History Main / AcquiredPoisonImmunity

* In ''StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', the Dominion diplomats, the Vorta, have a genetically engineered immunity to virtually any poison, and even enjoy testing the levels of toxicity in the concoctions.

* ''NetHack'' (what else?) features varieties of poisonous meats that have a slight chance of providing permanent poison resistance when consumed.
** A similar roguelike game, ADOM, gives poison resistance to players who eat corpses of giant spiders.

* Christopher Walken's ''SaturdayNightLive'' [[TheLeisureSuitLarry smooth-talking ladies' man]] character "The Continental" has been maced so many times he's built up an immunity to it.

* ''{{Spacetrawler}}'': Dmitri believes that a person can become immune to stun guns, and has started shooting himself repeatedly in order to acquire it. [[spoiler:So far, it doesn't work, but he has acquired a taste for getting stunned.]]
* [[TheAdventuresOfDoctorMcNinja Dan McNinja]] doesn't need to develop an immunity to poisons. His body separates it out and stores it up so he can squirt it out of his eyes like a toad.

* TruthInTelevision for many snake handlers or bee keepers. It's possible to build an immunity to some types of venom by being near-constantly exposed to small doses of them. In fact, people with strong allergic reactions (such as individuals who would normally go into anaphylactic shock from receiving a single bee sting, or unwittingly eating a product containing peanuts) can build up a resistance in such a way, although doing it safely takes hundreds of injections over the course of several years.

!!Examples

* Most of the Gourmet Hunters in {{Toriko}} have resistance to various poisons due to incidental or deliberate exposure. Coco is an extreme example, having been exposed to so many toxins that he's able to synthesize them within his body, and on the rare occasion that he's hit with a poison that he ISN'T immune to, he can adjust his immune system within seconds.

* Also spoofed in the NewspaperComic CloseToHome, where a golfer subjects himself to gradually stronger shocks of electricity to build immunity to lightning strikes.

* In Woody Allen's ''Bananas'', Gen. Vargas has a servant on hand to taste his meals in case they are poisoned. One meal does turn out to be poisoned, but the General eats it, anyway, claiming that he's been poisoned so many times to have developed immunity.
* In ThankYouForSmoking, terrorists [[spoiler: try to kill the main character by covering him in nicotine patches, which would overwhelm any normal person, and leaving him naked on the lap of the Lincoln Memorial]]. He survives, and recovers fairly quickly, because he'd been chain smoking for years and had built up a [[BlessedWithSuck superhuman tolerance to nicotine.]] Unfortunately (fortunately?) it also means [[CursedWithAwesome he can never smoke again.]]
* In the 2008 remake of GetSmart, 99 sprays Max with knockout gas. Max says that he developed an immunity to it, then passes out while cursing, "Oh, it's the new stuff!"

* The main character in The Journey of The Catechist gets his water skin poisoned by a snake, in a very low dose, for being nice to it. This gives him immunity to a poisoned dart used by the Big Bad later. Not that it helped much.
* This has been foreshadowed for the Dornish nobility in ''A Song of Ice and Fire'', as it is rumored that the very best hot sauces that the nobility would be buying contain extremely low doses of snake venom.

* In TheHungerGames [[spoiler:President Snow tried to build up a resistance to all of the poisons used to kill his opponents, but wasn't always successful, hence the smell of blood]].

* in "TheVampireDiaries" Katherine has built up an immunity to vervain, she can still get disabled by it if taken by surprise by a large enough dose but she gets over it much faster. Stefan uses this technique to get over his addiction to human blood.

* In ''Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles'', you meet the Selkie De Nam, who decides that the best way to deal with the deadly Miasma is to try to build up a resistance to it by drinking water with miasma mixed in. [[spoiler: It doesn't end well]].

* NeverwinterNights (and D&D 3.5) has acquired poison resistance as part of the assassin class.

* The next version of DwarfFortress is set to have this as a feature.
* One WorldOfWarcraft Horde quest has the player fight venomhide ravasaurs (basically venomous raptors) and get splashed with their toxic blood in order to become immune. This is the first step to getting a [[BraggingRightsReward venomhide ravasaur mount]].
* FalloutNewVegas allows you to build up an immunity to broken limbs. Somehow.

