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"Let the guy be a little fallible. Those are the ones I am interested in watching when I go to the movies. I want to see the flaws, the dirt under the fingernails. If he is invulnerable, how can you identify with this guy? As absurd as it may seem, you have to believe in it, or else the audience won't and they won't get their money's worth." — Brendan Fraser
"In movies they do this all the time to raise the tension. The hero needs weaknesses, otherwise we start to think of them as invincible and thus boring. You need to see Iron Man with his suit disabled, or Bruce Wayne attacked by the villain while out of his Batman costume." — 5 Plot Devices That Make Good Video Games Suck, Cracked.com
Heroes win. It's pretty common, and with a few exceptions, it's the general rule of fiction to the point of being a near Omnipresent Trope. That said, winning in Act 3 doesn't mean a hero won't lose to the villain in Acts 1 and 2; this is a good way of establishing conflict and drama while keeping them far away from being a Mary Sue. Expanding this, a hero may well consistently lose but learn valuable lessons out of it, get Character Development, and grow strong enough to win for the series finale.
Then there are heroes who never lose. Ever. Not only that, but they win handily, without much challenge. Especially in life threatening situations. A rival may win the first or second round (rare, for this type of charcter), but the hero neatly trounces them before the end credits, sometimes thanks to a Deus Ex Machina. Any "losses" (if they ever occur) are ambiguous and open ended, brought about by clear cheating on the villain's part, or as a forfeit from the hero due to external causes (kidnapped Love Interest, etc.). This of course tends to rob a given episode or movie franchise of dramatic punch when the viewer's reaction to a hero being lowered to a mortal Death Trap is "Like You Would Really Do It".
Behind this is usually the idea that the hero is " just that good". Plus he's the hero, good guys never lose! Doesn't matter how hard The Determinator trains, he is always two steps ahead. This is especially common in episodic series where the Monster Of The Week is a regular occurrence ( Lowered Monster Difficulty when the hero comes to fight it), or in fighting series (whether kung fu, Mons, or card games) where the protagonist is on a quest To Be A Master. If taken to extremes - and not in the comedic sense - leads to God Mode Sue. As the title suggests, this may bore viewers, though it is also possible that They Plotted A Perfectly Good Waste. Still, since this is a subjective trope, other viewers may not mind or may even prefer this type of hero.
As a Corollary: In a tournament setting of a sport which is Serious Business, the main character can lose the finals, but never the qualifying, quarter-final, etc. rounds. He can lose fights, including the big championship matches, but he never loses when it would stop him from collecting the Plot Coupons necessary to get there.
Compare with Boring Immortal Hero, where the heroes can and often do lose, but hardly ever die, and the less suspenseful Showy Invincible Hero that would be this except that it focuses on the Rule Of Cool.
Contrast with their Evil Twin the Boring Failure Hero.
Also, be careful to not just start Bashing Heroes You Don't Like. It's very obvious.
Not to be confused with the other sort of boring invincible heroes.
Examples: Spoilers Ahoy
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Anime and Manga
- One of the biggest problems many Gundam fans had with the ending of Gundam SEED Destiny was that at the end the the new heros had won the final fight without losing a single named character. The new main characters' mecha didn't get a single scratch, and they even went so far as to strike a victory pose at the end to show that they hadn't been scratched. Compare this to every final fight in other Gundam series, including the original Gundam SEED, in which every character can die and the main character often only gains a narrow victory, trashing his machine in the process.
- Akagi never loses a game of Mahjong in the anime or the manga. However he is reported to have once been beaten by the main character in author Fukumoto's earlier work Ten.
- Further, when Akagi loses a round, it's typically because his opponent either got the better of him ("cheating" doesn't really count because Akagi abuses his opponents like a red-headed stepchild when he cheats, which is often) or because Akagi is purposely laying a trap (RE: The third game, vs. Urabe).
- Prince Of Tennis's Ryoma Echizen has almost yet to lose a match.
- Speed Racer only loses in the movie because of cheating. He always won the races in the cartoon series.
- Yugi of Yu-Gi-Oh! has "lost" only three times. In episode two he lost to Pegasus... but only because it was a timed match and he ran out of time (Not to mention Pegasus' blatant cheating by mind reading). The other, Kaiba threatened to commit suicide if Yugi didn't let him win so he could duel Pegasus. Yami, Yugi's more experienced and ruthless Split Personality, would have gone through with this and let Kaiba kill himself (or call his bluff, at least), but Yugi was so horrified that for the first time he notices the alternate personality and suffers a Heroic BSOD out of it. The third time was against Rebecca Hawkins, in which case he forfeited to prove a point. But he could have won; therefore he did. So, hardly any legitimate or 'fair' losses, and yes, loads of Character Development out of it regardless.
- And don't forget the first duel against Raphael, which has the Pharaoh being a Jerk Ass again and playing the card that led to his loss... and poor Yugi's absence for most of the Doma arc. The Pharaoh goes into a Heroic BSOD soon after.
- The card in question was the overpowered "evil" card the villains of the arc were using, which had been slipped into his deck beforehand. The Pharaoh would've lost had he not played it, but he did anyway... and lost, making it Yugi/Pharaoh's only legitimate defeat.
