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"You must punch him in the center of his right buttcheek."
Any seemingly Nigh Invulnerable character (particularly The Dragon) will inevitably have some key weakness that can and will be exploited.
In any show where the main character is superpowered in some way, an Achilles Heel is essentially mandated, otherwise they would never be able to get into any kind of personal peril to drive a story. For example, the Gemini Man's 15-minute limit on invisibility (any more and he dies), or The Greatest American Hero's utter ignorance of the full capabilities of his supersuit.
Aliens and monsters that are Immune To Bullets will usually have a fairly mundane Achilles Heel that only surfaces/gets discovered completely by accident when things look the bleakest. The archetypal example is the Martians from H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds who shrugged off everything the armies of the world could muster, and then died from the common cold.
In video games, this is the spot the player has to hit For Massive Damage. See also Kryptonite Factor, Why Did It Have To Be Snakes, David Versus Goliath. Characters without one may be the targets of a Drama Preserving Handicap.
Examples
Anime
- In the anime version of Full Metal Alchemist, the homunculi are pretty much immortal, but can be killed if one gets anywhere near the remains of the human body they were created from. Also, Alphonse is bound to his armor by his blood seal, and should that be destroyed, he's a goner.
- The Zentraedi and Protodeviln of Macross and Macross 7 are both weakened by music - the Zentraedi because they haven't been exposed to "culture" for so long, and the Protodeviln because Basara possesses the Anima Spiritua.
- Virtually any character in Get Backers have fantastical abilities but with very heavy handicaps, more often than not forcing the characters to pull near-fatal trump card moves. The best example is one character of the main duo, Mido Ban, who can subject people to dreams with his Jagan (Evil Eye) for exactly one minute in reality, but indefinitely in the dream itself, making it an ultimate twink move. The catch? He can only use it once on a person and three times total a day. Needless to say, a lot of antagonists find ways to avoid this or force him to use his Jagan needlessly until he's helpless.
- Death Note's Shinigami, being grim reapers, are practically immortal...with two notable exceptions. First, a Shinigami's lifespan is extended by writing names in a Death Note: if a Shinigami forgets to write names, they will actually run out of time and die. Second is the fact that a Shinigami who intentionally uses their Death Note to protect a human - extending someone's lifespan rather than cutting it short - will die instantly. There are also a number of rules they have to follow while in the human world if they don't want to get on the bad side of the Shinigami King. Also, Ryuk is addicted to apples, and goes through some awkward withdrawal syndromes if he goes for too long without eating any.
- In Science Ninja Team Gatchaman, the team's main vehicle, The God Phoenix, has a rather poorly thought out weakness in that all the team's sub-vehicles have to be docked for the God Phoenix's weapons systems to work. While that kind of weakness would make sense to create the plane's Fiery Phoenix effect since it's an exotic weapon system, to have it affect the regular weapons seems too much. Even worse, Galactor learns about this weakness and the visual clues for it and wastes no time to take advantage of it.
- Although pretty much almost completely Immune To Bullets, the cyborg assassins of Gunslinger Girl are pretty much vulnerable as any little girl when they are not focused. Furthermore, shooting them in the eyes should be enough to kill them.
- Many times on Saint Seiya, more than one character suffers from this. Shiryu's main means of attacking leaves his heart wide open to attacks for a fraction of a second, something a few people notice over the course of the story. Krishna likewise was only defeated when Shiryu struck his hidden "Star Points", and the Pope of Sanctuary's astral projection attacks left his body wide open to attack.
- Probably one of the most gag-inducing Achilles Heels in modern media, the Big Bad of Digimon Adventure 02's only weakness was the Power of Dreams.
- In one of the earliest episodes of Inuyasha, a human artist gains the power to make his art come to life, and starts creating some of the most horrible creatures imaginable as an army to obliterate his enemies. However, once Inuyasha destroys the artist's inkwell—which actually turns out to be a magic inkwell—he's down and out.
- Subverted in Legend of Lemnear. The Big Bad transforms himself into a 50 foot demon cyclops, and the male hero: The warrior of Bronze declares "You may be tough, but I know your weak spot! Your demon eye!" Then through a crazy set of acrobatics, lands on the demons face to plunge a sword into its eye. Only to have his sword shatter on contact. btw: Don't watch the movie, it's terrible
- Goku of Dragon Ball survives a bullet and an axe to the head (relatively) unharmed, but if you grab his tail, he'll pretty much pass out. Eventually he trains himself to not be so affected by it.
