The Top-10 Strangest Superhero, Monster, & Alien Weaknesses

Special thanks to my wife Angie and William Bibbiani for crucial input on this list.

Opening this weekend is the anticipated superhero blockbuster “Green Lantern.” I did see the film, and I did review it, but, I must admit, I knew very little about The Green Lantern going in. The only thing I can really distinctly recall (from a childhood glued to a random assortment of superhero cartoons) is that he once fought his arch nemesis, The Yellow Lantern. The Green Lantern seemed to have a weakness to anything that was colored yellow.

Is it me, or is that a bonkers weakness to have? The color yellow? Can the Green Lantern be brought down by yellow legal pads? Polka-dot bikinis? Marshmallow peeps? I understand that the “green” part plays into his superhero identity, and that he could easily dispatch me with his greeny superpowers, but if he can be blocked by the color yellow, anyone with a supersoaker full of Rit dye could bring the guy down.

Most every superhero, alien, or otherwise extraordinary being typically has a single weakness – something simple, something so elementary that it becomes unexpected – that their foes can easily have a McGuffin to slow them down before they are taken out. Superman has chunks of crystal from his home planet, to cite one clear example. But as aliens and superheroes have become more numerous, the weaknesses involved have only become more outlandish. In honor of The Green Lantern’s weakness to yellow, I ave compiled this list of the strangest weaknesses in pop culture.

Let’s marvel, shall we?

10) Milk

in “Ernest Scared Stupid” (1991) 

Ernest (Jim Varney), the stalwart and clear-thinking, if not somewhat dull, blue-collar hero, has gone to camp, escaped from jail, saved Christmas, gone to Africa, played on the NBA, joined the army, and, yes, was scared stupid. In his 1991 feature film, Ernest, due to his bumbling with some taboo magical artifacts, accidentally unleashed a troll onto the Earth, right around Halloween. Ernest is clear-headed enough to want to releash the troll, and save Earth, but his misinterpretation of the sacred scroll had him looking for “miak” on the night in question.

Luckily, he untangled his mistake just in time, and found that the troll can be harmed and recaptured using ordinary cow’s milk. The scenes of Ernest and his pre-teen titans spraying milk on the trolls is a bit dizzying, not to mention borderline pornographic. Why are trolls weakened by milk? I dunno. Perhaps because it was slightly more poetic than Yoo-Hoo.

9) Water

in “Unbreakable” (2000) and “Signs” (2002) 

It must be remembered that, before he established a hateful reputation for directing self-aggrandizing fables like “Lady in the Water,” tepid thrillers like “the Village,” and loathed cartoon adaptations like “The Last Airbender,” M. Night Shyamalan presented us with a steady stream of solid and entertaining thrillers with unpredictable endings and fraught tension. Two of his better films, “Signs” and “Unbreakable,” however, share one conceit that is a little strange: Water as a driving, harmful force.

In “Unbreakable,” David Dunn (Bruce Willis) slowly comes to the realization that he hasn’t ever been harmed, that that he indeed cannot be harmed. While he slowly works his way into a pseudo superhero role, he finds that he is also subject to some of the trappings of the position: he has an arch-enemy, for one. He has powers that he doesn’t understand, of course. And he has a single weakness to be exploited. It turns out that David is weakened by water, which does him no favors when a bad guy pushes him into a swimming pool.

In “Signs,” Shyamalan gave us what is probably his best film, tracing the details of an alien invasion through quick glimpses, all framed by a Presbyterian minister’s (Mel Gibson) recovery of faith. While the aliens remain off-camera for much of the film, when we see them, they’re kinda scary. Luckily, water seems to act like acid for these beasties, and Joaquin Phoenix has a grand time batting glasses of water into a monster, melting its skin.

Water is plentiful on Earth. Wouldn’t it suck to be allergic to it?

8) Chai tea with cream

in “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” (2010) 

Twentysomething Canadian Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) is an unemployed venal douchebag who is desperately trying to dump his 17-year-old girlfriend in favor of an ultra-cool, pink-haired American chick named Ramona (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). He’s less concerned with actually charming her or even really relating to her, preferring instead to impress her with his coolness, a quality that he possesses in dubious amounts. His quest to win her also has him having to meet and emotionally overcome Ramona’s multiple ex-boyfriends, visualized in Edgar Wright’s 2010 movie as fantasy video game battles. Through the battles, Scott will learn to be less of a douchebag, and actually carry on a proper romance.

One of Ramona’s ex-boyfriends is the handsome Todd (Brandon Routh), who is tall, good-looking, a talented bass player, and, gasp, a vegan. In Scott’s mind, these qualities not only make Todd cool, but give him extra superpowers in his imagined fights. Todd is able to call upon the powers of a vegan diet to defeat Scott.

