History Main / ImmortalLifeisCheap

* As they're more or less human souls encased in penguin suits, Prinnies of the ''{{Disgaea}}'' universe are infinitely revivable, and thus infinitely ''expendable''. Invoking this trope quite literally, it only costs 1 HL to revive a Prinny at any level, so their bosses will kill them for just about any reason.

* As they're more or less human souls encased in penguin suits, Prinnies of the {{Disgaea}} universe are infinitely revivable, and thus infinitely ''expendable''. Invoking this trope quite literally, it only costs 1 HL to revive a Prinny at any level, so their bosses will kill them for just about any reason.

** Then Jack gets [[HighOctaneNightmareFuel buried alive for 2000 years]], constantly suffocating and reviving without somehow going insane.

* This is the reason for the ''CodeGeass'' picture on the "ShutUpHannibal" trope page. C.C. also sometimes gets this sort of abuse, such as when [[{{Yandere}} Mao]] decided he was going to "[[ChainsawGood make her compact]]."

*** He does die, but [[spoiler:his mother gets immediately pregnant and gives birth to an identical boy, whom they name Kenny and who grows into his normal age overnight, having all the memories of the previous one. Essentially, he is only immortal for as long as his mother is alive. Thanks, Cult of [[CthuluMythos Cthulu]]]].

** Taken to its logical conclusion in "Mysterion Rises," where Kenny claims his inability to die is his super-power

* [[ImmortalityImmorality Fujiwara no Mokou]] from ''{{Touhou}}'' [[WhoWantsToLiveForever passes the time]] by ''killing'' ([[CycleofRevenge and being killed by]]) [[EverythingsBetterWithPrincesses Kaguya]]. And in Imperishable Night, [[{{Miko}} Reimu]] begins [[BonusBoss her fight with Mokou]] by pointing out that [[http://touhou.wikia.com/wiki/Imperishable_Night:_Boundary_Team%27s_Extra ''if she's the sort that can't die, I can go all-out on her, right?'']]

* ''Fanfic/Luminosity'': [[spoiler:The Volturi]] keep vampires disassembled, in case they can ever find a way to bring them to their side. Sort of like freezing someone, except they're in terrible pain. And alone. For years.

[[folder:Fan Works]]

[[/folder]]

* A couple of characters in ''{{Naruto}}'' are like this. The Akatsuki member Hidan takes sick pleasure in doing horrible painful things to HIMSELF in battle after performing a ritual to ensure that his oponent feels the same thing. Hidan is virtually immortal (e.g. getting his head cut off hardly slows him down), but the same cannot be said of his opponents who get trapped by the ritual.

** Wolverine has fallen prey to this many times. He is often burned to a crisp, has all of the metal pulled out through his pores by Magneto, and at one point The Punisher shoots him in the crotch with a shotgun, where he then gets his legs sawed on by midgets, and then flattened by a steamroller. There is also an episode in the animated series where Proteus uses his reality altering powers to rip Wolverine in half and then melt him into a puddle (he comes out crying). The other X-Men are also attacked by Proteus, but no one else gets the {{Nightmare Fuel}} treatment, even though in this case they may have survived afterward since Proteus's effects go away when he leaves the area.

* In {{Smallville}}, the {{Lesbian Vampire}}s have fun throwing each other off the balcony. Since this is done to [[TheWesley Lana]], the scene might be [[AndTheFandomRejoiced favored]] [[TakeThatScrappy more]] [[KarmaHoudini than]] [[TheWoobie it was intended]].

*** And then there's the general quests and power up that take advantage of the attendent HealingFactor, which generally make the ''player'' [[GoodThingYouCanHeal glad the Nameless One can regenerate]].

* In one ''{{Muertitos}}'' arc showing Death's brief carreer as a cartoon hero, Death fights a number of villains, including Multiple Chin, a chinese acrobat with multiplying powers... who is actually a hero who's been brainwashed to work for the bad guys. Death slaughters Chins with wild abandon even over the protests of his sidekick, claiming that she's fine as long as there's at least one left. Then he realizes he's killed them all without thinking. The Comissioner even makes a brief mention of this at the end.