* Snake Eyes in GIJoeRenegades takes multiple hits from poison darts thanks to a built up immunity. They're still enough to weaken him though.

[[folder: Tabletop games]]
* In Warhammer fantasy, ogre butchers (wizards that eats all kinds of dangerous things to cast spells) have the immune to poison rule, so one would assume they have built up a very handy poison immunity.
* In the Pulp RPG SpiritOfTheCentury there is an endurance stunt called Developed Immunities that gives a + 2 to resist any poison the character hasn't previously ingested, and + 6 to any he or she has. This makes the character immune to all but the worst of poisons and unluckiest of rolls.
* Of course, DungeonsAndDragons has this trope in spades. [[PrestigeClass Assassins]] get it automatically, and Dwarfs have an innate resistance.

<<|ActionAdventureTropes|>>
<<|ExampleAsAThesis|>>

* Played for laughs in OnePiece with Magellan, whose exposure to his own poison leaves him stuck on the toilet for ten hours a day.
** Speaking of Magellan, after he nearly kills [[spoiler:Luffy]] with a cocktail of extremely deadly poisons, [[spoiler:Luffy]] proves immune to one of those poisons when it's used on him again in a different story arc.

This trope is officially named Mithridatism, after a king who made use of the effect. It backfired when he was defeated and [[DrivenToSuicide tried to commit suicide]]; [[BlessedWithSuck his immunity to poison worked so well]] that he ended up hiring a mercenary [[ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice to run him through.]]

* In ''NinjaScroll'', the character Kagero is a poison taster for her master and has become totally immune to poison. It also means that her bodily fluids are highly toxic which is good for assassination, not so much for potential love interests.

* Subverted in OnePiece with Magellan's case, whose exposure to his own poison leaves him stuck on the toilet for ten hours a day.
** It should be noted that it is not Magellan's own poisons that make him sick, but all the spoiled and poisonous food he eats because they can't kill him. Still, one would think at this point he's eaten enough to be immune to at least some of the poisons he ingests.

* An issue of [[{{ComicBook/Batman}} Batman]] revealed that the title character regularly devises antidotes and methods of controlled exposure to Scarecrow's fear gas. However, every time Scarecrow attacks Batman with a gas, he changes the formula afterwards so that immunizing against the previous has no effect. Batman does it [[CrazyPrepared simply on the off chance that Scarecrow didn't change it this one time.]]

* {{Wolverine}} has assassin Reiko invoke this trope with blowfish toxin, which Jubilee learns while dodging attacks. Fortunately for Jubilee [[spoiler: Reiko owed Wolverine her life, and so spared her when she learned of Jubilee's connection to Logan.]]
* Harley Quinn is immune to Poison Ivy's poisons because of all the uh... [[LesYay time]] they spent together.
** Although in the animated series, Ivy merely injects her with antitoxins.

* In ThankYouForSmoking, terrorists [[spoiler: try to kill the main character by covering him in nicotine patches, which would overwhelm any normal person, and leaving him naked on the lap of the [[AbrahamLincoln Lincoln Memorial]]. He survives, and recovers fairly quickly, because he'd been chain smoking for years and had built up a [[BlessedWithSuck superhuman tolerance to nicotine.]] Unfortunately (fortunately?) it also means [[CursedWithAwesome he can never smoke again.]]]]

** Better yet, he actually uses them as ''seasonings'' - he tastes one character's meal and proclaims that it's clean, but would be all the better with some toad.
** The [[OurVampiresAreDifferent vampires]] in ''Discworld/CarpeJugulum'' have also built up a resistance to garlic, sunlight, holy water, [[BeatItByCompulsion vampiric OCD,]] and holy symbols by this method. [[spoiler:It backfires, sort of. When they lose the immunity, they realize they're surrounded by ''the shapes'' of holy symbols they wouldn't recognize if they hadn't been shown so many different ones becoming immune in the first place.]]
* In ''TheCountOfMonteCristo'', old Monsieur Noirtier survives a murder attempt using poison because he has been taking a medicine that contains the same compound, and has built up a resistance to it. Realizing that his granddaughter and heir Valentine is also a target, he starts giving her small doses of his medicine; this saves her life when the poisoner has a go at her. (Of course the poisoner later tries again using a different poison, but by then Valentine's LoveInterest Maximilien has called in his friend the Count of Monte Cristo, who saves the day in his own inimitable style.)

