure and that he was never the all-powerful god he thought he was. | |
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On MADtv (1995), one of the recurring characters is an example of this: an easily provoked jerk jock, who is highly possessive of his girlfriend. Gets in a fight with at least one person in every appearance. The opponent is usually scared to fight the guy until they realize his fighting style consists entirely of flailing his arms impotently and falling against his opponent. | |
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Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas features this during El Cid's flashback. It involves a young trainee that was a single day from being awarded a high-ranking cloth and officially becoming a Saint of Athena. His friends congratulate him but during the night, El Cid sees him running away from the sanctuary. Upon being confronted, the man breaks down and starts to cry before explaining that he didn't want to die. El Cid responds by saying that running away from the sanctuary is punishable by death and promptly raises his sword to deliver a death blow. He's halted by Sisyphus, who comforts the man and says that there are other ways he can help. | |
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The PBS show Ghostwriter does this a lot. One villain turns out to be a failed artist living in his aunt's basement. A computer hacker nearly shuts down the school, but when she's caught, she has no reason for her crimes other than to get attention. The THABTO gang: they steal a lot of money, wear creepy monster masks, perform secret ceremonies, communicate in code, send people death threats, and try to strangle the heroes. The good guys humiliate the THABTO gang by revealing their pathetic secret: all the scary masks and codes were part of an elaborate plan... to win a video-game tournament. Subverted in "Am I Blue?": There's a theft at the "Galaxy Girl" convention, and the perp leaves clues which imply a weirdo who watches way too much TV. When the perps are caught, they indeed are weirdos, but they have sound financial reasons for the theft. They created Galaxy Girl and sold the idea, but never got any money. |
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Labyrinth When the cleaners chase Sarah and Hoggle down an underground tunnel, it looks like a monstrous, unstoppable juggernaut of whirling blades and steel-plated doom, but when the camera finally shows it from another angle, it turns out to be a bicycle-like device run by two little goblins on pedals. Also, the gate guardian robot called Humongous. Inside the big metal behemoth is a weak goblin that Hoggle easily throws out of the pilot seat. |
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One-Punch Man has King, a renowned S-Class Hero who in actuality is a completely average person who just happens to have an intimidating appearance. His reputation is built upon the fact that he always ended up in the aftermath of Saitama's fights, which led to him accidentally taking the credit. | |
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In Skulduggery Pleasant it's hilarious really, the rise and fall of Killer Supreme Vaurien Scapegrace. He goes on about how he makes killing an art form, but he's really a coward, useless, and in the end, mainly dead. | |
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The warriors of Halfdan the Black in Erik the Viking were so used to people being so afraid of them that they fled immediately that they didn't know what to do when Eric managed to inspire his men to actually fight back. | |
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The third season of Degrassi: The Next Generation does a Story Arc on this. Manny makes a spectacular Face–Heel Turn, transforming from the girl next door into The Vamp. After she's repeatedly seduced a boy, we get the Feet of Clay moment when Manny asks a friend, "how do you know if a guy used a condom?" From there, her Heel–Face Turn comes swiftly. | |
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In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the wizard himself. He carries this characterization to the movie. Fascinatingly, the book of Wicked is the only iteration of the story in which he has actual power. He appears to be some kind of magical criminal fleeing his home dimension, and Dorothy, who comes from the same place, is his inadvertent nemesis. (Elphaba is his daughter.) |
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Hawkeye to Radar in M*A*S*H, right until Hawkeye sent him to Seoul on a "date", during which Radar was injured. After Hawkeye was drunk in the ER because of guilt, Radar eventually saw him as an ordinary man, not the hero he looked up to. | |
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Monk, "Mr. Monk and the Other Detective" (with Jason Alexander as the guy with Feet of Clay). | |
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In A Series of Unfortunate Events we have a character named Ishmael who is this. He tells colonists that he can predict weather using "magic", constantly uses coercion disguised as cordiality (and, on occasion, actual cordial) in his role as a facilitator, and makes others give up on possessions in order to use them himself under the excuse that he's doing it for their well-being. Naturally, the Baudelaires were disgusted. And it is even hinted at by having him cover up his supposedly-damaged feet with healing clay. | |
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In another Kim Possible example, there is Phen from the episode "Grudge Match". Despite supposedly being a genius at robotics, he is pretty much incompetent and arranged the theft the episode deals with to protect his reputation. | |
