  We show that, in a broad class of continuous time random walks (CTRW), a
small external field can turn diffusion from standard into anomalous. We
illustrate our findings in a CTRW with trapping, a prototype of subdiffusion in
disordered and glassy materials, and in the L\'evy walk process, which
describes superdiffusion within inhomogeneous media. For both models, in the
presence of an external field, rare events induce a singular behavior in the
originally Gaussian displacements distribution, giving rise to power-law tails.
Remarkably, in the subdiffusive CTRW, the combined effect of highly fluctuating
waiting times and of a drift yields a non-Gaussian distribution characterized
by long spatial tails and strong anomalous superdiffusion.