- Yu-Gi-Oh Fan Fic writers call the tendency of authors to refuse to let their heroes lose any duels "Invincible Yugi Syndrome" as a result of this. It's usually considered a Mary Sue trait. (On the other hand, it's also chide-worthy to try to "counter" this by having them lose a completely meaningless duel and then point to that when accused of the former offense.)
- Lampshaded in Yu-Gi-Oh The Abridged Series:
Panik: Why aren't you dead?
Yugi: As I explained earlier, I'm the main character. You, however, can just go right ahead and die.
- The Pharaoh loses a fourth time at the end of the series, against Yugi.
- Judai of Yu-Gi-Oh GX takes after Yugi. He lost the first battles he had against Ryo and Edo and his match with Kaibaman, and tied several times. He won on all other occasions. Several Big Bads and rivals pointed this out, leading him to believe he needed some inner darkness to be a true hero. Be Careful What You Wish For...
- In the manga, he wins virtually every duel, but lost against Koyo Hibiki before coming to the academy (although Koyo was the World Champion, and this was before Judai got Terra Firma and Winged Kuriboh).
- the manga also has Judai losing to Manjoume at the final match of the tournament. In fact, just as Manjoume was getting dangerously close to BIH status himself, Kaiser Ryo defeats him when he has all three of his most powerful monsters on the field.
- ...and against all odds, subverted in Yu-Gi-Oh 5Ds, of all places. The real bad guys spend most of their arc mopping the floor with Team Yusei, and even though the good guys are starting to make some progress, things aren't exactly going swimmingly for them...
- Played painfully straight with Crow, who has a better deck then anyone else on the show by far, and always wins.
- Mahou Sensei Negima usually averts this (Negi generally loses at least one fight with any villain before he beats them), but the Tournament Arc followed the subtrope of getting to the finals and then losing. Although in that case, the victory was in reaching the finals, and what happened then.
- The most recent Tournament Arc seems to be doing something similar, as Negi's brand new invincible technique didn't really work at all, and Jack seems to have beaten the crap out of Negi without a lot of trouble.
- The match ended in a draw, although it is noted that Rakan went easy on Negi. And let's face it, had Rakan actually been Laws-of-Physics-be-damned serious, Negi would be floor paste.
- Alternatively, his father Nagi Springfield has been explicitly stated to be completely invincible. Through all the flashbacks, we've yet to see him greatly struggle (with the exception of a tie and a climactic battle against someone by the name of "Lifemaker").
- In fact, the Myth Arc of the series concerns Nagi's disappearance ten years prior to the start of the series, and his son's attempts to find out what could possibly have happened to him.
- Makunoichi Ippo from the Boxing Anime Hajime No Ippo. He's only ever lost ONE match, which was a title-match against a veteran champion who soon became a Retired Badass. And he got the belt on his next try. And of course, when he wins, he ALWAYS wins on KO... several other character have been forced to 'win by decision', but Ippo's 'Dynamite Punch' never fails to deliver the KO.
- Ippo does get beat to hell in back in a good number of his fights. So much so that Coach Kamogawa becomes concerned with his viability as a boxer. And it's also mentioned that Ippo literally cannot win by decision, not because he's "that good", but simply because of his fighting style: Either he KO's the opponent or he loses, there is no third option.
- This trope more literally applies to Takamura, who always seems to come out on top no matter what the situation, including winning an arm-wrestling match with Ippo and punching out a bear (of course, in the second case he would've been dead if he hadn't won.)
- Kenshiro in Fist Of The North Star is nearly unstoppable. There are very few opponents that ever won a fight against him, or demonstrated superior skill, and he defeats all of them on second attempts, in one case without even having time to recover from the initial mauling. This trope is very prominent in the anime version, as it adds lots and lots of filler CurbStompBattles against Mooks, but much less so in the manga.
- It should be noted that that when beaten, Kenshiro is beaten badly. Both Souther and Kaioh really did a number on him, and his loss to Shin is the moment that sets the entire series in motion.
- Well, someone who lost to Kenshiro tends to EXPLODE so ...
- Oddly Justified in Flame Of Recca. Recca never loses a fight past a certain (fairly early) point in the series, but then again his powers come from a deal he made with the dragons inside him so if he ever loses anything he'll die. His teammates lose all the time though, especially since much of the series is a team based tournament where they just barely win enough matches to move on every single time.
- Similarily, in MAR (done by the same author) Ginta never loses in the tournament, since if he loses, it's game over. His team mates on the other hand, can and have lost. Some of the rounds come down to a 3-2 win/loss ratios (with Ginta being last fighter to boot).
- Golgo 13 never fails an assignment, or for that matter misses a shot. If he did, he'd lose his reputation as an assassin and there would be no series. Later chapters solve the problem by focusing more on the people who hire him and how their situations deteriorate to the point that they need to bring in a hitman. (Infamously, he doesn't appear in one story at all; the central character merely uses Golgo 13's reputation as a weapon.) The fact that the stories are standalone and bounce around time help in this regard. For completeness sake, there have been several occasions of him missing, at least once by weapons sabotage creating a misfire, and one complete miss caused by the target's allegedly psychic bodyguard.
- You would think the writer would have him miss, ruining his reputation forcing him to rebuild it (like Boba Fett did after falling into the Sarlacc).
- Angelic Layer, although there wasn't much of a choice for the writers outside of maybe a double-elimination round or two—the entire tournament was a vehicle for character development and an opportunity for the main to confront her absent mother.