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The Wizard of Oz The Wizard turns out not only to be considerably less powerful and impressive than he initially appears, but hastily decides not to be a villain at all, once the ruse is exposed. The Cowardly Lion is also this type. Remember, when he first appears, he challenges the Tin Man and Scarecrow to fight. ("I'll fight ya both at the same time! I'll fight ya standin' on one foot!") It doesn't take long for his true nature to be revealed. |
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Ex Machina: Mitchell Hundred is a self-styled superhero who manages to do some pretty spectacular things with his jetpack and technopath powers. However, he's often shown screwing up, making things worse, and making poor choices, as an otherwise untrained civil engineer turned crimefighter might. Even when he turns his hand to politics, he rather foolishly sets up his campaign website at "hundred4governor.net," somehow failing to get the .com domain and forcing himself to explain that "four" is a numeral while "hundred" is spelled out. | |
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Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: Gilderoy Lockhart manages to coast along fairly well as a legendary Hunter of Monsters despite his obvious lack of monster-hunting competence thanks to his own extensive hype machine and accomplishments stolen from the people that actually did them, who he magicked into forgetting — at least until he runs into Harry. | |
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Partial example in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. The elderly witness Oldbag has vital information that she's not willing to give up and when you approach her and ask about it, the second largest arrangement of Psyche-locks so far appears, which in-game looks like you'll need four pieces of evidence to get her to break. However, giving her an autograph from someone she likes makes her break 3 out of 4 of the locks instantly, and the 4th one is broken (with no further effort on your part) solely because she's a gossiper and wants to tell you. | |
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Star Trek did this on a smaller scale with villains who seem godlike but are distinctly not (like in the episodes "Catspaw" and "Who Mourns For Adonais?"). | |
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In Spider-Man 2: The Game, the boss battle with Mysterio begins with his 4 life bars filling up and dramatic music. He goes down with a single punch. | |
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Captain Qwark in Ratchet & Clank wobbled between this and Fallen Hero in his first two appearances, which implied he was at some point an actual hero before his fall from grace, but settled firmly into this trope at the same time as his Heel–Face Turn. | |
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Futurama's Zapp Branigan, a military hero whose exploits are based on one of two factors: sending wave after wave of men in unnecessary suicide gambits, or fighting totally helpless or pacifistic foes. | |
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Practically every Scooby-Doo villain ever, to an extent.There have been a few exceptions. Subverted with the animated Scooby-Doo movies in general. A commonly-used plot point in them is the monster being just another person in a costume, followed by the real monster showing up. |
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The characters in Metal Gear Solid make a big fuss about how incredibly tough Meryl is - an eighteen-year-old female soldier with a Desert Eagle. However, she trembles when told to shoot, forgets to take the safety off her gun, gets Mind Controlled by a psychic into shooting Snake and attempting a suicide, takes point in the most useless way possible for the gamer and for Snake, gets shot by a sniper, and spends the rest of the game getting tortured and arguably raped off-camera, to make a return, unconscious, at the end. Depending on the ending, she may or may not live to crash her car and pin her and Snake under it. But unlike, say, the Faux Action Girl, we learn that it wasn't that she was inherently useless so much as very young and inexperienced - she becomes aware of this over the course of the game and her façade of arrogance is dropped. Fortunately, when she returns in Metal Gear Solid 4, she's taken several dozen levels in badass. | |
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In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part III, all the heroes initially see of ZZ, the user of the "Wheel of Fortune" Stand, is his huge muscular arms, in between trying to avoid getting killed by the user's giant muscle car. Turns out he's completely scrawny everywhere else with a potbelly, can't fight back once pulled from his vehicle and is reduced to begging for his life, and the car itself is a rusty old junk heap when not being powered by a Stand. | |
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Inversion: Danger Mouse and Penfold are captured and trussed up by Baron Greenback, who has set up headquarters on the moon. DM appears to acquiesce to Greenback, which irks Penfold. (From the episode "Project Moon.") | |
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The Golem referred to by the title in Feet of Clay was built to be a hero, but has gone totally off the deep end thanks to what amounts to conflicting "programming." | |
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Parodied, lampshaded and played straight in Peanuts, when Charlie Brown's baseball hero gets sent down to the minors: | |
