This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Duckluck: Would Superman's death count?
Katherine: I'd say no. The trope seems to be referring to characters who seem invincible and who may have cheated elaborate deaths, but are brought down by mundane diseases and injuries. Superman got killed fighting this guy
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Ununnilium: Hmmm. What about the Marvel Captain Marvel?
Katherine: Yeah, he does.
Bob: Cutting non-examples.
- Boris in Goldeneye. At several points in the film this relatively mild-mannered computer nerd says "I am inveencible!" when he does something particularly noteworthy. He does it again when he appears to be the only one who survived the Elaborate Underground Base's fiery destruction, but he is promptly and rather amusingly killed by some exploding cryogenic tanks.
- In the Discworld book Soul Music, the bartender of Ankh-Morpork's rowdiest bar, The Mended Drum, recounts a regular having walked in the prior week and declaring that he was invincible. The rather pragmatic and Genre Savvy Watchmen ruled his subsequent death to be a suicide. Even Death agrees with this assessment.
Bob: More non-examples.
- In Hancock, the titular Flying Brick hero is shot, as he is slowly losing his powers. He Got Btter though.
A bullet hardly qualifies as "mundane".
- When you think about it, almost all deaths in the Star Trek franchise fit into this trope. Given the fact that they stare down death defying disasters that seem nigh impossible to escape on an average of once every week, it must be difficult for the writers to come up with an even more incredible and unescapable set of circumstances when a character is due to die. This has led to several deaths including:
- Wait, Spock was killed by radiation? After everything they've been through? Radiation poisoning in a locked room is what gets him? Sure it was heroic and all, but... jeeze...
A Heroic Sacrifice hardly qualifies as "mundane".
- Lt. Tasha Yar's rather anticlimactic death in The Next Generation. She had survived everything from growing up on a collapsed civilization that had degenerated into lawless world of murder, pillaging, rape and violence, to a battle to the death with poisoned blades, to being Security Head of the Enterprise.... And yet she ended up being killed by a giant puddle of black goo.
A giant puddle of black goo hardly qualifies as "mundane".
- The fact that the crew of the Enterprise have survived so many freaking disasters makes Data getting himself blown up by an uncomfortable set of circumstances just a bit jarring, albeit heroic.
"Getting blown up" hardly qualifies as "mundane".
- Non-disease variant: In the Japanese sci-fi action flick The Returner, the villain seems to survive all manner of gun battles and horribly massive explosions, one after another. When he finally faces the hero one last time, torn and battered, but with Terminator-like relentlessness, he and the hero fire on each other simultaneously... and the villain throws his hand up in front of his face as though he honestly believed he could catch the bullet. Turns out he can't.
A bullet to the head hardly qualifies as "mundane".
- Serenity. "I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I..."
A giant harpoon through the chest hardly qualifies as "mundane".
- Another Buffy example: the Judge, touted as an invincible demon who would burn anything non-evil, and supposedly can not be harmed by any weapon forged by man... and is taken out with a rocket launcher, since weapons forged by man had come a long way since his time. As Buffy says, "That was then. This is now."
A rocket launcher hardly qualifies as "mundane".
- Metal Gear Solid 4, well, where to begin? Liquid/Ocelot finally dies not when Snake beats the ever-loving shit out of him, but when he suffers a heart attack from FOXDIE. EVA dies not from jumping into an inferno, but when she suffers a heart attack from FOXDIE. Big Boss, who by all rights should be dead seventeen times over, dies not from the numerous deaths, but when he suffers a heart attack from FOXDIE. Snake, on the other hand, handily averts this trope about fifteen times in this game alone. And don't even get started on Raiden's aversions...
- Far more dramatically, the first game had the seemingly invincible Liquid Snake raise his gun to shoot the main character, and suddenly keel over because of a heart attack. It's a lot less Deus ex Machina than it sounds.
The heart attacks in the Metal Gear Solid series aren't natural.