- Noir has its leading ladies usually come out on top, often with ridiculous ease, but considering that they're assassins the other option would end the series. There are a few exceptions, and they do get close a few times: Mirielle nearly dies in the first episode and only survives thanks to Kirika showing up, and Kirika herself gets seriously wounded in an early episode because of a stupid mistake.
- Kazuma Azuma is completely stuck in this trope. Despite constantly being sabotaged in the Monaco Cup and being given the "worst possible opponent" over and over again in Yakitate 25, the worst he does is tie, or have his bread judged lower than someone in a different bracket.
- Until the last part of Hellsing, there's no tension when Alucard fights anyone. He survives being shot to pieces, decapitated and nose diving a super-sonic jet into a ship. He also rips through normal vampires like tissue paper. It's amazing anyone even tries to fight him.
- This may very well be an inversion; Alucard's extreme power failing him during the battle against Anderson comes an immense a shocker for the audience and creates a very powerful scene.
- Though, it's quite arguable whether Alucard counts as a hero- or indeed as a character at all. He's a big, nasty, red-coated plot device and spectacle that no-one wants to use unless there is absolutely no other choice. That's why everyone else fights first- to try and make him unnecessary. If the heroes have to let him loose, they're in serious trouble and there will be a very large mess to clean up afterward.
- Himura Kenshin slightly avoids becoming this by using a reverse blade sword. A good number of his major fights in the series would have ended much quicker and easier if he had been using a regular sword. Despite this, though, he still never outright loses a fight in the series, only drawing against Saitou and Soujirou (who he defeats later on).
- Tsk, tsk. Somebody hasn't read the manga. During the final ("Jinchuu") arc of the manga, Kenshin is not only physically beaten by the Big Bad in their first encounter, but is actually sent into a Heroic BSOD that sees him chain up his sword and wander off to a Wretched Hive to wait for death when it appears that his Love Interest has been killed by him. It takes incredible amounts of soul searching and news of one of his Nakama being beaten to near-death for him to finally bounce back.
- This is actually addressed in-story in Bamboo Blade. Tamaki Kawazoe, or Tama-chan, is a kendo prodigy capable of defeating adults. One character in the series remarks that he thinks Tama should lose a bout, and not to an adult but to a girl her own age. He feels losing to an equal can teach things that no victory can. Ishida-sensei starts trying to get the team into tougher and tougher bouts in part to give Tama a chance to face others of her own level.
- Hades Project Zeorymer takes this about as far as it can go. The machine itself is ridiculously fast and can teleport, plus it's armored enough that it can shrug off nuclear weapons without even being at half power. And the few times its seriously damaged in the manga, it just teleports in replacement parts from a parallel dimension. It doesn't help that the pilot is a Complete Monster with an Omniscient Morality License and never gets any real comeuppance for all the crap he pulls.
- Dante is this trope given physical form.
- Saki and Nodoka from Saki both lose ONE time, against the same opponent and on the same match, who was basically the anime equivalent of a Boss In Mook Clothing at that (Namely, a Mahjong pro). Every other match they have, they win. Saki at least usually has a harder time (But her wins go Beyond The Impossible on improbability) and she loses on purpose a few times; Nodoka is worse, for she just wins without too much effort every match she plays and unlike Saki. Just check their respective battles against Momoko: Saki has to try hard to defeat Momoko's unique quirk, but Nodoka is outright immune to it. From the beginning (Every other character finds her a very tough opponent to face, and she ends second both matches, so yes, she IS good). Meanwhile, the other members of the main team get equal amounts of both wins and losses (Or rather, Yuuki and Hisa do. Maki, however...), but Saki and Nodoka? Nope!
Comic Books
- Superman, with a few exceptions, such as never being able to beat archvillains Darkseid or Lex Luthor (and Zod and Bizarro and Doomsday and Brainaic and Mr. Mxyzptlk and the Cyborg-Superman and Eradicator and...), though that's mostly due to Joker Immunity. The best Superman stories tend to be the ones that focus not on the Man of Steel himself but the people around him and how they react to his presence. The Type 5 Love Triangle between Clark, Lois and Superman can be a key factor.
- Lampshaded in a comic where he competes against another super-hero character who is dying because of a method he used to rejuvenate himself. Superman's friends point out this strange energy and Superman reveals what he has learned. Technically, because his opponent cheated, his opponent technically loses, making Superman remark "When you're Superman, what's one more victory?"
- I'm A Marvel... And I'm A DC uses this quite well to actually make Superman relatable again. He's constantly lamenting how no one seems to care about him anymore, having moved on to the more fallible and relatable characters in Marvel's comics, and is frozen by self-doubt when Lex Luthor's newest scheme wipes out every other superhero in the world. He's finally able to win with the realization that it doesn't matter that people don't relate to him; his job is to be the person they can want to be like.
- Batman likewise has no trouble catching crooks; it's the justice system's fault for not being able to keep them behind bars. Also, while he suffers several personal losses, he rarely loses battles. What? He's Crazy Prepared and a master of the Batman Gambit!
- He lost pretty often in the old days; back then, readers were less apt to wonder why the villains didn't just shoot him. In fact, almost every episode of the 1960s Batman show had a cliffhanger in the middle where Batman was captured and had to escape a villain's deathtrap.