- Goku and Piccolo themselves exploit this weakness in the battle with Raditz. After that attempt failed, Goku didn't bother going for the weakness again, because he remembered that Saiyans could also manually detach the tail from the body. Attempted against Nappa and Vegeta, although Piccolo finds out rather brutally that the Elites aren't stupid enough to not train that weakness.
- Makoto Shishio from Rurouni Kenshin is a very powerful swordsman, but can't fight for more than 15 minutes straight. If he does, he will overheat to death.
- Nagi Springfield of Mahou Sensei Negima is described as invincible with no weaknesses. Except for the fact that he's an idiot who needs a cheatsheet to remember spells. He also has trouble pronouncing latin.
- Alternatively, his commerade Eishun is a more serious character who for his strong focus on his training means a lack of human contact, and therefore a difficulty with women. This seems a common trait in Shinmeiryuu swordsman if Setsuna is any indication. Tsukuyomi takes this weakness too far in the other direction.
- All Devil Fruit users in One Piece have the common fatal weakness of becoming completely immobile and useless in deep water. Other fruits have more specific weaknesses; for example, Luffy's Gum Gum fruit makes him immune to blunt force, and can only be damaged by being slashed or pierced. On the other side of the coin, Buggy the Clown's fruit makes him immune to being cut, so his weakness is blunt force.
- In perticular, the Logia Fruits, easily the most powerful of all the Devil Fruits, all seem to have a single weakness that negates their great power or their perfect defense. For example; Sir Crocodile, eater of the Sand Sand fruit, becomes solid when wet. And God Enel, eater of the Rumble Rumble fruit, which gives him lighting powers strong enough to destroy the entirety of Skypeia, is made completely helpless when pitted against Luffy, who is made of rubber and doesn't conduct electricity.
Comic Books
- Perhaps the most well-known Achilles Heel is Superman's weakness to kryptonite. He's also perfectly susceptible to magical attacks.
- The unstoppable Juggernaut from X-Men is susceptible to a mental attack once his helmet has been removed.
- Martian Manhunter (and indeed his species) was, then wasn't, deathly afraid of fire, which did, then didn't, and now does again melt him into a puddle.
- The Ultimate Marvel version of Iron Man can't touch anything with his bare skin, even dust, without causing himself excruciating pain—hence the suit.
- Traditionally, Green Lanterns have had trouble with the color yellow—except the first of them, whose power came from a different source, and was instead vulnerable to wood. Parodied by the parallel-universe "Green Guardsman" in an episode of the Justice League TV series.
- The alien symbiotes, from the Marvel Universe, that created such creatures as black-suit Spider-Man, Venom, Carnage, and Toxin, are vulnerable to "sonics"—essentially, extremely loud or high-frequency noises. Extreme heat is also a notably unpleasant weakness of theirs.
- Inverted with the supervillain Doomsday. If you kill him, he comes back, immune to what killed him last time (so, if you tossed him into space, he'd come back probably able to survive sudden changes in pressure; if you did it again, he wouldn't need to breathe the next time; and if you did it a third time, he might—eventually—freeze, or burn up, and come back immune to that).
- The brilliant, amoral Thanos from the Marvel Universe has a particularly strange weakness: self-defeatism. As Adam Warlock points out in a Hannibal Lecture in The Infinity Gauntlet crossover, he subconsciously knows he doesn't deserve victory, and thus arranges his defeat without realizing it.
- Best. Achilles. Heel. EVER.
- Rising Stars features a character completely immune to physical damage. However, he still needs to breathe, and is killed by someone sneaking up behind him and throwing a plastic bag over his head.
- More generally, in the third story arc, it is discovered that the resistance to damage that, by this point, all specials have, does not guard against radiation. Thus, a special who has spent the last 10 years stealing and hiding nuclear weapons gets radiation sickness, and any special can be temporarily weakened by an electromagnetic pulse.
Film
Literature
- The name for this trope, and what makes this Older Than Dirt, comes the Greek hero Achilles, whose mother, the nymph Thetis, dunked him in the River Styx to make him immortal. However, she wasn't able to dunk the foot she held him with, since as a goddess, she could not bear the touch of the Waters of Styx. Quite naturally, he was killed by a poisoned arrow to the heel, courtesy of the "cowardly" Prince Paris. Incidentally, Achilles is wounded in The Illiad at least once; he just can't die from wounds anywhere else.
