See also the following
YKTTW:
Gus: I zapped the
Whoopi Epiphany reference, because it didn't really apply.
From the article:
"Subverted in an Angel episode where Angelus uses an Achilles Heel that Angel dreamed of in a hallucination against the Beast, and is utterly disgusted when it actually works. "
How is it a subversion if it worked? This seems more like
Lampshade Hanging to me..
Space Ace: You know, these sentences seem rather silly to me:
"Perhaps the most famous Achilles Heel is Superman's weakness to kryptonite."
"The mother of all Achilles Heels is the exhaust port on the Death Star in Star Wars."
I mean, what about, you know, ACHILLES? Not only the trope but the very
expression is named after him.
Fast Eddie: Anonymous Person, I made a change to the order of presentation of the examples that may address your concern. The other entries are idiomatic English, which is what we are all about — idioms. By the way, the wiki culture is to propose a change, or perform one, not just complain about the need for one.
Janitor: I now want to have
Fast Eddie's babies. Okay, not really. But in an agreeing-with-that sort of way,
minus the sex. And the babies.
CM Lo Bue: I don't think Claire's power on Heroes is stopped by a specific spot on her head. I think that, as long as the cause of the injury is present, she can't regenerate the wound (the body doesn't expel the object, it just knits the flesh back up once it's gone).
INH: Yeah, that's definitely part of it, but she still lost her ability to regenerate anything else (the coroner had no problem cutting her up) and died. Early in the second season, Kensei got hit in the chest by a bunch of arrows. They were obviously fatal wounds, and the arrows stayed stuck in him until he pulled them out, but he was still able to come back to life and regenerate everything else. And Peter specifically told Claire to shoot him where the glass had been stuck in order to kill him permanently if he went nuclear.
dancecommander: Regarding the original
Achilles Heel, it all could've been avoided if Thetis had just bothered to flip him around after the first dip.
UT: Or worn gloves.
Shale: Better yet, dip him by his hair. Unless you're Samson, who would even
want invincible hair?
Unknown Troper: It would be too polarizing to add a Real Life AC and write, "Sarah Palin's Achilles' Heel is that... she doesn't know what an 'Achilles' Heel' is," right?
Madrugada It would.
Madrugada Would anyone get upset if I deleted the statement that
H 2 O is the second most common molecule in the universe? I couldn't find any verification for it. The closest is an article on Space.com that says that it's the third most common molecule in certain areas of space that have been studied, and that 99.% of it is ice and the other 1% is gaseous. So aliens being damaged by liquid water isn't terribly farfetched.
Vampire Buddha: Removed natter (00:58 GMT, 6/5/2009)
natter
- Only in the anime. In the manga, the homunculi's incredible powers of regeneration are limited: destroying their Philosopher's Stones renders them quite vulnerable. Removing it, however, is completely ineffective...they just regenerate from the Philosopher's stone ITSELF! You have to kill them an unspecified but high number of times.
- The whole "kill until stone runs out" things is present in the anime, too. Lust even tells Wrath this is what she will do to him.
- He can use it on people more than once, Just not in a 24-hour period. He's used it on Mr. No-Brake at least twice.
- Dont' forget that Ginji can't use his Shock And Awe powers for a long period of time ininterrupted, otherwise he becomes a Psycho Electro.
- Wearing a full body suit doesn't count as touching things with his bare skin?
- He wears an otherwise easily damaged nanite sheath between the suit and his skin to prevent that problem.
- In the recent crossover Annihilation, it's revealed that a certain character is the "silver bullet" to Thanos' "werewolf", with the former succeeding in killing the latter in the penultimate issue. However, this weakness is subverted by Thanos' general fondness for Death (and vice-versa).
- It should be noted that said character was created for the specific purpose of killing Thanos. This was just the first time he got a good hit in to pull it off.
- One, Earth's computer technology had been reverse-engineered from the aliens in the first place. Two, the scientists at Area 51 had had 50-some years to study the alien's OS, so the virus didn't even have to be in Mac OS. The lack of firewall is the only real puzzler here — and given that a species of telepathic locusts doesn't need any computer security against themselves (being a hive), and their usual M.O. was to pick on primitive worlds incapable of defending themselves, they wouldn't have a pressing need for computer security against their victims, either.