* In the DashiellHammett short story "Fly Paper" (1929) a woman wants to poison her abusive boyfriend, but is afraid he'll be suspicious if she gives him something without drinking it herself. After reading ''TheCountOfMonteCristo'' she takes small doses of arsenic (extracted from fly paper) to build up an immunity, but instead fatally poisons herself. In discussing the case afterward the detectives reveal that [[DidNotDoTheResearch the book is wrong]]. While some people have a natural resistance to arsenic, it's not possible to build up an immunity through controlled exposure.
** Except that the poison of choice in''TheCountOfMonteCristo'' is in fact [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brucine Brucine]], and '''is''' subject to Mithridatism.

* This has been foreshadowed for the Dornish nobility in A Song of Ice and Fire, as it is rumored that the very best hot sauces that the nobility would be buying contain extremely low doses of snake venom.

* In TheHungerGames [[spoiler: President Snow tried to build up a resistance to all of the poisons used to kill his opponents, but wasn't always successful, hence the smell of blood]]

** ...Or, if you're not a fan of Normal types, you could always use a steel type.
** [[FightFireWithFire Or another Poison-type]].

* As noted above, he official term for this (Mithridatism) comes from King Mithridates VI, a king of Pontus. He feared assassination so badly that he took small doses of poison regularly in order to become immune to the poison's effects. This backfired when the king was eventually conquered. He attempted to commit suicide by poisoning himself only to find that he was immune; depending on the version of the story you hear, he then either fell upon his sword or had an underling run him through. In either case, the poem says it best: [[http://www.bartelby.net/123/62.html "Mithridates, he died old."]]

* It is said that this is mainly the reason why the Poison Dart Frog is so hideously poisonous: It was being eaten by a certain species of snake, so it developed poison to protect itself. Then the snake adapted to the poison, so the frog developed stronger poison. After several hundred generations of evolution ensuing, the frog won the arms race, and now it can't be eaten by ''anything''. However, the native people of South America now dry the frogs to use the poison in their spears.
** CriticalResearchFailure here. The Poison Dart Frog doesn't "make" its poison; it eats other toxin-filled ants and plants and [[http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/amphibians/poison-frog/ metabolizes their venom.]]

* Of course, DungeonsAndDragons has this trope in spades. [[PrestigeClass Assassins]] get it automatically, and Dwarfs have an innate resistance (Which is parodied, where else? in TheOrderOfTheStick).
** Drow were quickly turned this way, because it makes sense. In ''The Drow of the Underdark'' -- the first {{sourcebook}} dedicated to them more than a Monstrous Manual entry -- it ranged from +4 vs. random ingested poisons to +7 vs. spiders' and their own sleep poison (it's too ubiquitous and safe to ''not'' try this).

* Gilgamesh Wulfenbach of ''GirlGenius'' has immunity to many many things. Because his father "figures that a ruler should be... ''hard to kill''", what with the people across all the Europe who upset at killing that MadScientist or bombing this town in process... which extends to [[OverlordJr his heir]]. [[spoiler: This came in useful in the current arc where Tarvek suffered a particularly nasty disease -- Gil was able to disregard the risk of infection.]]

In short, this trope references the development of immunity to a particular drug or poison by taking small doses for a long time.

* It basically happens with all drugs. The most widespread example might be caffeine: most coffee-drinking adults and energy drink-drinking teenagers acquire a practical immunity to caffeine (in ordinary doses). A cup of coffee or two is rather effective at preventing the withdrawal symptoms than actually stimulating the nervous system of the drinker (though more serious caffeine abuse is still effective). The same thing happens with alcohol, nicotine and most illegal drugs or prescription painkillers and sleeping pills; they are dangerous because the effective dose rises faster than the lethal dose.