* ''Doc West'': The title character trains three guys for a fight match, making them focusing on their stronger point: kicks for one, BerserkButton for another, and HardHead for the third. This last one is trained to ''get punched in the face for several minutes, without countering or dodging on purpose, to tire the opponent''. It works.
* ''Series/{{Flashpoint}}'': In one episode, Sam is caught in a bomb blast and knocked out for about fifteen minutes. When he comes to he's completely fine. Notably out of place in a series that treats injuries more-or-less realistically.
* ''Series/ForeverKnight'': When the vampire protagonist-turned-cop is shot in the head he naturally regenerates, and his friends have to scramble to cover things up. [=LaCroix=] steals the X-Ray and hypnotises the doctor into saying that the bullet merely glanced off the protagonist's "exceptionally thick" skull.
* ''HappyDays'': In the episode where [[spoiler: the restaurant burns down due to Chachi being, well, Chachi]], Fonzie and the gang are trapped in the bathroom, and the Fonz gets the bright idea to open up a pathway by putting on his motorcycle helmet and bashing a hole in the wall. After crashing through the wall, he pulls his head out, and one of his friends asks what the wall was made out of because it broke so easily. The Fonz calmly replies "Concrete" and falls unconscious. Other than knocking himself out, he suffered no injuries from headbutting through a concrete wall.

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* Vyvyan of ''TheYoungOnes'' who, in one episode, strikes oil by cracking the basement floor with his head, later helps dig it out by headbutting the hole (which leads to Neil accidentally putting a pickaxe through his head), and, from his first appearance, has metal studs on his forehead.
* In ''{{Smallville}}'', people get knocked unconscious OncePerEpisode. No exceptions.
* ''Series/ForeverKnight''. When the vampire protagonist-turned-cop is shot in the head he naturally regenerates, and his friends have to scramble to cover things up. [=LaCroix=] steals the X-Ray and hypnotises the doctor into saying that the bullet merely glanced off the protagonist's "exceptionally thick" skull.
* In ''{{Scrubs}}'', Dr. Kelso apparently has a "head like a mountain goat", as evidenced by an occasion where the Janitor hit him over the head with his mop and it "only made him mad".
* ''Doc West'' trains three guys for a fight match, making them focusing on their stronger point: kicks for one, BerserkButton for another, and HardHead for the third. This last is trained to ''get punched in the face for several minutes, without countering or dodging on purpose, to tire the opponent''. It works.
* Avon of ''Series/BlakesSeven'' was knocked out an impressive number of times through the series, apparently without damaging his IQ (although he did go slightly off the edge in the last season).
* Averted in ''MightyMorphinPowerRangers'': Kimberly, while practicing after being exhausted by a battle, falls off the balance beam and hits her head. She suffers a concussion and has to be put in the hospital.
* Prince Arthur on '''Series/{{Merlin}}'''. Repeatedly. Like, every time Merlin has to do a spell in front of him, he's conveniently knocked out. Morgana as well.
* James West and Artemus Gordon of ''Series/TheWildWildWest'' should have been prime candidates for brain damage after the season ''1'', and the subsequent 3.
* In an episode of ''Series/{{Flashpoint}}'', Sam is caught in a bomb blast and knocked out for about fifteen minutes. When he comes to he's completely fine. Notably out of place in a series that treats injuries more-or-less realistically.