- Note that Batman is only invincible half the time. His Crazy Prepared skills obviously only work in situations he's planned for, so if he meets a new rogue or an old one with a new trick, he will typically lose the initial encounter: the villain will get away scot-free and Batman will get his ass soundly beaten. After escaping and researching the new foe, however, he will pretty much always win round two.
- Batman exemplifies this trope in Justice League Of America. He pretty much has to, since he wouldn't survive his first mistake against a JLA-class menace.
- The Marvel Universe's The Sentry, Robert Reynolds, is so freakishly overpowered that he would be this except for two reasons: 1. His crippling mental disturbances frequently exclude him from battles, and 2. Comics featuring him tend to focus less on supervillain battles (which he never really loses) and more on psychological and moral issues.
- Mad Magazine has a character who is basically a lampshading of this trope named "Fantabula-man".
- Fletcher Hanks' Stardust the Super Wizard, who has super-strength, flight, invulnerability and basically any power that would be useful in a situation, and no weaknesses. Generally considered a So Bad Its Good or So Bad Its Horrible comic.
- Squirrel Girl, with her powers consisting having enhanced Squirrel abilities and being able to talk to squirrels, has yet to lose a single match. Accounting her wins are
a Thanos clone with the combined power of the entire universe, Deadpool, and even Dr. Doom is dead scared of her.
- Wolverine, thanks to his Popularity Power having increased his regenerative abilities to ludicrous levels, can now come back from only a few cells, after having the rest incinerated from his skeleton, in a matter of minutes. While still a very popular and interesting character, this pretty much kills any tension you might have when reading his stories: He’s gonna get shot up, and he’s gonna heal right back, no matter the damage suffered.
Fan Fic
- This trope is one of the many reasons why Mary Sues are hated. When the character is so awesome, losing is not an option.
- Rose Potter from The Girl Who Lived is this. Who cares about all the truths about love, family, friendship, and sacrifice learned over five years of suffering, when "Harry" now has magical fairy powers that make him ten times more powerful than Voldemort could ever be?
- An amazing subversion comes in the plot of a Touhou Project doujin Koamakyou. The protagonist for the games is shown fighting through the bosses for one of the games brutally; violently impaling the first to the ground, angrily mocking the second's attempts to fight, simply ignoring the third, and fighting the fourth and fifth at the same time. At the end of the battle with the fourth and fifth, the fifth stabs her in the back, ignoring the rules of the games... and the protagonist turns around completely unharmed. Turns out, she's pissed off because she completely personifies this trope: as the lead of the series, she can't lose. Ever. In anything. In a world where the best way to pass time is the joy of fighting, and you can never conceivably lose a battle... So Yeah.
Film
- Equilibrium: Word Of God is that he made Preston a "god of death" because he always imagined his heroes that way.
- In this one, it's softened by the fact that, though Preston always wins, it's never boring.
- Ultraviolet, by the writer/director of Equilibium, has a similar hero. Violet, a super-powerful "hemophage," can defeat mere humans without any effort. When she is confronted by a mob of fellow superhuman hemophage bad-asses, she cuts every single one of their heads off with a single swing, when they're right up against her shoulders. See if you can make your hands do that at home.
- A prime example: The main hero of the Japanese movie (and MST 3 K episode) Prince Of Space, whose invincibility depends largely on his ability to repel energy weapons (as well as his ability to choose really pathetic enemies.) "Your weapons are useless against me!" becomes something of a Catchphrase for the hero, who uses it no less than seven times during the course of the movie. Needless to say, this film is a good example of why a story featuring an invincible hero would be entirely boring and devoid of tension (Even Crow tried to walk out on it, once it was clear that the villain had no chance of winning.)
- Any character played by Steven Seagal. Made worse by the fact that Seagal's characters are always immensely sadistic towards the poor bastards they beat up. By way of an example, at the end of one film he cuts the bad guy's face in half, sticks his thumbs in the guy's eyes, breaks his spine over his knee, and then throws him down an elevator shaft. The bad guy doesn't score a single hit.
- One exception: in Executive Decision, Seagal's character dies halfway through, although it's in an accident and not a fight. Even Boring Invincible Heroes are not immune to getting stuck in the bathtub.
- In one film, he took out five guys with guns pointed at him... with a credit card.
- In fact, Seagal has gone on record as saying he views this trait as a good thing. He says his characters are "born perfect" and that's just how it should be. Considering he writes or has a great deal of influence over all of these characters, it takes them out of the realm of a Boring Invincible Hero and closer to a God Mode Sue.
- He even does this to a character played by R. Lee Ermey. R. Lee Ermey! They must've payed him a lot to agree to that.
- The titular character of Ip Man Curb Stomps all his enemies, but the choreography is tight enough to minimise boredom. More likely a Showy Invincible Hero.
- Unfavorable reviews of The Matrix Reloaded often blamed this trope: Neo is in multiple lengthy fights but sustains minimal damage despite all the hits, when his opponents manage to make contact. His real challenge is how he will choose to express his free will, but that conflict isn't any of the visceral ones on-screen.
- This of course despite the fact that he clearly loses the biggest fight scene in the movie.
- Spoofed in Rusters' Rhapsody, a western parody starring Tom Berenger. The hero repeatedly lampshades the fact that he's defeated the villains in countless frontier towns without much effort and always will because he's the good guy. The villains in this particular town get Genre Savvy and hire another "good guy" to fight him, presenting him with his first-ever challenge.
