Immune to Mind Control

Marcus: Over the years during your absence, my powers have increased enormously. I now have the power to charm all living things, to subjugate their minds and make them do my bidding. You will kneel to me, Kain, and the Sarafan Lord will be pleased with my new slave. Now — obey me!
[Kain flinches briefly, but quickly shrugs it off]
Marcus: What?! Impossible!
Kain: What manner of creatures have you been practicing on? Dull mortal fools with their minds full of commerce and dung? My mind is far too strong for your powers.

— Blood Omen 2: Legacy of Kain

This describes a character who is, somehow, immune to any kind of Mind Manipulation when other characters aren't.

Maybe they have strong willpower.^note Note that being mind controlled and then fighting it off successfully doesn't count here. Maybe they have superpowers or some Applied Phlebotinum that protects them. Maybe it's inherent to their species. Maybe they're just too stupid, or just too crazy. Whatever the reason, this person is completely impervious to any attempts to mind control them. This could be a major plot point in an episode involving hypnosis... or it could just be dashed off as a joke. Those who are immune may exploit the fact by going to Pretend to Be Brainwashed. If a character was subjected to a Cranial Plate Ability, this may be one of their newfound abilities.

It should be noted that in reality, nobody can be hypnotized unless they willingly submit to it, and even then they cannot be forced to do something that is against their moral code. And yes, there are also some people who just can't be hypnotized, period. One's susceptibility to hypnosis also is linked to how susceptible you are to the Placebo Effect.