Scott, however, duped Todd, mid-battle, into drinking a chai tea with a small slip of real cream in it. The act not only weakens Todd, but causes Vegan Police to appear and de-power Todd for violations to his diet. I understand that the fights in “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” are all metaphorical, but I think most non-vegans can relate to Scott’s mild resentment against the vegan lifestyle, and the arrogance that sometimes comes therein. Don’t you wish you could secretly feed meat to some snotty, superior vegan health nut? Surely it would be Their One Weakness.

7) Salt Water

in “Alien Nation” (film 1988, television series 1989-1990) 

The 1988 feature film “Alien Nation,” its two-seasons-running TV spin-off, and even its multiple TV movies, are, I feel underrated pieces of sci-fi, and are too typically underrepresented in the geek world. Its premise – of a slave ship of human-looking space aliens crashing on Earth, forcing them to climatize to human culture – is clever and relevant. It’s like “District 9,” but for Americans.

The Tenctonese, often called “Newcomers,” faced the usual problems of culture shock, including, most damningly, racism. Or I suppose it would be specism. But they discovered something even more horrifying about Earth: a large percentage of the planet is coated in salt water, a substance that acts like acid on their skin. Their overseers used to burn them with salt water guns. To land on a planet covered in the stuff had to be uncomfortable.

They did also discover, however, that humans have produced sour milk, a substance that acts like fine booze on their systems. I suppose it’s not a total loss.

6) A double-decker boloney sandwich

in “Troll 2” (1990) 

The denizens of Nilbog are all secretly goblins in disguise. If you eat their alluring meals, you yourself mutate into a plant, and are then eaten by your hosts. The goblins, you see, are vegetarian, and will not touch a meat human, but seem to love planet humans. They also love popcorn. Disturbing, sexual popcorn.

Claudio Fragasso’s seminal cult classic has been called the Best Worst Movie ever made (I even wrote a list about Best Worst Movies once), not least of which for its bizarro vegetarian monsters. The monsters seem to be led by a wicked librarian (Deborah Reed), and are powered (?) by an ancient stone monolith kept in the local church. A ghostly dead grandfather has armed the film’s 10-year-old hero, however, with the one thing that vegetarian goblins hate: a double-decker boloney sandwich.

As Josh (Michael Paul Stephenson) noshes hungrily at his sandwich, the goblins fall on the floor, gasping in pain. The smell of processed meat seems to sicken and kill them. And while some off-the-rack processed meats can be pretty vile, this seems like a kind of backward way to kill a monster. Remember kids: every time you eat a boloney sandwich, a goblin dies.

5) Slim Whitman

in “Mars Attacks!” (1996) 

Otis “Slim” Whitman was a country music powerhouse, whose folksy country tunes, paired with his unmatched yodeling abilities, kept him in the charts for decades, despite any accusation of hip chilren that he is stodgy and old-fashioned. Between the years of 1956 and 1984, he made 45 albums. His first hit song, “Rose Marie” from 1955, managed to stay at the number one spot on the UK Billboard charts for 36 years, a stat that is still listed in the Guinness Book. Mock him if you will, he’s a rich man.

“Mars Attacks!” was a lurid series of gory and sexy trading cards put out by Topps in 1962. They had painted depictions of big-headed aliens mutilating livestock, mutating bugs, killing people, and molesting women. If you’ve never seen the trading cards, find them. In 1996, Tim Burton made a feature film based on the trading cards, and he wisely cleaved close to the cards lurid and wacky tone, making his feature film a stylized spoof of all thing alien invasion.

And one of the best jokes in the feature film? The Martians, hellbent of zapping the celebrity cast with laser guns and stomping on cars with giant robots, are ultimately defeated by the most unlikely weapon: the music of Slim Whitman. It turns out that Slim’s falsetto yodeling (specifically in “Indian Love Call”) causes Martian heads to explode. Wacky, weird, and fun, that is a brilliant weakness.

4) Drugs

in “The Faculty” (1998) 

Kevin Williamson’s subtly intelligent screenplay of his alien invasion flick “The Faculty” is, like “Alien Nation” undeservedly omitted from too many geek conversations. The way the film plays with popular teenage archetypes in playful, intelligent, and bothers to make sure that, however archetypal the students are, they still have personality and individuality. It’s a strong little genre film from the 1990s that is too often forgotten.

The story: A group of students at a mid-American high school have noticed that their teachers and school staff are acting even more cruel and horrible than usual. Ordinarily, they would chalk this up to the usual war between the generations, but the kids discover, through a series of increasingly creepy revelations, that their teachers are indeed being possessed by body-snatching space aliens, bent on world domination. The aliens are amphibious and need water to survive, and our heroes, thanks to the use of a garage-bound homemade drugs lab, discover their one weakness.

Yes, evidently, by snorting a few ounces worth of caffeine pills and getting pleasantly high, you can prove that you’re not a space alien. The aliens, you see, will dry out and melt and crumble if they have even the slightest amount of drugs in their systems. Not only in this a weird weakness to have, but it gives “The Faculty” a strange and unexpected pro-drugs message that adds an edge of camp to proceedings. It’s o.k. kids. Do drugs. If you get high, it means you’re not a flesh-eating hellbeast from space.