- 'Bone' in Blood and Bone, even more than most of the heroes on this page. The only reason an opponent ever gets in a hit that actually leaves a mark is so he can get patched up by his Sassy Black Woman landlady and give her a Tai Chi lesson. It doesn't matter how many opponents he has, or what weapons they have, he pwns them. At least the other examples loose a fight or at least look like they might at times. Not Bone.
- Played straight and yet averted at the same time during Transformers: The Movie when Optimus Prime arrives for the fight against the Decepticons at Autobot City. Boring Invincible in the fact he single-handed owns nearly the entire Decepticon force in the space of less than sixty seconds, when they had just annihilated a considerable portion of the defending Autobots without a single casuality. Even when he fights Megatron in their There Canbe Only One battle, you don't get a sense that he's going to lose...until Hot Rod gets himself held hostage and Prime's previously minor wounds were exacerbated to the point of being fatal . Almost all of that is averted however due to a mix of Crowning Musicof Awesome from Stan Bush's The Touch and Prime's innate awesomeness.
Literature
- Honor Harrington plays with this trope. In earlier novels the ultimate victories are Honor's. She wins at great costs to her crew and ship, but always does the major turning in the end. However, as Haven becomes better characterized, she often just survives Pyrrhic victories. Until she ultimately spends a year in a POW camp.
- Ultimately the original storyline was to kill Honor in 'At All Costs' to fulfill her role as Horatio Nelson In SPACE!, which would have resulted in the second trope.
- Aloysius Pendergast, at least in the book Brimstone, is the very essence of this trope.
- Subverted in the later books. It's true that Pendergast never loses when he's on the offensive, but cracks and fails badly when he himself, and those he loves and protects, are the ones attacked. The price of Pendergast's intensive training and discipline to obtain his Bad Ass abilities is also explored in depth, making him rather similar to the Batman example earlier.
- Peekay, the main character of The Power of One, doesn't lose a single boxing match in the entire book. He does Handwave this at one point by noting that with such a wide range of opponents in South Africa, it wasn't unusual for someone to go 40-0 at the Junior level, but he's also something of a Determinator anyway.
- Pretty much any book by Raymond Feist, of Krondor fame. While the characters have their fair share of misery, the definition of such people as Jimmy the Hand, Mara Acoma, and Roo Avery is that they always succeed at everything they put their minds to.
- Also, many books by Piers Anthony, in particular the Apprentice Adept series. The books revolve around contests in a wide variety of games, styles, and arenas, and the protagonist Stile always wins every single one of them. Except one that is simply a dice roll of pure luck with no skill involved, which is so briefly described and swept under the rug that it's easy to miss.
- Well, its a double-elimination tournament, so there's no way the story can have him end as champion except by having him win every single round but one. You are correct in that his one loss in the Games was deliberately scripted to be in no way his fault, ever, it was just pure random chance.
- Also, Stile has been training for at least ten years for this exact tournament, as well as for the Metagame (the game which picks which game is played in each round). He (and other serious competitors) are rarely the Olympic-caliber equivalent at anything, and do in fact have weak areas, but can deflect attempts to exploit those into a "nearby" strength. And there's a good amount of unspoken mutual agreement between the more sportsmanlike people to have "honorable tests", as well.
- This is Lamp Shaded to a degree once he becomes a noble. The other nobles have noticed that he never loses anything and start taking bets on who can make him lose first. The winner's victory, however, is short lived, as Stile only lost the bet because he bet another noble (a much larger amount) that somebody would tamper with the last bet to force him to lose.
- Not to mention that a metric tonne of implied (and sometimes more than implied) behind the scenes Chessmastering by the Game computer, the other Self-Aware Robots, and the original Blue Adept, among others, are also involved, matching Stile deliberately with opponents he was likeliest to beat, putting him in fields where he excelled, etc.
- Feric Jaggar, hero of The Iron Dream, never loses at anything, ever. The pace of the plot is determined primarily by how fast he can swing the "Steel Commander". This is intentional; it's part of the book's Stylistic Suck.
- This seems present in Harry Potter, but only so far as Quidditch goes. The Gryffindor team is the "good" team which never loses so long as Harry is playing — the only losses he experiences are ones where he's knocked out or isn't playing at all, because Harry's quidditch skill is so good that no one else can ever rightfully win against him. It's also played straight in that the Slytherins, in Harry's view at least (and most other characters as well, it seems, like Luna, Lee, etc.) seem to cheat gratuitously in every match against Gryffindor, because there is no possible way that any team (including Slytherin) could win against Harry's Gryffindor if they played fairly. While this trope doesn't extend to the rest of the Harry Potter series, this is one example where it seems to hold true every time.
- The heroes of any given chivalric romance. Amadis of Gaul and Sir Tristram are particular offenders. Somewhat inverted with Orlando Furioso, though, as Orlando eventually turns into The Incredible Hulk because Angelica does not love him, and slaughters hundreds of innocents.
- Roland, from The Song of Roland. Although he has to die in order to be the Doomed Moral Victor (and because the actual Roland died in that battle), most his wounds are somewhat self-inflicted things, like when his temples explode because he's blowing so damn hard on that horn in order to warn Charlemagne's army. Also note that he keeps fighting even when his brains are running out his ears and onto his army.
