There's a lot that's unknown about the Quirks in My Hero Academia, such as how they came to exist or how they spread across the globe. One of the first facts explained about Quirks is that about 80% of the global population has one. But what if that fact isn't entirely true and far more people have quirks than initially assumed?
A Reddit user has come up with a theory that explains how the actual number of Quirkless individuals might be a lot lower than 20%. In their post, u/dokotathehuman suggests that many people in the My Hero Academia world have useless or extremely subtle Quirks that simply go unnoticed. Not every Quirk is as prominent as being able to shoot fire or manipulate gravity. Mutation Quirks, like Mashirao Ojiro's Tail or Mezo Shoji's Dupli-Arms, are easy to spot but very specific, and low-key Quirks have been displayed before.
For example, Stain's Quirk, Hero Killer, allows him to paralyze a target by tasting their blood. If Stain wasn't so violent, he might never have discovered that this was his specific power. This also applies to Saiko Intelli, whose Quirk boosts her intelligence when drinking tea. What if she never drank tea or just assumed she concentrated better when she had her favorite drink? U/dokotathehuman proposes that many people who believe themselves to be Quirkless simply haven't found the right conditions to activate their quirk, or that it's so mundane it's practically invisible. The abilities to "always fart silently" or "breathe in space" were some "powers" given as examples.
There does exist a test that determines if a person has a Quirk or not. Those born with a Quirk have one joint in their pinky toe, while those born Quirkless have two. However, this test isn't 100% reliable. Many people who are born every day have missing appendages or appendages that aren't fully formed. Surely those people are still capable of having Quirks even if they are born without a pinky toe at all. Moreover, considering the vast number of random Quirks, there has to be at least one person whose Quirk is that they have two joints in their pinky toe.
There's also the possibility that a person does discover they only have one pinky toe joint but never figures out their quirk and assumes the test was wrong. As u/doktathehuman theorizes, it's hard to figure out you can breathe in space if you've never been into orbit. With the high probability of receiving an extremely obscure or useless power, u/doktathehuman suggests that the true number of Quirkless individuals is closer to 15% or even as low as 5%.
An even more interesting idea is that every single person in My Hero Academia has a Quirk and no one is truly Quirkless. Maybe if your Quirk isn't strong enough, it doesn't remove your pinky toe joint. A person could believe they're Quirkless when in reality, their Quirk just makes them slightly better or different at one specific thing. How many people in the world are just a little bit faster or stronger than the average person, but not quite enough to qualify as superhuman?
There is still much to be learned about Quirks and how they affect the human population. Regardless of whether or not the theory is true, it's still exciting to imagine that every person has a special power just waiting for the right circumstances to be discovered.