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* ''Series/{{Merlin}}'': Prince Arthur. Repeatedly. Like, every time Merlin has to do a spell in front of him, he's conveniently knocked out. Morgana as well.
* ''MightyMorphinPowerRangers'': AvertedTrope. Kimberly, while practicing after being exhausted by a battle, falls off the balance beam and hits her head. She suffers a concussion and has to be put in the hospital.
* ''Series/{{Revolution}}'': Charlie must have a bionic skull. In Episode 9, not only does she survive [[spoiler: getting shot in said noggin - a grazing wound only, but she then hits her head on concrete steps hard enough to cause bleeding and a near-death experience, yet she eventually wakes up and shrugs it off, even though]] in real life (as has been proven in the sad case of actress Natasha Richardson and many other cases) a head wound of that nature has the potential to be fatal.
* ''{{Scrubs}}'': Dr. Kelso apparently has a "head like a mountain goat", as evidenced by an occasion where the Janitor hit him over the head with his mop and it "only made him mad".
* ''{{Smallville}}'': People get knocked unconscious OncePerEpisode. No exceptions.
* ''Series/TheWildWildWest'': James West and Artemus Gordon should have been prime candidates for brain damage after the season ''1'', and the subsequent 3.
* ''TheYoungOnes'': Vyvyan who, in one episode, strikes oil by cracking the basement floor with his head, later helps dig it out by headbutting the hole (which leads to Neil accidentally putting a pickaxe through his head), and, from his first appearance, has metal studs on his forehead.

27th Apr '13 5:43:12 PM TiggersAreGreat

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27th Apr '13 5:42:51 PM TiggersAreGreat

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This page has gotten so big that splitting into sub-pages would make it easier to work with. Don't panic, you'll find the examples in the sub-pages listed.