Live Action TV
- MacGyver is practically the posterchild of this trope. Earlier seasons were still able to portray him as fairly interesting in spite of his contractual invincibility (if often through Diabolus Ex Machina), but after the writers finished turning him into a full-fledged Fixer Sue, it got to a point where it was almost subversive to not have an improvised gadget work to full effect (of course, it would still remedy the situation regardless...).
- The leads in courtroom dramas tend towards this, especially Perry Mason and Matlock. This is usually to prevent Karma Houdini because no one else can ever figure this shit out for themselves.
- But avoided in Law And Order—both Ben Stone and Jack McCoy have had pretty bad losses, and McCoy's been dragged before the Bar Association a couple times for shady ethics.
- Michael in Burn Notice, at least in regards to his non-spy Villains Of The Week. His skills and resourcefulness so vastly outclass his opponents that there simply is no dramatic tension. It's a measure of Mike's usual invincibility that the most effective scene in the series showed him nearly whimpering in the face of one more, notably galling injustice.
- Eliot Spencer in Leverage. As the group's muscle, he is unstoppable. The bar for his abilities was set high in the show's pilot, as he enters a room full of armed mobsters, and, in a matter of seconds, defeats them all. From this point on, anyone he faces is doomed. The fact that he works completely unarmed only adds to this trope.
- He doesn't just enter a room full of mobsters and beat them. He beats them after they all took out their guns and pointed them at his head.
- At the end of season 1 and on into season 2, he has started facing opponents who are closer to being on par with him.
- Horatio Caine from CSI: Miami it has become this to such an extent that became a worldwide Snark Bait.
- Sportacus from Lazytown. He has no character flaws, never fails at anything he tries and is hero-worshiped by everyone (except Robbie Rotten.) The only thing that keeps him from being a Mary Sue is that he's as naive as everyone else in the show (except, again, Robbie.)
- This is subverted somewhat due to the fact that the show is intended for children aged roughly 2-6. They may recognize that the hero is invincible, but he's never boring - very young children want their heroes to be invincible.
Music
- Hjältekväde ("Hero's song") is a popular song at swedish SCA gatherings, about the noble duke Caspian (no relation to the Narnia guy) who leads his army to fight the enemy. Except he dies in the seventh verse from a stray arrow. But since the song is (jokingly intended to be) commissioned by "the duke" (maybe a successor or relative, maybe Caspian himself), the songwriter amends this by having a goose land on his head and take the arrow. As the song continues, the hero gets killed in several un-heroic but fairly realistic ways (he gets stabbed by a spearman from behind, crushed by a panicking horse, and butchered by the more skilled enemy leader) and hastily saved by various contrivances (he's carrying a sack of potatoes on his back for explicitly no reason at all, the horse falls in love with a passing moose, and he wins the duel with no description at all). The song continues to sing about how dull it is to have the hero win all the time and never let him even take a scratch, but assures the listeners that when real nobles go out to fight, they're just as vulnerable as anyone else...
- Lampshaded and parodied by Blues Traveler in their song "Run-Around": "Like a bad play where the heroes are right/And nobody thinks or expects too much/Hollywood's callin' for the movie rights/Sayin' hey babe, let's keep in touch"
Other
- At a panel discussion/writer's workshop summarized here
 , Timothy Zahn of The Thrawn Trilogy called this trope "Superman Syndrome", where characters were so powerful that there were few challenges for them; he mentioned that a lot of Star Wars Expanded Universe writers have done that with the Jedi, elevating their powers so far beyond what we saw in the movies. He considers it boring, because who could ever really challenge or defeat such characters? Characters had to genuinely surmount whatever difficulties that might create, not use a deus ex machina to escape.
- An excellent example of his addressing this, specifically with respect to Star Wars, can be seen in the Hand Of Thrawn duology, with Luke Skywalker finally learning a lesson that it took him from all the way back in The Empire Strikes Back (when he rushed off headlong to save his friends) to learn: the Force can guide a Jedi's actions, if they let it. He needed to let go of the torrent of raw power to hear, essentially, the wisdom of the Force. In doing so, he had to trust that his friends and family could handle themselves without him, as he knew they could, and to trust in his own abilities and his own path (the specific catalyst being to head to the one place where he saw a vision of himself, not just of others). It worked out pretty damn well. (This was, of course, promptly discarded by future writers, who went back to the style of superweapons and insane power for good and evil alike.)
Professional Wrestling
- Triple H gets a lot of this, to the extent that reviewer guidelines for Smackdown Vs. RAW '09 explicitly forbade showing him in a "prone or defenseless position". Guess how that one went.
- Most of the animosity John Cena receives from Smart Marks stems from this, as most of his matches seem to have him get into a seemingly hopeless situation, only to miraculously come back and win (usually with the same sequence of five moves).
- Smarks have started joking that John Cena "runs on odds" — the higher the odds (in other words, the less likely it is for Cena to win on paper), the more certain his victory becomes, and generally when he loses it's against an evenly-matched or lesser foe.
- In fact, most of WWE's main event faces seems to have this aura of invincibility around them. Hulk Hogan and The Undertaker will lose cleanly literally once in a blue moon. (For those wondering, a blue moon is an actual occurrence: the second full moon in a month. This Troper is not saying the moon must actually turn blue for them to lose.)