[[AC:Literature]]
* In CoryDoctorow's ''DownAndOutInTheMagicKingdom'', people can take backup copies of their personalities in case of death. Nobody is particularly worried about this, because everybody who had a problem with it "you know, ''died''".
* In RichardMorgan's ''TakeshiKovacs'' series, everybody is implanted from birth with a "cortical stack" that records their personality in case of death. The hero occasionally kills people and steals said stack for later interrogation.
* Taken to extremes in the last chapter of CharlesStross' ''Accelerando''. [[spoiler: Children, free to take backups of their personality, play war with real weapons. Additionally, they keep software copies running at faster-than-real-time to grow up and watch over them.]]
* Threnody in {{Xanth}} often cuts off bits of her husband Jordan, such as his tongue. This is not considered a big deal because his talent is incredible healing.
* Gilbert Gosseyn in A.E. van Vogt's ''The World of Null-A'' can be killed, and then he just wakes up in a new Gilbert body with all his memories.
* Used and subverted in ''Kiln People'' by DavidBrin, in which people download their personalities into short-lived clay golems which they use for work and pleasure. While these golems are regarded as totally expendable, no-one risks their real self any more, and for someone to suffer even minor injury is quite a scandal.
* Simon R. Green's novel ''Hellworld'' features the protagonists being dropped onto a planet to determine its potential for colonization. They find the planet apparently devoid of most animal life, with large pools of what can be described as greyish, primordial goo. Then, they discover that [[spoiler: the advanced alien race that lived there constructed a machine that made them immortal and protean, able to take on any shape they willed and unable to die.]] The psychic member of the group discovers that [[spoiler: the aliens had eventually become violent sociopaths, fighting endlessly until the machine grew bored and turned them into said goo.]] To make matters worse, [[spoiler: that machine? It's still around. And insane. And starting to affect mutations within our heroes.]]

[[AC:Mythology]]
* Baldur, the Norse god of beauty, had a prophetic dream of his own death. His mother, the goddess Frigg, responded by making everything on Earth vow never to harm Baldur--effectively making him [[NighInvulnerability Nigh Invulnerable]]. The other gods react to this, in jolly Norse God fashion, by making a game of hurling things at him, all of which harmlessly bounce off. (Unfortunately for Baldur, his mother neglected to bother with getting the lowly mistletoe to take the promise, so Loki, the {{Jerkass}} [[TricksterArchetype Trickster]], made an arrow out of mistletoe and tricked Baldur's blind twin brother Hod into shooting Baldur with it, killing him dead.)
** Another (completely different, by the way) version of the myth simply has Baldr as the rival of Hod (who is mortal) and already pretty much resistant to anything but a certain sword, whose name is Mistletoe.

It's common sense. There's nothing wrong with using non-lethal force to stop someone. So what if it just so happens that, with this person, non-lethal force happens to include bullets? It's not that [[ThouShaltNotKill the code against killing]] doesn't apply. They're just not killing anyone. Which means heroes who normally have to fight with a ReverseBladeSword to avoid [[CouldHaveBeenMessy things getting messy]], or otherwise take pains to NeverBringAKnifeToAFistfight can now [[IAmNotLeftHanded cut loose]] against the immortal enemy.

** The Master points this trope out right after he zaps Jack with a laser weapon. "The best part is, he's immortal. ''I get to kill him again!''"

** Wolverine has fallen prey to this many times. He is often burned to a crisp, has all of the metal pulled out through his pours by Magneto, and at one point The Punisher shoots him in the crotch with a shotgun, where he then gets his legs sawed on by midgets, and then flattened by a steamroller. There is also an episode in the animated series where Proteus uses his reality altering powers to rip Wolverine in half and then melt him into a puddle (he comes out crying). The other X-Men are also attacked by Proteus, but no one else gets the {{Nightmare Fuel}} treatment, even though in this case they may have survived afterward since Proteus's effects go away when he leaves the area.

* In the ''UltimaeMarvel'' universe, HeroicSociopath Hawkeye remarks during a fight that the best thing about killing Multiple Man is that there's always more of him.

* In {{Smallville}}, the {{Lesbian Vampire}}s have fun throwing each other off the balcony. Since this is done to [[TheWesley Lana]], the scene might be [[AndTheFandomRejoiced favored]] [[TakeThatScrappy more]] [[KarmaHoudini than]] [[TheWoobie it was intended]].

** [[spoiler: Greed]] got a nice, quick death. He got thrown into a vat of acid-or-may-be-it's-lava and was killed instantly.