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[[folder:Anime & Manga]]
* Killy, the protagonist from ''{{Blame}}'', takes more physical punishment than any normal human would ever be able to survive. Most notably in one chapter, where he gets half his head ''blown off''. It has its consequences, naturally, but he still gets better.
* In one episode, ''Manga/SailorMoon'' is thrown upside down into the air and hits the ground with her head without any lasting consequences. To be fair, all Sailor Senshi are regularly tossed around by the MonsterOfTheWeek and usually don't sport any visible injuries, but that example was particularly jarring.
* Averted in ''Manga/BlackLagoon'' when Revy actually gets a concussion, rendering her non-responsive for about a whole episode, during her fight against [[spoiler:[[NinjaMaid Roberta]]]]. Granted, in the anime it took no less than a near-direct hit with a grenade launcher (just an armor-piercing round to the shoulder in the manga), but still...
** She fully recovered less than an hour later, immediately after being in ''a car crash''.
* The Saiyans from ''Manga/DragonBall Z'' generally seem to have this, although Goku -- despite the EasyAmnesia he suffered as a child -- seems to be a notable case, and it was commented on multiple times by other characters, including fellow Saiyan Vegeta.
** He did beat a guy in a combat robot suit by ''headbutting it.''
-->'''Krillin''': I hope he's got a seat belt in [the Saiyan Space Pod].
-->'''Yamcha''': Why? To protect the ship from Goku's head?
* Ry&#333;ga Hibiki of ''Manga/RanmaOneHalf''. Even for someone who uses SupernaturalMartialArts, he's considered insanely tough. His most well-know "technique" is the Bakusai Tenketsu, TrainingFromHell in which he slammed himself face-first into boulders so much that he toughened up way into the higher grades of MadeOfIron. There was one gag where he headbutted a concrete pole so hard that he not only dented it (noting that it didn't hurt in the slightest), but it actually cracked in half and fell on his head with enough force to shatter into pieces after he turned around. This resulted in a CranialEruption and him commenting that it hurt a little. In at least the anime version of the "Waterproof Soap" story, after Ry&#333;ga's apparent "cure" has been revealed, Ranma [[CuteBruiser casually lifts a huge boulder]] and slams him on the head with it, only for Ry&#333;ga to pop back up, completely oblivious, causing it to flip over and crush Ranma instead.
* In the manga ''[[TekkenChinmi Ironfist Chinmi]]'', one of the first [[VillainOfTheWeek minor opponents]] that Chinmi fights are a pair of identical twin martial artists called [[MeaningfulName the Stonehead Brothers]]. They've taken this trope and made a form of MartialArtsAndCrafts based around it.
* ''Manga/YuYuHakusho'': Yusuke Urameshi displays this, most notably during the Dark Tournament when an opponent tries to [[TapOnTheHead incapacitate him with a large rock.]] Not only does this only barely stun Yusuke, the rock crumbles to pieces on impact.
** It got started way back when he was still a BadassNormal. When Yusuke gets into a BarBrawl during an attempt to rescue Keiko from a rival school's gang, one of the {{mooks}} [[GrievousBottleyHarm hits him over the head with a beer bottle]]. Yusuke says "ow", then complains about the guy wasting good brew.
* Possibly subverted in ''WolfsRain'': Following [[spoiler:the death of his lover, Hamona]], Darcia violently and repeatedly smashes his head against the wall of his palace. He eventually goes insane, but not before seemingly recovering completely from the head trauma with no ill effects.
** His insanity may instead be the result of [[spoiler:Jagara's poison]].
* {{Doraemon}} always do this as his FinishingMove against the BigBad in the movie (some of them). {{Justified|Trope}} since Doraemon is a robot after all.
* Appears in ''TokyoMagnitude8'', [[spoiler:where it is horrifically subverted. Yuuki is struck in the head by a piece of the Tokyo Tower and dies a few episodes (approximately a day) later from cerebral hemorrhage, showing increasing amounts of weakness and nausea after the impact.]]
* In an episode of ''SayonaraZetsubouSensei'', the girls go to break Sensei out of government confinement using their respective skills. The ApologizesALot girl, Ai Kaga bangs her head on a security person every time she bows to apologize, and kills tons of people through the hardness of her head.
* ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'' gets his head slammed into the ground a few times in the series. Most of the time, his [[SuperPoweredEvilSide Kyuubi state]] reacts to the trauma.
** Pain. In Naruto Shippuden 167, he was punched in the face, hammered into the ground by a 5-10 ton boulder, and thrown with incredible force head-first into a cliff, courtesy of [[spoiler:[[UnstoppableRage 6-tailed]]]] Naruto. ''And he didn't get even a scratch.'' Considering he's practically undead, that makes sense of why he didn't die.
** The fairly strong Jugo punched Killer Bee ''right in the face'' (and followed it up with a [[PowerFist rocket boosting]], but Bee appeared to have dodged that [[OffscreenTeleportation somehow]]), which doesn't slow him down at all.
* Sakuragi from SlamDunk has a really hard head. His most well-known fighting move is his headbutt. It doesn't even hurt him when he headbutts the floor of a basketball court with all his might.
* Black*Star from ''Manga/SoulEater'' once fell from the sky and landed head-first in a crater and comes out unscathed.
* While it is never officially stated, in ''SaintSeiya'' the eponymous Seiya is hit in his head very often. And by "very often" we mean every single time there's an unstoppable, all-powerful technique used on Seiya, it'll unerringly hit him in the head. And in fact he usually seems to be more affected by attacks in his body than attacks in his thick skull.
* In ''Manga/FullmetalAlchemist'', Winry hits Ed on the head with a wrench, often, and he is usually shown collapsed on the ground, bleeding more than enough to be worrying. Strangely, always PlayedForLaughs, since he inevitably recovers.
* The titular ''Manga/InuYasha'' tends to get thrown through the terrain face-first a lot. Usually, the terrain gives up. In fact, he never responds to head injures, and the only damage he pays attention to is [[{{Determinator}} the kind that]] [[MadeOfIron makes it harder to swing his]] BFS around.
* In ''Anime/NatsuiroKiseki'', Natsumi hurls a wooden bucket at Koharu's head, since she thought Koharu was a boy peeping on her and her friends in the bath. This renders Koharu unconscious for several minutes, during which nobody helps her, not even her own twin sister Chiharu. When Koharu finally wakes up she proceeds as normal with only a mild headache.
* Horribly, terrible subverted in AngelBeats. A "simple" blow to the head from a bottle flung by her drunk father causes a character to collapse a few days later from intracranial bleeding, wake up for a couple hours with complete aphasia, and then ''die''.
* [[SpellMyNameWithAnS Harry/Halley]] Tribeca of ''Manga/MagicalGirlLyricalNanohaVivid'' demonstrates just how hard her head is when she counters SuperStrongChild Rio's [[ElementalPunch electrically-charged punch]] with a head butt, and manages to injure her opponent's fist while taking minimal damage herself. 
[[/folder]]