- Hulk Hogan's actually a fairly interesting example here, as that same aura of invincibility that made him a god in the WWF bored WCW fans to tears (well, that, and the horrible storylines and god-awful gimmicks that surrounded him). Then they turned him heel, and he became more popular than he was since he left WWF. Of course, then he greatly outstayed his welcome and the problems started again.
- Any match between a main eventer (face or heel) and someone lower down the card involving a potential world title change will inevitably involve this. Even if the lower-carder does manage to win, it's usually the result of a disqualification or countout (on which the title cannot change hands); if not, it's a non-title match, often for the lower-carder to "earn" a title shot. Like you would REALLY have Shelton Benjamin win the world title.
- The ultimate professional wrestling example of this trope is Goldberg. He had a winning streak of 173 since his WCW debut. His first defeat at the hands of Kevin Nash was because Scott Hall electrically shocked Goldberg with a cattle prod.
- "Boring"? Goldberg was one of the most over wrestlers in the business at that point, simply because of his streak and the aura it gave him. He pretty much floundered after dropping the Title and getting punked out by the nWo the following night, never to hold the WCW World Heavyweight Championship ever again.
- Can also apply to Heels holding championships with designated Face rivals, especially in Ring Of Honor: Bryan Danielson's reign after "In Your Face" (June 17, 2006), Takeshi Morishima's reign, and Nigel McGuinness' reign to date have fit this trope. It's been a credit to booking and the roster when they didn't look like this, both before and during the match.
- Subverted by Pro Wrestling NOAH in the case of heavyweight champion Jun Akiyama vs. challenger Masao Inoue, a perennial heel midcarder who'd unexpectedly won a contender's tournament... since his inevitable doom was so "obvious" — Inoue could neither overpower, outsmart, or out-wrestle Akiyama — that the match began with him immediately using his signature moves at the beginning and became a race to see if he could outheel his opponent in time, Inoue's "tricky" cheating heel ways against Akiyama's heel brutality...
Close Professional Wrestling
Tabletop Games
- In Warhammer 40000, pretty much every army is this... when appearing in their own codex. When they are appearing in other races' codexes, they tend to get beaten...
- It is also worth noting that some codices don't take the Boring Invincible Hero approach. Codex: Eldar shows that while they still have much strength in them, they are quite clearly sliding towards inevitable destruction.
- And the Imperial Guard... well you know...
- The Ork logic goes something along these lines: Orks is made for fightin' and winnin'. Therefore, any Ork who loses isn't Orky enough to count as a real Ork. Therefore, Orks have never lost a battle. Therefore, WAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!
- That's not entirly right the quote is minus the accent "Orkz are never beaten in combat, if we win we win, if we die, we die fighting so that doesn't count and if we run away it's ok because we're always back for another go"
- It's quite possible that there are competing theories on the matter. Orks do not seem the kind for philosophical dogmatism, after all.
- There's another philosophy in which Orks reincarnate, so getting their heads blown off by a bolter is more delaying victory than an actual loss.
- This is criticism that is very often leveled against Exalted, as the titular Exalted themselves are always portrayed by the system as completely indestructible übermensch that can outplan Batman, outdrink Tony Stark, outfight Everyone and survive any attack.
- Players often state that this does not count for their own personal games.
- Which does nothing for the fact that the setting portrays the exalted as impossible to defeat by anything except other exalted, unless they use Perfect Defenses, in which case they're just plain impossible to defeat.
- Until you grind down their Essence supplies. Most of the main-book PDs can also be defeated by manipulating them into a position that exploits the virtue flaw you have to choose.
Video Games
- In the entirety of the Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney series, there is only one time a character completely loses a case: The last case of Justice For All, in which the defendant really is guilty, but you have to find a way to get out of it without losing Maya at the hands of a blackmailing assassin. All other cases that aren't won do not receive a verdict, which there are two examples: Terry Fawles dying in the fourth case of Trials & Tribulations, and Shadi Engimar fleeing the courtroom in the flashback case of Apollo Justice.
- Of course, it is possible to lose a case in Ace Attorney if you play badly, but basically yes, the protagonists canonically win all their cases apart from the ones mentioned above.
- Also, a Double Subversion from Trials & Tribulations: At the start of case 3 we see Phoenix losing a case against Payne. But we later learn that it was a phony lawyer and Phoenix didn't even take that case.
- Maya mentions at some point in Justice For All that they have had clients who were declared guilty. This troper guesses that the game developers were trying to make it seem like Phoenix was helpless during the gap between the first two games without the player poking orders with the stylus and screaming "Objection!" at him.
- At the end of Justice For All Franziska von Karma tells Phoenix he just soiled his perfect court record, suggesting Maya was only talking hypothetically.
- The series tries to avert the trope by way of peppering the cases with instances between Phoenix's commissioning and his inevitable victory where Phoenix believes that the prosecution has just hit him with the best and hottest of good, hot dickings. You can generally tell where these are because when he's not actively despairing of his chances at saving his client, he's desperately calling out for him to be allowed one last chance to present his case while noting to himself that he's flying by the seat of his pants so completely that he's going to need a tailor when the case is over.
- Disgaea spoofs this as characters are well aware that this trope is one of the priveleges of the Main Character/Hero and will try to steal the spot when they can.
- It's also a sort of Lampshade Hanging on how the game mechanics work: namely that there are no conditions where you lose a match without getting a Game Over, so defeats can't be saved, and thus never happen.