- Making him literally, a One Man Army who threatens to kill all the Trojans by himself before the Gods restrain him.
- In some versions, he was her LAST son by a mortal man, and she held him over a fire to burn off his mortality ( a process that had killed his brothers, but he was apparently stronger). She was holding him by his heel. Then his father showed up, pulled him away, and drove Thetis out, preventing her from finishing the process.
- Also from Greek myth, the Gigantes were the children of Gaia and only had their supernatural powers when they were touching the ground. Heracles defeated at least one of them by picking him up with one hand and beating him with the other.
- In the Biblical Book of Judges, Samson loses his Super Strength when Delilah cuts off his long hair. Notice that this is hinted to not be a 100% Achilles Heel. Hot Blooded as he was, Samson had broken all of the other rules God gave him to keep his Super Strength and telling Delilah about his hair (and how he was consecrated to God) was literally the last straw.
- Leto Atreides II, the titular God Emperor of Dune, who combines his body with a sandworm to extend his life by thousands of years and gain immunity to almost every form of physical damage, also inherits the sandworms' vulnerability to water. The Wicked Witch of The Wizard of Oz is equally vulnerable. Maybe those two are related...
- When Balder (of Norse Mythology) started dreaming of his own death, his mother went around to every single thing in existence and made them swear an oath to never harm Balder. Presto, invulnerable god, right? Not quite: she forgot to ask mistletoe, since it seemed too small and shriveled to be a threat. When the rest of the pantheon decided to make "Let's throw things at Balder" into their favorite party game, Loki (who was jealous of the attention accorded Balder) tricked the blind Hoder into shooting a Mistletoe arrow at Balder...
- In the Chronicles of Chrestomanci by Diana Wynne Jones, the Chrestomanci are powerfully magic characters who are nearly invincible due to their powers, and their nine lives. However, every Chrestomanci has one particular weakness.
- In the German myth of Das Nibelungenlied, the hero Siegfried bathes in the blood of the dragon, Fafnir, after he's slain it, and becomes invincible as a result. However, a leaf had stuck to his shoulder, and thus left a small spot there untouched by the blood... and yes, the similarities between him and Achilles have been noted before.
- In David Eddings' The Belgariad, it appears the Achilles Heel of the ancient and evil god Torak is to tell him nobody loves him. And then stab him in the stomach with a huge, magical sword. The "nobody loves you" part was really just to distract him from the sword for a moment, since the sword was infused with the power of...let's just call it the Universe and leave it at that. It was a lot more powerful than Torak.
- Although it can vary, werewolves are typically weak to silver, touching it causes severe burning.
- In The Lord Of The Rings, Sauron is incredibly tough, but if the One Ring he created is thrown into Mount Doom, he will lose all of his power, so that all he becomes is a little formless evil spirit incapable of affecting anything around him forever. Arguably, that's worse...
- While we're on the subject of Tolkien, there's Smaug, from The Hobbit. With his armoured scales he is well nigh invulnerable - except for one missing scale in his belly, unknown even by Smaug himself until Bilbo discovers it.
- An unarmored spot or weakly-armored belly is a common feature of many dragons in Western legend. (See "Fafnir" example, above.)
- Generally a Soul Jar is the weakness for anyone who uses it.
- in Star Wars EU, Yuyuzhan Vong are immune to force. A dark-sider can still choke them by diluting the air around them.
- It's stated in the Harry Potter series that Voldemort's weakness is his inability to love.
- One of the 'Demon Headmaster' books featured a super logical computer which was defeated by all the children in the world yelling pointless anti-logic.
- In Dan Simmons' Illium and Olympos the Trojan war is being deliberately recreated. Part of this involves Achilles being given a sort of quantum invulnerability that ensures he will only every be hurt by an arrow intentionally fired at his heel by Paris, which probably takes the cake for most specific and most inevitable Achilles Heel.
Live Action TV
- In Angel, where Angelus figures out the Beast's weakness rather cleverly:
"I mean, look at this guy, hm? Pretty much the only thing that could do damage to that thick, stony hide...is himself. Or, maybe, I don't know, a piece of himself."
- Doctor Who does this a lot.