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[[folder:Literature]]
* In the ''Literature/GarrettPI'' series, Garrett [[DrinkingGame WILL]] get knocked out at least once per novel.
* In ''Literature/NancyDrew'' (and the very similar ''Literature/TheHardyBoys''), the protagonists and their friends were knocked unconscious multiple times in every book. It apparently didn't cause any lasting damage: Nancy never lost her detecting touch.
* Subverted in SandyMitchell's CiaphasCain novel ''Duty Calls''. Cain suffers a realistic head injury, putting him out for three days and inspiring nausea and dizziness. Cain plays it up or down as suits him, causing other characters to remind him that such an injury is serious.
** Played half straight in ''For the Emperor'', where Jurgen takes a glancing hit to the head. He would have died if not for his thick skull. Other than that, it is played realistically.
*** Uhm, no mention of the Carapace armor helmet he was wearing at the time?
** In William King's ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'' novel ''SpaceWolf'', when Ragnor considers that injuries can be more severe than they look, he remembers stories of men who suffered a light blow to the head, fought through a battle -- and dropped dead.
* Subverted and [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] in DorothyLSayers' ''Murder Must Advertise''; LordPeterWimsey comments on how the hero in an in-universe piece of fiction lightly shrugs off all injuries, while Charles Parker has been incapacitated by one head injury.
* ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'', ''Discworld/{{Maskerade}}'': Nanny Ogg is hit over the head with a champagne bottle. It does stun her, but she recovers quite quickly because there is some Dwarf in the Ogg ancestry.
** Earlier, in ''Discworld/WitchesAbroad'', Nanny has a house land on her. Turns out her witch-hat is reinforced, and Nanny survives because all the hat had to do was bust through the rotton floorboards of the lowest floor.
** Averted in ''Discworld/MonstrousRegiment'': the medically-trained Igorina very carefully taps a guard's head in the right spot to knock him out without badly injuring him. (It helps that he stands still to let her do it, wanting it to seem like he put up a fight against the title regiment.)
** Invoked in "Discworld/NightWatch", where Vimes stops his younger self from hitting someone on the head in a sneak attack due to him knowing the risk of it killing the man.
* Kahlan, in ''SwordOfTruth'', becomes determined to sneak out of a palace at one point, and is very reluctant to hit any guard who might insist she stay inside for her own safety, as she knows that she could as easily kill them as knock them out.
* In the two-part ''Series/DoctorWho'' Literature/EighthDoctorAdventures novel ''Interference'', Sarah Jane [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] this, by pointing out the risk of severe damage, and asks an alien exactly how they manage to do it without inflicting said severe damage, ''every damn time''.
* In P.C. Hodgell's ''ChroniclesOfTheKencyrath'', heroine Jame is hit over the head at least twice per book, and recovers just fine. However, she's not human, and is or a race with a powerful HealingFactor; furthermore, even with that, she suffers realistic concussion effects from the worse beatings (ones that a normal human would have died from).
* Played straight in the works of German author Karl May, where a knockout blow to the head is practically the AuthorAvatar's signature move. (His ''nom de guerre'' in the fictional West is "Old Shatterhand" for a reason.) Very occasionally subverted when a suitably nasty villain dropped by this does ''not'' come to his senses anymore... but usually it works just fine, in line with his stated aversion to killing other human beings.
** Occasionally, he hits his targets too ''lightly'', and they wake up too soon, usually adding humor to an otherwise suspenseful scene. Or it could make it even ''more'' suspenseful, if he ends up being caught by the enemy.
* [[PlayingWithATrope Played with]] all over the place in ''TheBelgariad''. [[TheHero Garion]] has a habit of hitting his head on things to no long-term effect, which eventually becomes a RunningGag and is even {{lampshaded}} by Belgarath. The heroes also knock out whole swathes of {{Mooks}}, who conveniently come to when it's necessary to interrogate them. It's averted in a few notable cases, however: King Korodullin gets brained at the battle of Thull Mardu and has difficulty hearing afterwards; later in ''TheMalloreon'', a Cherek assassin gets hit over the head with an axe and Polgara proclaims him incapable of being revived.