- Not entirely true: according to the scientist played by Brent Spiner (really one of the few redeeming qualities of the movie), the alien ship only "powered up" in the last few days. So while the hardware would be copyable, the software would have needed some serious reverse engineering in...what, three, four days tops?
- 'Area 51 had had 50-some years to study the alien's OS' - Are you telling me you could hack a modern computer based on the giant room-sized machine from 1950's? Aliens have technological progress, too.
- What people don't realize is that, even if our technology is based off theirs, the software doesn't have to be. To fully reverse-engineer a full software OS, you'd also have to determine the character encoding and all the other things. I.e., you'd need an understanding of their language. As well as wondering how they handle a lot of other basic stuff. They might not use an octet for storing data, too. In order to make the virus they'd also need a compiler written for their software. Honestly, just figuring out the technology and not the software would be significantly easier, making the whole point of the virus silly.
- But then there's the ships' primary weapons, practically screaming "Attack my weak point For Massive Damage!" Lucky that somebody figured it out before the stupid Earthlings wasted all their missiles on the ship's outermost perimeter.
- About the firewall: See War of the Worlds from before. As in, if the aliens haven't developed a resistance to our diseases, then it kinda makes sense that our hacker attacks can penetrate their ultra-advanced firewalls just as easily.
- Of course, the War Of The Worlds example is bad enough in itself: 99% of diseases can't even cross species, yet alien invaders have completely compatible biochemistry?
- Three words: Science Marches On. Wells couldn't have known that.
- But the tailored virus was still a hybrid of Earth diseases. Somebody please edit this; I only remember that one half of the virus was anthrax, and can't find my copy of the graphic novel.
- I think the other half was smallpox
- Given the 19th century biology that was contemporary to the original novel, having the bad guys killed by a cold is forgivable. In the original novel! Having the movie versions suffer the same problem is where we encounter the Fridge Logic. And in the original novel, the martians weren't defeated by viruses, but "putrefying bacteria". In other words, they were decomposing while still alive.
- You could probably handwave it. There's a theory that life evolved on Mars before seeding Earth by way of meteorite impact, so at least you can argue for basic biochemistry being similar...
- Also of note, while aliens might not be susceptible in the same way to diseases that affect us, there's the possibility they'll be negatively affected by something that we're completely unaffected by.
- Any concevable aliens would probably have a biochemistry with at least passing similarities to that on Earth, so the idea that they could be all killed by a simple virus is possible, however, if they've been planning their attack for thousands of years, you think they could have spent 20 minutes to check the atmosphere for viruses and test to see if they will wipe out their invincible armada. When they would have found the virus, perhaps they could use some breathing apparatus.
- This Troper's screenwriting teacher has suggested that one change would make the film's script perfect: the Witch taking care to avoid the stream in Munchkinland, thus having her weakness not come out of nowhere.
- Played with in the Musical Wicked where her vulnerability to water is a rumor spread by terrified Ozians along with an equally fictitious third eye and a snake like ability to shed her skin. Fiyero immediately dismisses it and sarcastically comments that people will believe anything, but that doesn't stop him from later on suggesting it as a method for the Witch to fake her death.
- The Master's key weakness in "Last of the Time Lords" was that he wasn't willing to sacrifice his own life, so the Doctor was able to call his bluff about destroying the world while they were standing on it.
- There were always fewer of the Airbenders than any of the other benders, and there was also the matter of a traitor in their midst. Plus, they just happened to be the one Fire Lord Sozin targeted on the one day when they (the Firebenders) were the most powerful. Besides, while it has its uses, air is probably the weakest offensive power of the four.
- The Airbenders were also pacifists (as I understood them), which didn't help matters.
- It stands to reason that Waterbenders would be similarly powerless during a lunar eclipse, since it's established that they're stronger at night and weaker during the day (the opposite of firebenders), and killing one of the moon spirits shut down their powers until Princess Yue traded her own life to revive it.
- In an alternative version, Thetis put Achilles into a fire every night to burn away his mortality, using ambrosia as a salve by day. Peleus caught her at it and, well, there's a reason the lady's living under the sea by the time of the Trojan War.
- On Trojan side there was also a hero that was bathed in Styx, and he was immersed completely (by being held first by one leg, then another). However, he was not as strong as Achilles, so when they fought, Achilles after a while simply choked him.