- Cybermen were given an Achilles Heel in the story "Revenge of the Cybermen": gold dust would asphyxiate them. This was not a tremendously damning weakness, since gold is neither common nor easy to form into an effective weapon. In "Revenge of the Cybermen", the cybermen were almost indestructible even on a planet made entirely of gold, because the locals didn't have the technology to make an effective delivery system for the gold. As the series progressed, gold was promoted to kryptonite status: in "Earthshock", the Doctor injures, but does not incapacitate, a cyberman by grinding a gold badge into its chest, but by "Silver Nemesis", cybermen can be killed by lobbing gold coins at them, or shooting gold-tipped arrows. Gold tipped arrows are very effective against cybermen, but, of course, totally ineffective against anything else. It is sometimes joked that had the original series gone on, it would eventually have been possible to destroy a cyber-war-fleet just by saying "gold" at them. While not mentioned in the new series, a fake website connected to it hints that the Cybermen seen in "Rise of the Cybermen" and later episodes had the gold weakness worked out in the prototype stage. It was showed on a computer screen in that episode that the weakness had been worked out.
- The Sontaran's 'probic vent'. "Back of the Neck!" Of course bullets work perfectly well too...
- The Slitheen, being composed largely of calcium, can be killed with acetic acid. Similar to the Signs aliens, this makes them look not all that bright for repeatedly invading England, the land of putting vinegar on everything.
- The Daleks were originally vulnerable to turning off the static electricity.
- The Macra were helpless without their special gas (which made one wonder how they managed to force humans to start making it in the first place).
- The Ice Warriors are vulnerable to (what else?) heat.
- The deadly sea weed of The Fury from the Deep were vulnerable to Victoria screaming (luckily, she was good at it).
- In addition to the gold allergy mentioned above, the Cybermen have been vulnerable to emotions in several appearances, and solvents in others.
- Autons are also vulnerable to solvents and, later, anti-plastic... which sounds a lot like solvents, but now with new, improved, cooler name!
- The "Seeds of Death" are vulnerable to water, WATER! (Not to be confused with the "Seeds of Doom", which are vulnerable primarily to large explosions, which doesn't qualify for this trope.)
- The evil computer in the Green Death was vulnerable to logical dilemmas.
- Mandragora energy is vulnerable to being conducted away.
- The Fendahleen are vulnerable to salt.
- The giant octopus Kroll was vulnerable to... a small stick. Okay, a special stick.
- The Mara is (are?) vulnerable to mirrors and happy thoughts.
- The Sea Devils and Silurians are helpfully vulnerable to a deadly gas which is blatantly introduced at the start of "Warriors of the Deep", then conveniently forgotten about until the climax.
- The Destroyer in "Battlefield" is vulnerable to silver.
- Fenric is vulnerable to puzzles.
- The Master leaves himself vulnerable to happy thoughts in "Last of the Time Lords". In addition, his biggest weakness throughout the series is... the Doctor, the one person he's never fully understood. (One episode of the classic series shows that his worst fear is a room full of the Doctor, laughing at him.)
- In Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman, extreme cold could make the bionic heroes' parts stop working until they warmed back up.
- In Heroes, Claire Bennet has a Wolverine-class healing factor that can repair her body to brand new after taking the unrealistically extreme amount of punishment that always comes her way. However, if an object is stabbed into a certain spot in the back of her head, she's rendered "dead" until it's removed, and the same goes for anyone who copies her powers. It's implied (and confirmed in an alternate future episode) that if this part of her brain was removed or destroyed, she would die permanently.
- Sheriff Lucas Buck's vulnerability in American Gothic is his third eye—if stabbed there, he could be killed. What makes this a particularly egregious example is that not only is there no indication of this vulnerability until the next to the last episode of the show, but what could have been a very cool mythologically resonant plot point is instead wasted twice over: the person who reveals and exploits this weakness is a throwaway character we'd never met until the previous episode and the stabbing doesn't even take, since Buck is revealed alive in his grave at the end of the episode.
- In Star Trek DS 9, Founders are almost absolutely immune to physical damage, vulnerable to BIG amounts of radiation or phaser weapons... and can be killed by specific virus.
Tabletop Games
- Many Dungeons and Dragons monsters have specific weaknesses that either do more damage than normal, or are necessary to even be able to kill them. The most famous is arguably the troll, which in most editions can't be killed with just standard weapons, but that also needs to be burned with acid or fire for it to permanently die. Unconventional tactics can also exploit certain weaknesses, or at least find other ways to kill them.