* Averted in Susan Dexter's ''The Prince of Ill Luck''. Leith, the eponymous unlucky prince, gets hit on the head twice during the course of the book; both times, it renders him so sick as to be incapacitated for several days following.
** All of Susan Dexter's books seem to approach this one pretty well; in ''The Wind-Witch,'' Kellis is so incapacitated by a blow to the head that he is unable to escape his prison when his fellow pirates do, and remains sick and nearly crippled for the week that follows his release. Admittedly, he was also [[spoiler:hit by cold iron, which has poisonous effects on shapeshifters.]]
* In ''{{Otherland}}'', a drinking game could be made from the number of times a scene transition occurs through one or more protagonists getting knocked out, then reviving later with no ill effects. They are InsideAComputerSystem, so it's all technically virtual, although YourMindMakesItReal is in play and many characters do indeed die in RealLife from fatal injuries in the Grail Network.
* Lampshaped in the ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles''. The hero, Harry Dresden, tends to get very much beat up over the course of a book. He's been shot, bitten, had bones broken, intentionally wrecked, near explosions, tossed around by supernatural powerful creatures, burned, frozen, and almost dissected while he was still alive. Thanks to FunctionalMagic, he recovers from these -- slowly, but he still continues to heal (at a normal human rate), until a wound's traces have gone away. Despite his injuries (he comments there are phonebooks smaller than his medical file, when he sees a doctor struggle to lift it), Harry has never broken his skull. He says he thinks someone snuck in and did an adamantium bone-coating on his skull somehow.
-->''Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of trauma, I will fear no concussion.''
* In Creator/RobertEHoward's ''Literature/TheHourOfTheDragon'', ConanTheBarbarian is dazed and has his vision blur after a head injury -- but that hardly stops him.
* Subverted in Justin Cronin's ThePassage. When Michael is said to have been unconscious for several days but has no slurring, unfocused eyes, or signs of a concussion, it tips off Sara, a nurse, that something isn't right.
* Averted in the ''Literature/{{Gone}}'' series. In the second book, Hunter is knocked out by a crowbar to the head. When he wakes up, he can barely speak coherently, and after receiving [[HealingHands supernatural healing]], he is left with permanent brain damage.
* In ''[[{{Shannara}} The Wishsong of Shannara]]'' Garet Jax [[EstablishingCharacterMoment establishes himself]] as a BadAss when he rescues Jair from a group of gnome warriors, killing them all with a SimpleStaff. All but the leader of the group that is, when they're inspecting the bodies Jax notices that the leader is unconscious but still alive, and comments that the gnome must have a particularly thick skull.
* Justified in ''TheSupernaturalist'', when Cosmo has a metal plate implanted in his skull during surgery. It becomes a ChekhovsGun later on when he needs to headbutt his way out of a containment vat.
* In ''Literature/GalaxyOfFear'', Tash gets headbutted in the stomach by her little brother Zak, who'd heard that they're headed to the Ithorian homeworld, and Ithorians are also known as Hammerheads. He cheerfully tells her that her stomach is ''much'' softer than the walls he'd been headbutting before finding her.
* In JRRTolkien's ''Literature/TheHobbit'', Bilbo is knocked unconscious both in the goblin tunnels and at the final battle. After the later, someone has to carry him down to the camp, but otherwise, he is fine.
* In ''Literature/JourneyToTheWest'', Sun Wukong claims to have "iron head and bronze limbs" due to his overdose of immortality peaches and elixirs followed by a sojourn in Laozi's alchemical kiln. During the novel he's hit on the head by other demons who nevetheless fail to harm him, even when using swords.
[[/folder]]

13th Apr '13 4:41:48 PM Servbot

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4th Apr '13 4:55:54 PM Goldfritha

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3rd Mar '13 7:48:31 PM Angeldeb82

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