- Most videogame characters are retroactively this, thanks to the magic of saving and loading, but Half Life is one of the few that actively lampshades it.
- Ever use a Game Genie code for infinite lives, infinite health, or anything else that will ensure that the "Game Over" screen never appears? Nice for kids, but older players may prefer a little challenge and suspense.
- Subverted in the Flash game Indestructo Tank. Sure, the tank you're controlling may be completely invulnerable, but even that can't stop it from running out of fuel!
- Ike sort of turns into this in Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn. It makes sense given his story and history, though.
- Refer to the Game Breaker list. Some heroes that aren't boring/invincible on their own can be made that way with some creativity.
Western Animation
- Bugs Bunny may be the biggest manifestation of this trope in western animation. He has spent just about the whole of his career effortlessly outwitting and humiliating B-listers and icons alike in the Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies pantheon, such as Beaky Buzzard and Daffy Duck respectively. So untouchable is Bugs, that of the many adversaries he faced over the roughly 172 cartoons he originally starred in, the number of characters able to best the trickster rabbit can be counted on one hand; Elmer Fudd and Cecil Turtle being the most successful examples.
- This was actually lampshaded and subverted in a 1943 Porky and Daffy cartoon, "Porky Pig's Feat' in which the pair are trying to escape from a hotel without paying; Daffy says Bugs is his hero ("He can get out of any spot") and calls Bugs for advice — only to find that he is a prisoner in the same hotel.
- Yosemite Sam was actually created as a response to this trope; Elmer Fudd is many things, but intelligent is not one of them, and consequently, there were only so many ways Bugs could outsmart him before it got old. Sam was created with the intent of giving Bugs an adversary smart enough to give him trouble.
- This troper heard that they weren't trying to make a smarter character (indeed, Sam was little smarter than Fudd), but rather a character assholish enough to get the audience back on Bug's side. Fudd was so hapless that Bugs was starting to come across as a bully.
- There was one cartoon where Bugs didn't actually best his opponent-"Falling Hare," where he comes upon a gremlin intent upon sending a plane crashing to the ground. The gremlin actually succeeds in sabotaging the plane-the only thing that save Bugs is, as he remarks, "You know how it is with these 'A' cards!" 'A' cards were rationing indicators of the era the cartoon was from; they received minimal fuel allowances.
- He also lost to a mouse in "Rhapsody Rabbit" that was able to defeat him by the end of the cartoon and upstage him in a piano recital.
- He took his fair share of lumps in "Bully for Bugs", being repeatedly punished for celebrating his victory too early.
- While Tom, the lead character in Chaotic, handily averts this trope, spending whole episodes in a losing funk, it's played straight with... Peyton?! While something of a Cloud Cuckoo Lander, he wins all the fights he's in. While Peyton has a good rep as a duelist, presumably he hasn't won all his off-screen matches (having lost to a duel master at least once).
- Actually, one episode revolves around Peyton trying to get out of a huge losing streak.
- Not just the funk, either. Tom and Kaz both lose much more often than they win. Basically any opponent not depicted as morally bankrupt will win, which makes their victories over supposedly stunningly good players all the more jarring.
- Oban Star-Racers averts this so much it can be considered an inversion: the Earth team seems to get by winning as few races as possible. At least one time their continuation verged on a match they weren't even in.
- The Silver Skeeter in Doug's comic book episodes: He's made of liquid metal (thus Nigh Invulnerable) and can fly through space on his skateboard, which is extremely overpowered compared with Quail Man's intellectual "powers of the Quail." Doug, frustrated that Skeeter's God Mode Sue is taking over his story, calls Skeeter out with this trope.
- Skeleton Warriors. This troper suspects that the show's biggest failing was the complete invincibility of its antiheroes.
- The 1967 Hanna Barbera series Shazzan featured an all-powerful Genie as its title character; the writers professed difficulty with the series, because Shazzan was so powerful that they couldn't think up any difficulties for him to face.
Webcomics
- Rocky from Pokémon-X has fainted a grand total of once, and this was so notable that it was actually pointed out when it happened that it was the first time it had ever happened. Nearly 600 pages into the comic. This also lead to Brendan's first ever defeat in the comic— but he's an Idiot Hero, so we tend to overlook his boring invincibility.
- Justified: How often do you lose against the computer while battling pokémon?
- In the dozen plus years Sluggy Freelance has been around, there have only been a handful of characters who aren't horribly outclassed when facing Bun-Bun, and only three who have ever actually beaten him in one-on-one combat: Aylee's evil clone, Blacksoul (who is actually Bun-Bun from the future), and Oasis (who had to suddenly unveil pyrokinetic abilities to pull that off).
Web Original
- Tennyo, in the Whateley Universe, was looking like this until she got curb-stomped in "Boston Brawl 2", this trope is slightly deconstructed: people who don't know her personally tend to find her terrifying, between her power and her temper its not unjustified.
Real Life
- Whenever a competitor in a sport becomes extremely skilled to the extent that they are better than almost everyone else their matches become extremely boring, even for their fans, because victory is nearly always assured.
- Case in point, Jimmie Johnson. Look up the NASCAR driver's stats since 2006. Three straight Sprint Cup titles (on track for a fourth), can do no wrong, keeps winning races even with the other competitors stepping up their game, makes very few mistakes, he fits this trope to a tee. NASCAR fans want a return to the old ways, and with ratings and attendance slipping, they may have a point.
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