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Invader Zim had an episode where Zim is kidnapped by the galaxy's two stupidest aliens. Zim escapes them by walking out the door, and one alien yells at the other, in a really weird British/Australian accent, "So you're saying that just because I forgot to lock it, it's my fault that the door was unlocked?". Jhonen Vasquez has stated that he finds the idea of technologically advanced idiots to be funny. | |
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Transformers: Animated: Sentinel Prime. The most arrogant Autobot of all time, and though he is Optimus' equal in terms of rank, he still acts as if he's far superior ho him. And then along comes the Headmaster... And again with escaped Decepticons... |
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In the Sponge Bob Squarepants episode "Kenny the Cat", everyone in Bikini Bottom, especially SpongeBob himself, idolizes the cat of the same name whose claim to fame is being able to hold his breath underwater for days at a time despite being a land-dweller. When SpongeBob discovers that Kenny has actually been using a hidden oxygen tank, he's literally heartbroken. Kenny tearfully convinces him to keep his secret, but he gets found out anyway. Thankfully for him, SpongeBob comes up with an idea for a new gimmick; since Cats Hate Water, he can be a cat who likes it. | |
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Unsounded: Vampire references the trope for self-depreciation, revealing that despite his hearty appearance, he's constantly worried he'll screw everything up once the enemies unleash their superweapon. He does. | |
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Played with by the North Wind in Penguins of Madagascar. While they are a competent and heroic team, they're also rather egotistical and unsympathetic, causing much of the antagonism between them and the penguins. Cemented when the North Wind abandon the penguins inside Dave's submarine to "regroup", even after Private saved them from a Death Trap. Private calls them out on that and they do later return. | |
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In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic The Great and Powerful Trixie presents herself as a badass magician who once beat an Ursa Major, and humiliates the mane cast by one-upping them but when an actual Ursa Major (actually an Ursa Minor) shows up, she reveals that she made the story up to give her a better reputation. It's then left up to Twilight Sparkle to actually get rid of the bear. | |
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Bloom Into You has Mio Nanammi, Touko's older sister. She had a reputation as The Ace and was Toomi East High School's Student Council President from seven years ago before she was killed in a traffic accident midway through the year, resulting in her younger sister Touko trying to live up to her example. However, according to Mio's friend and fellow student council member Tomoyuki Ichigaya, Mio supposedly had the other student council members do most of the actual work (in contrast to how Touko did most of the work for her predecessor as president), and even made the other members do her summer homework for her. Ichigaya didn't say this out of malice, since he did honestly consider Mio a friend even if he thought Touko was a better president, but learning this forces Touko to question how well she knew her sister. | |
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In Stephen King's The Dark Tower novels, the character of The Crimson King is revealed in the end to be a (non-)towering example of this trope. Whether this is a clever subversion or a lame anticlimax has been a matter of heated debate. | |
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Oolong early in Dragon Ball. As the villagers explain later, they were so scared of his fearful looks they never even thought of fighting back. The village girls he kidnapped, however, realized how much of a pushover he was once they saw his true form. | |
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In the 2018 reboot of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, all four of the major Horde villains are pathetic in some way, their considerable talents notwithstanding. Shadow Weaver is a knowledgeable sorceress and a competent administrator. However, due to the effects of the Spell of Obtainment, she has no innate power and must draw magical power from a runestone, ground Mystacore crystal, or a magically endowed person. She also seeks influence not through her own achievements, but by manipulating children and teenagers. Hordak created the Etherian Horde from the ground up, is a powerhouse on the battlefield when equipped with his arm cannon and cybernetic exoskeleton, and has a brilliant mind for logistics, science, and engineering. However, his public persona — an intimidating, dominant warlord who appears muscular — is a fabrication hiding a sickly and insecure man underneath. What makes him truly pathetic is that his identity and self-worth are completely bound up in Horde Prime, a tyrant who does not deserve his loyalty and does not appreciate his efforts. He has gambled all of his self-respect on earning Horde Prime's approval, like a child seeking his father's affirmation. He expects Horde Prime to conquer Etheria and punish his enemies, despite knowing exactly what kind of man his progenitor is. Catra is driven, adaptable, impressive in hand-to-hand combat, and has a brilliant tactical mind. However, like Hordak, she's driven by an unhealthy need for validation. Despite getting everything she thought she wanted in season 4, she's miserable and mentally unstable. She taints all of her personal and professional relationships with jealousy, manipulation, deception, and cruelty, driving everyone away until she is truly alone in the world at the end of season 4. Hordak's Overlord, who presents himself as the pinnacle of his (and Hordak's) species, is the very definition of a Fundamentalist Megalomaniac. Half the time he's too busy going through ludicrous rituals meant to glorify his existence as a divine Ubermensch - even when he ends up creeping out every other villain in the series. In the finale, he has a Villainous Breakdown from being shown that there's a chance he isn't the perfect, all-omnipotent god he constantly claims to be, and squanders his ambitions for universal domination because he can't take the idea that anything is capable of defying him. |