3) Stairs

in “RoboCop” (1987) 

In the future, Detroit will be overrun with crime. Street violence will be the primary concern on the minds of the people, and the minds of the politicians. The police force has now been privatized, and their newest crime-fighting gimmick is a series of poorly-thought-out and incredibly well-armed robot warriors, called ED-209s. The ED-209 is about twelve feet tall, nine feet across, and looks like a walking tank, only with more firepower. After an unfortunate demonstration (wherein an executive was shot to bits), the private police rethink their strategy.

Their new answer is RoboCop, a dead police officer resurrected, brainwashed, and put in a cybernetic body. This one is less prone to bouts of unneeded violence. RoboCop is, in fact, too good; He finds that the private police force is rife with corruption and manipulation, and have the local gangs on their payroll. In response, they send the ED-209 after RoboCop to kill him. Luckily, RoboCop was able to give the ED-209 the slip by taking advantage of its one weakness: a small flight of stairs.

Yes, OCP made a gigantic tank-sized robot monster, with stompy feet, huge guns, and a pre-programmed bloodlust… that can’t descend a staircase. Much has been made of this cute little foible of the ED-209, to the point where they referred to its inability to take stairs on “Mystery Science Theater 3000.” What a stupid robot.

2) Logic Problems

Several times throughout “Star Trek” (1966-1969) 

Nomad is a robot concerned with perfection. It invades The Enterprise and “deletes” anything it considers to be imperfect. Capt. Kirk manages to find a weakness in its programming: confront it with its own mistakes, and it’ll have to destroy itself. It does. Easy peasy. In another episode, an army of evil androids is made to explode when the crew of The Enterprise decides to behave strangely and illogically in front of them. In yet another episode, Kirk confronts yet anotehr machine, this one controlling the bahavior of the local residents, by pointing out its mistakes to it. The threat of illogic, it seems, is a grave threat to any mechanical life form.

In “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” the examples are even more numerous. The Borg, for instance, are able to be destroyed by a logic problem with no answer implanted in their brains in two different episodes. A logician is defeated at a strategy game by Data who “out-logics” him.

The conflict between will and reason has long been a staple of sci-fi in general, but it’s no more obviously and glibly put forth than in “Star Trek,” where machines, who cannot think in any other terms than the purely reasonable, are destroyed by the power of will. This teaches us an important survival lesson: if you’re ever confronted with an evil robot bent on destroying you, be sure to ask it the square root of 2. It’ll freeze up until it finds the end. You’ll be able to saunter away quietly at your own pace.

1) The Common Cold

in War of the Worlds (1898) 

The twist ending to H.G. Wells’ sci-fi classic is now so well-known that it’s often taken for granted. Space aliens invade, try to kill all the humans for unknown ends, and are ultimately undone by the presence of germs in our atmosphere. While Wells clearly intended this as a statement of hubris (the most powerful forces in the galaxy are taken out by something innocuous and largely harmless to man), it’s become something of a cliché in the sci-fi world, to the point where it can serve as an inspiration to every item on this list.

And while the book, and subsequent films based on it, also serve as a political allegory, or perhaps allude to the Hobbesian fear of war, it still has to be admitted that a weakness to human viruses is a strange, strange weakness for aliens to have. Are you telling me, Mr. Wells, that a race of space aliens has been watching us from afar, envying us and planning their evil schemes this whole time, building gigantic death machines and craft capable of interplanetary travel, and they haven’t bothered to look into our biology or the salience of the atmosphere? Those are some dumb aliens.

Maybe the aliens were so mad that they didn’t bother to think about such things. Whatever the reason, our would-be alien oppressors were taken out by a sneezing child. If I ever see an alien, and I even suspect it’s going to take over the world or try to kill me. I’m going to sneeze on my hand and wipe it on him. That’ll learn him.

Honorable mentions 

Achilles and his heel.

Samson and his hair.

Water (for The Wicked Witch of the West)

Car horns in “R.O.T.O.R.”

Head and Shoulders brand shampoo in “Evolution”

Bad pop music in “Robotech”

The blood of a cured vampire in “Daybreakers” (that’s pretty strange, right?)

Laughter, from that fear monster in the third Harry Potter story.

“Puberty Love” in “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes”

Carrot cake for SuperBabs.

 Witney Seibold has a weakness for William Castle movies, ’90s grunge, and peanut butter cracker sandwiches. He lives in Los Angeles with his beautiful wife, where he occasionally stares wistfully out his back window, hoping to see strippers fighting in the parking lot across the way. He maintains a movie review ‘blog called Three Cheers for Darkened Years! where he has published over 800 articles to date. He is also half of the voice of The B-Movies Podcast on Crave Online, which he co-hosts with William Bibbiani.