- Virtually any named enemy in Deadlands will be Nigh Invulnerable, except for one weakness somehow obscurely related to its past. The list goes on: Stone, Raven, the Bishop, prominent Whateleys, Grimme, Death, War, Pestilence, Famine ... In fact, it's so common that one of the most coveted abilities of arcane characters is the rare ability to intuit these weaknesses. (That's part of why the Bad Ass Normal posse keeps the bookworms around.)
Video Games
- Just about any glowing spot, on any boss, in any video game. Sometimes just does extra damage if hit, but is often (in Platformers especially) the only place where the boss is not Nigh Invulnerable.
- In many First Person Shooter games, enemies may have strong body armor, but can be killed faster by shooting them in the head (i.e. headshots).
- For example: House Of The Dead, where not only do headshots take down enemies faster, but each boss has a specific weakpoint, and cannot be damaged (or only take minimal damage) if shot anywhere else. The best one is the one with a huge gaping hole in it's chest that opens to reveal it's heart every time it beats (How...not easy...).
- The superhero MMO City Of Heroes balances all classes and powersets by giving them strengths and weakness, but only the Peacebringers and Warshades have a specific crippling weakness, Quantum Energy damage, which only NPCs with Quantum Weapons can deal. The problem was that the developers overdid it and made the weapons available to every enemy group in the game, essentially distributing kryptonite bullets, and it many cases it was powerful enough to kill the player in a single hit. As this was a major gripe about the two classes, eventually the developers responded by reducing the effects of the weapons to make it simply a danger rather than an overwhelmingly crippling threat.
- Furthermore, many defensive sets have Achilles Heels in the form of damage types they offer only minimum protection against. Ice Armor melts under fire damage, Fiery Aura is susceptible to cold, Dark Armor has only minor protection against energy and so on. Only two or three armors in the game offer appreciable protection against psychic attacks.
- Ironically the Quantum Energy problem almost exactly mirrors a problem encountered by Superman.
- Legend of Zelda. In this case, it's nearly always the eye or another insufferably obvious 'weak point'.
- Usually an eye in an odd part of their body.
- Ganon/Ganondorf usually has a spot on his chest or his weakness is his tail. And of course, the Master Sword also counts.
- Arcueid Brunestud, and presumably all the True Ancestors from Tsukihime. Normally Arc in particular is all powerful, but thanks to the protagonist Shiki cutting her to pieces early on in the game she's usually pretty weak. We finally see her true abilities at the end of the Ciel route, when she goes batshit crazy after finding out that Shiki has chosen Ciel over her. Shiki only wins when he remembers that True Ancestors get their power from the earth itself, so he kills the earth beneath her to cut her away from her power source.
- In the later editions of the Resident Evil series, bosses began to show certain specific weak points. For example, all of the Uroboros creatures in RE5 have glowing weak points which can be shot to expose bulbous body parts that can then be targeted to kill the creature itself.
- Gilgamesh in Fate Stay Night has the two most broken Noble Phantasms in the game. One of them is beamspamming Noble Phantasms and the other is some spinny drill sword thing that absolutely dominates Excalibur. Oh and he can use them both all he likes. Weakness? He's an Archer, not a swordsman, so all he can do with those swords is beamspamming them instead of using them properly. Much more importantly, he has an ego so larger that it's even bigger than his ego. Wait. But anyway, he never takes any fight that he's in seriously until he's in mortal peril. Or pieces.
Webcomics
- In Sluggy Freelance, Aylee's crab-like transformation (actually a clone of Aylee) is nearly invincible. Her shell can take just about anything the characters can throw at her, but she can be hurt along her extendable neck.
- Horribus is also only vulnerable on certain parts of his body. Even when Torg uses a magic, kill-anything sword, he can still only take Horribus down by either decapitating him or stabbing him right through his soul (located roughly in the center of his chest).
- Frans Rayner in The Adventures Of Dr Mc Ninja is vulnerable on only one place on his body (his right butt cheek). However, the protagonist (who witnessed his defeat as a boy) strikes the same place 25 years later and fails... Rayner had moved it to his left eyebrow.
- From Eight Bit Theatre, "A spear? Through my brain? My...only...weakness..!
Western Animation
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