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Eddy's brother on Ed, Edd n Eddy is actually both types at once. The whole series plays him up as The Ace, someone who Eddy looks up to and admires. When we finally see him in The Movie, he is quickly revealed to be a jerk whose constant abuse toward Eddy was the reason for him pretending to be a jerk. Then type two comes into effect when Ed defeats him by removing a hinge on his trailer door, causing it to hit him in the face. Word of God says this is because he never received pain in his life, so the door hurt him more than it would anyone used to pain; the same hit on Eddy would've just been shruggable Amusing Injuries. | |
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The Ultimates: Tyrone Cash for his protégé Bruce Banner, who is the one officially credited with creating the Hulk Formula. Most of the research is derived from Williams' own notes, which Banner built from to develop his own Super Soldier serum. This is later Zig-Zagged, as Williams took Banner's flawed formula and perfected it, transforming himself into a Hulk that gets to keep his intelligence. | |
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Fascinatingly, the book of Wicked is the only iteration of the story in which he has actual power. He appears to be some kind of magical criminal fleeing his home dimension, and Dorothy, who comes from the same place, is his inadvertent nemesis. (Elphaba is his daughter.) | |
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A Halloween episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer has the gang facing the coming of a "fear demon", who, when he finally breaks through into the human dimension, is revealed to be about three inches tall. Buffy steps on him. Which Giles would have known beforehand if he'd thought to translate the caption on the picture: "Gachnar - actual size". Played with in that he is a powerhouse magically, killing several people before they manage to confront him in person. |
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In Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues, Crispin Hayward is an up-and-coming author, who initially appears to be handsome and confident... until the heroes actually interact with him, where he's revealed to be cowardly and ineffectual. They hunted him down for information about the Mass Super-Empowering Event and only got a load of conspiratorial gibberish that didn't help them at all. | |
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The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt: Fergus is presented as the only master armourer in the entire game, and takes the quiet, unassuming young Skellige girl Yoana as his apprentice. In reality, he can barely forge a nail, and it's Yoana who is the actual master armoursmith. She made an arrangement with him to pose as the "face" of the smithy because no-one would believe that anyone but a dwarf, let alone a woman, could be a world-class armoursmith. Unlocking her services requires you to find a way to reveal the charade. | |
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Broken Saints plays with and lampshades this. One of the Shadow Men references the "giant with clay feet" imagery to the other, who turns out not to be the threat he was built up to be, though still a dangerous foe. It is the lampshading Shadow Man who is the real threat, and a BIG one too. | |
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Fantastic Four: The Miracle Man/Joshua Ayers in his first appearance, "Fantastic Four" vol. 1 #3 (March, 1962). A villainous stage magician who was supposedly tougher than the Thing, could bring statues to life, terrorized New York City, defeated the United States Army and stole tanks from them, and repeatedly bested and humiliated the Fantastic Four. Once temporarily blinded by the Human Torch's flames, he was rendered powerless. It turned out that he was just a Master of Illusion, who could mesmerize entire crowds through eye contact. He was never a physical threat to begin with. Later writers have given Miracle Man genuine magical powers and tried various temporary power-upgrades to make him a more credible threat. It has not really worked and his reputation is that of a second-rate Mastermind. | |
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In The Quick and the Dead, Ace looks like he's a front-runner for champ of the quick-draw contest, aided by the fact that he's played by Lance Henriksen. It turns out that he's mostly full of hot air. | |
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Star Trek: The Next Generation had Ardra, a local planet's version of the devil who arrived to assume total control over the populace and was soon revealed to just be a con artist with "A bad copy" of a Romulan cloaking device whose "powers" came from her undetected ship. | |
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