Nigh Invulnerability Discussion - Television Tropes & Idioms

Seven Seals: Took out Peter from Heroes as an example (since he's clearly in on a technicality), then thought about it and took out Claire as well. I don't think it's yet been established just how invulnerable Claire is. Would she survive decapitation or getting blown to bits? All we've seen so far is that she regenerates quickly, and is able to recover from such minor inconveniences as having a tree lodged in your skull and being dead for a good while, but this doesn't quite qualify as "nigh invulnerable" just yet. If you want to pad the list with regenerating beings, both Wolverine and the Hulk have beeen shown to regenerate from preposterously extensive injuries. And don't get me started on Lobo.

Susan Davis: Put Claire and Peter back in — Claire just about defines the trope (she came back from the dead), and Peter now matches her. Both characters have shown greater resilience than others on the list. And this is nigh invulnerability, not absolute invulnerability....

Seven Seals: Clearly, your definitions of "nigh invulnerable" are much more lenient than mine. Being a comic book reader, I'd demand nothing less than the ability to regenerate from, say, a single cell. Or maybe a skeleton if we're generous. :-)

If "Peter now matches her" is a spoiler for an episode I haven't seen yet where Peter somehow permanently acquires her power, then never mind (and please don't spoil any further), but the episodes I've seen still have Peter only copying the powers of people in his near vicinity, and losing them when they move away. That would certainly not count.

Seth: Not to spoil you, but from now on consider Clair and Peter on the same footing. As for neigh invulnerable, hell yeah - she has her skin and muscle burned away during a neuclear reaction, and survives, fully healed in less than ten seconds. That is waaaaay more regeneration than wolverine ever pulled off.

Seven Seals: Alright, never mind then. May want to put this example in, behind a nice spoiler tag.

seth: I did that yesterday :D

Seven Seals: Recent changes overload!

Scrounge: Added "Spare Body Parts" category for anyone who doesn't regenerate but can be rebuilt. Watch an episode of Beast Wars... any episode... to see it in action.

Umptyscope: And why isn't Wolverine in here?

Seth: He has healing powers but isn't neigh invulnerable. Thats why i said we should create Healing Factor - because not all healers are immortal.

Scrounge: I'd argue that at least in the movies, he is. The healing powers pushed a bullet' out of his forehead. Then he looks at the guy who shot him like he's annoyed but doesn't really care.

Nezumi: Wolverine's skeleton is made of admantium. A bullet wouldn't penetrate his skull. It should still knock him out, but that's not nearly as dramatic.

Scrounge: I say "Casually shrugs off being shot in the head" should be enough for any sane person.

TJ Devil 02: I'm remembering everything but the name: a movie that came out 15-20 years ago featuring a serial killer, already having gone through Old Sparky, possessing random people and taunting the cop who captured him and pulled the trigger and some such. To make matters worse for the cop, he could pass from person to person by touch, constantly in the body of an innocent. Memorable because he'd taunt the cop with "Time Is On My Side" by the Rolling Stones. If anyone knows the name, it belongs here.

Mark Z: That's Fallen, 1998. Body-hopping spirits are a variant of "Made of Air". They're also protected by the fact that nobody wants to hurt the host. Do we have a trope for that, or for bad guys using innocents as shields in other ways?

Hollow49: I don't get the distinction behind this "made of dragonforce" and "made of diamond". As I understood it, Made of diamond means "so tough nothing can hurt you" with only the possibility of an attack slowing you down at that - dragonforce simply seems to be the same thing but unstoppable, which I think is an unnecesary distinction here. The nigh invulnerability aspect is unchanged. (And just what is dragonforce anyway? Is it a reference to something, because it just sounds out of place by comparison to the other variants.)

Travis Wells: It's silly Memetic Mutation stuff. Dragon Force is a British power metal band. It connects to Made of Diamond through the "Diamond is the strongest metal known to man" meme. It's, uhh, complicated. ok, this all starts at Game FA Qs. Someone made a topic

there talking about durability of cars, which strayed onto the topic of a theoretical car made of diamond. Someone else replied that "Diamond is one of the hardest metals known to man". This became a meme, and this image was made

. Then this image, replacing the Diamonds with the logo of DragonForce

. Why? Because they're a (power) metal band. Possibly the hardest (power) metal known to man. Do you see now? It's just sillyness.

Hollow49: I'm yanking it. It's just an in-joke that takes Made of Diamond too literally, and simply confuses the issue. Being Made of Diamond has nothing to do with the actual hardness or toughness compared to diamonds.

Donomni: Adding Absolute Virtue from Final Fantasy XI under the fact that, while it can be damaged, the playerbase has yet to kill it legitimately.

Donomni: The hints to AV's weakness are kept in, but the link provided to AV's defeat was to a thread talking of using the glitch that was patched a while back. Fixed accordingly.

Bobby G: Hate to bring this one up, given the surrounding controversy, but even by Word Of God, Jack is only maybe the Face of Boe.

Gloating Swine: Cut

A famous example is the witch-king of Angmar, from Lord of the Rings who is said to can not be defeated by a living man probably everyone knows he got killed by a woman in the end Though, his means of immortality are unknown, but because he's undead it's probably some magic means which keeps his soul alive apart from any physical damage.
- Also the big bad Morgoth ore Melkor and Sauron to some mean are hard to kill, the first even completely unable, as he had to be banished into the space between dimensions. The latter bound his soul to a ring, living as long as the near indestructible ring existed.
  - Destroying the Ring didn't do Sauron in either. However, it did have the effect of reducing him to little more than a malevolent spirit.

The witch-king was a case of Prophecy Twist, rather than this, and Sauron and Morgoth were Physical Gods, and being hard to get rid of comes with the territory there. Edited it to show the general toughness of the wraiths.

Basically, he forgot it was a prophecy about who would kill him, rather than a promise about who wouldn't.
Okay, does anybody have the name of that trope for where two people with this ability fight. (It's about how these moves just don't seem to COUNT!) I wanted to add the AVGN versus Nostalgia Critic things to it...

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