History Main / GiantEqualsInvincible

* Perhaps not as ridiculous a trope as it seems; a 50 meter tall, 20,000+ ton monster would most certainly ''need'' to be made of a super strong, hyper-resistant, indestructable substance, simply to ''keep itself from falling apart at the seams.'' Any monster that huge that was so flimsy as to be vulnerable to conventional weapons would be squashed by its own mass before we'd ever need to fire a shot. If on the odd chance you ever do [[TemptingFate meet a kaiju IRL]] and it doesn't collapse into jelly the moment it steps out of the ocean, you can [[GenreSavvy safely assume this trope is in effect]].

* The ''MonsterHunter'' series heavily averts this trope in its later monster hunts.

* Monster Hunter Freedom heavily averts this trope in its later monsters.

* The ''[[EarthDefenseForce2017 Earth Defense Force]]'' series gleefully averts and inverts this. You play as a wimpy looking guy in a baggy jumpsuit who is tasked with killing swarms of giant bugs, towering mechs, kaiju, flying saucers, and walking fortresses. On foot. With conventional weaponry like assault rifles and shotguns. And it works!

** They don't seem to be ''completely'' invincible. After all, the poachers are able to catch them, and the movie acts as though the head poacher's elephant gun would have worked had the [[DesignatedHero environmental terrorist]] not stolen his ammo. Also, there's the instant death coral poison gun that got [[TooDumbToLive tangled in some cargo netting.]]

* ''{{Evangelion}}'' takes this one seriously. On the one hand, they try bullets, missiles, and clean nukes on the angels; but [[spoiler:[[AssimilationPlot part of]]]] the reason the Evas exist is that the Angels are protected by a force field (they call it an AT field) that only the Evas can cancel out with their own AT fields. Though there are cases where Science Fiction Based Weapons DO defeat them.

* "http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MonsterHunter" heavily averts this trope in its later monsters.

* "[[Monster Hunter]]" heavily averts this trope in its later monsters.

*** Elephant guns aren't strictly necessary for elephant hunting. In the olden days of unregulated slaughter for ivory many an elephant was killed with the lowly 7x57mm hunting cartridge, today now mostly used (at least in the United States) to bring down the relatively tiny whitetail deer.

* Averted in ''[[PerdidoStreetStation The Scar]]'', where the gargantuan avanc slowly succumbs to infection after it gets injured by the grindylow. We don't actually see what weapons they'd used to damage it, but the lakeful of pus it emits while ailing is a definite sign that it's the infection, not the wounds themselves, that proves fatal.

* One of the (many) common complaints against MichaelBay's second ''{{Transformers}}'' movie is the presence of human soldiers with rifles during the battle scenes. It seems that they're only there because Bay wants to see their bodies pinwheel through the air from explosions. Never mind that we see [[BigBad Megatron]] himself driven back by concentrated fire from the fleshlings.

* In ''TheSimpsons'' "Treehouse of Horror V", giant advertising mascots go on a rampage. Predictably, conventional weapons are useless, but it turns out that [[YourMindMakesItReal our attention makes them real]] and they'll [[GodsNeedPrayerBadly keel over]] if we [[EarWorm just don't look.]]

* In ''{{Godzilla}}: Final Wars'', fans had every reason to expect invincible kaiju. Ryuhei Kitamura attempted to overcome this trope with superhuman mutants and flying battlecruisers with lasers. YourMileageMayVary on whether or not he succeeded.

** Subverted with the TearJerker ''Godzilla VS Destroyah,'' in which what kills Godzilla isn't a high-tech weapon but rather an overdose of radiation, which causes him to go into nuclear meltdown.

Of course, there's a good reason many monsters can't be stopped by normal guns. How lame would it be if {{Godzilla}} emerged from the ocean only to be killed by a volley of missiles? [[InNameOnly Oh, wait.]]

Anyway, it would seem that audiences usually like to see a [[PlayingTennisWithTheBoss more]] [[YourMindMakesItReal creative]] [[CosmicKeystone method]] for destroying the monster than MoreDakka.

* GGundam has [[{{Badass}} Master Asia]]. He can stop mecha-scaled bullets with his bare hands, kill Mobile Suits with his scarf alone, and can punch a building out of the way with his student. Size alone doesn't automatically make anything invincible here.

* Played with in One Piece. While more powerful characters tend to be bigger, giants are easily taken down by the more powerful characters. The most brutal subversion was Oars Jr, who though he could take cannonballs with ease and smash through smaller giants (wrap your brain around that), it meant for the truly powerful characters, he just presented a bigger target.

* ''{{Ultraman}}'' does this too. The Science Patrol always attacks the MonsterOfTheWeek with EnergyWeapon handguns, airplanes, etc., but only Ultraman can actually defeat the monster.
** Averted occasionally - for example, it's the Science Patrol that actually destroys Zetton (the monster who actually 'kills' Ultraman). It takes circumstances and (often) special one-of-a-kind weaponry, but the human teams ''are'' capable of protecting Earth on their own.
* The trope is very much averted in {{Macross}} for both the Zentradi and their battle pods. While Zentradi (at least those of Breti's type) are powerful enough to dismember GiantMecha with their bare hands, human weaponry or Zentradi weapons wielded by humans can take them down in an instant.

*** Elephant guns aren't strictly necessary for elephant hunting. In the olden days of unregulated slaughter for ivory many an elephant was killed withthe lowly 7x57mm hunting cartridge, today now mostly used (at least in the United States) to bring down the relatively tiny whitetail deer.

** They are resistant to many small arms fire, that is what [[BFG elephant guns]] are for.