Related to No-Sell and Disability Immunity. Supertrope to Hypnosis-Proof Dogs. Compare Intrinsic Vow: A person is immune to Mind Control that conflicts with one of their strongly held beliefs. Compare also Psychic Block Defense, immunity to telepathy. Contrast Weak-Willed and Hypno Fool.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In Attack on Titan, the Coordinate power only works on members of the Eldian race. For this reason, the Asians and the Ackerman family were hunted to near extinction so that they wouldn't become a threat to the Eldian royal family.
• A Certain Magical Index/A Certain Scientific Railgun:
  • Misaka Mikoto thanks to her natural EM field generated from her high bioelectricity. She is immune to mind control and mind reading, due to said EM field somehow interfering with telepathic signals. It took one of the worst villains in the series using an epic mind-control device to get around this in order to initiate the Level 6 Shift.
  • Kamijou Touma is also immune to mind control, due to the supernatural-cancelling powers in his right hand (which apparently extend over the rest of his body for certain other things, such as this). Shokuhou Misaki manages to send a telepathic burst message to him, but they can't have a conversation, and she warns that if he touches his head, the message will disappear. This is another hint that they used to know each other, before he lost all memory of her while protecting her.
  • Gunha Sogiita has a power that can best be summarized as "anything that can be justified with GUTS." So when Misaki mind-controls him, it seems to work... for five seconds, until it shatters.
    Gunha: Oh! I can move.
    [beat]
    Misaki: What?
  • While Misaki's power is most often described as "telepathy," it's actually hydrokinesis of such an incredibly precise degree that she can read and edit brain chemicals. Therefore, anyone who can physically control any aspect of their own brain is immune or at least resistant to her power. Mikoto is the most famous, but there's a level 4 hydrokinetic at her school who is likewise immune.
• Chainsaw Man: When fighting the Falling Devil, who is capable of forcing people to relive their worst memories in order to drive them to suicide, Denji makes himself immune to such attacks by the simple expedient of eviscerating his brain with his chainsaws. His powerful Healing Factor allows him to keep on fighting with no other side effects, apart from being a little loopier than normal.
• Delicious in Dungeon: Succubus mosquitoes are shapeshifters who render their prey defenseless by turning into Your Heart's Desire. Izutsumi is immune to this trick, being a Beast Man produced by fusing a human's soul with a monster's soul: when one part of her is charmed, the other part remains lucid and capable of fighting back.
• Dragon Ball Z: Vegeta showcases a mix of this and Fighting from the Inside. When Babidi tries to enslave Vegeta's mind and turn him into a brainwashed warrior, to his surprise Vegeta manages to defy Babidi. Turns out Vegeta's overwhelming pride and Heroic Willpower ensures that he simply refuses to take orders and be made into someone else's slave. In fact Vegeta, willingly let himself be subjected to Babidi's Mind Control sorcery to gain the power-up benefit that came with it as a sideeffect, but was never under Babidi's control.
• In Fire Force, the villain Haumea has the power to control people by jolting their brains with electrical impulses. Arthur is immune because his plasma-based powers disrupt them.
• In Kirby: Right Back at Ya!, there's an episode where all of Cappy Town is given pillows by Holy Nightmare/Nightmare Enterprises. The pillows contain Noddy monsters that induce nightmares to trick everyone into thinking Kirby's been nothing but trouble since his landing, turning them into Kirby-hating zombies. Fumu/Tiff appears to fall prey to this ploy, but snaps right out of it a few seconds later when she realizes this. A more obvious example would be Meta Knight, Sword, and Blade who all arrive with their pillows to let her and Bun/Tuff know what's going on, apparently having seen through the insidious plot in the nick of time. There's also Kirby himself, who just relives all of his Iron Butt Monkey moments from before this episode and laughs it off with everyone.
• Usui from Maid-Sama! is unable to hypnotized because he does not trust anyone.
• In Naruto, people can be broken out of genjutsu (illusionary techniques) by having someone else disturb the flow of their chakra. Killer Bee and potentially any other Jinchuuriki can have the Tailed Beasts sealed inside them do just that, making them functionally immune.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • The Orange Islands episode "Pikachu Re-Volts" has Butch and Cassidy using a machine that amplifies the hypnotic powers of their Drowzee to control all the Pokémon on an island (including Ash's Pikachu, Misty's Togepi, and even Meowth when they arrive) except for the local Officer Jenny's Gastly, which is completely unaffected. Officer Jenny claims this is because Gastly is a Ghost type and Ghost types are immune to Psychic type attacks, which is one of many times the anime directly contradicts the Pokémon games, where Ghost types are fully vulnerable to Psychic attacks (it's actually Dark types, which hadn't been introduced yet at the time of this episode, that are immune to Psychic attacks) with Gastly itself even being weak against them due to its secondary Poison typing.
  • The Johto episode "Control Freak": Jessie gets ahold of an ancient mystical mask and staff that has the power to manipulate Pokemon and and dubs herself "Pokemon Control Queen" and uses the power of the staff to brainwash all the heroes' Pokemon onto Team Rocket's side. All that is except for Brock's Golbat, since the staff works by emitting a supersonic sound wave and Golbat can counter it with his own Supersonic.
  • "Capacia Island UFO!", of the Best Wishes series, a UFO of Beheeyem hypnotize a whole town in order to find their power supply, and kidnap Meowth as his coin looks like it. When Ash, Pikachu, Jessie, and James, the only ones immune to the hypnosis, break in and learn that the Beheeyem mean no harm, they ask why they were not affected. Through Meowth, they say that "idiots are hard to hypnotize"... in contrast to all the other times they had been hypnotized with no problems.
• Rebuild World: Genetic version. Being vulnerable to mind influences depends on ones sensitivity as an Old World Connector. Since the setting is After the End of that Humans Are Psychic in the Future civilization, humans inherited those Transhuman abilities to send and receive emotions unconsciously to varying degrees; generally, the further east someone is, the more powerful their connection to the Old World Domain is, while it’s weaker the further west. Kain/Nergo has inherited so little of this power, their unconscious broadcasts don’t effect him at all. This is mostly revealed in the Web Novel's 212th chapter.
• In Seven Mortal Sins, Maria Totsuka seems to have some degree of immunity to the Demon Lords' powers, as she's the only human who doesn't become mesmerized when the demons influence others. However, she's not immune to having her body controlled like a puppet while she is still conscious.
• In one episode of Space Patrol Luluco, the main characters are put into a Lotus-Eater Machine by a villain called Kill ** Killian. While Luluco does fall into his Appearance Is in the Eye of the Beholder power (seeing him as her Love Interest Nova), she isn't hopelessly mesmerized like everybody else. There's no explanation for this, so presumably it's just so that the show still has somebody to deliver some gags.

Audio Plays

• Big Finish Doctor Who: In "The Cradle of the Snake", one character is immune to the Mara, which mind-controls people by feeding on their dreams.
  That character: I never really have dreams.

Comic Books

• Captain America: During the crossover event "Acts of Vengeance", the Red Skull tries to have the Controller use his mind-controlling disks on the mystery villain who's brought everyone together (who, for the record, is Loki). It doesn't work, but fortunately the villain just thinks this was amusing and leaves.
• Daredevil:
  • Daredevil is shown as immune to mind control, particularly that of the Purple Man. Explained as being blind means he literally can't look into someone eye's when they're trying to mind control him, and this allows him to focus completely on ignoring their commands.
  • His nemesis Bullseye is also immune to mind control due to the adamantium that laces his bones, something most psychics find out too late.
• Deadman has a bad habit of encountering villains he can't possess in major storylines. The first of these is Sensei, an killer ordered the hit on Deadman, who Deadman can only fight by taking over the body of his own killer. Later on, he encounters aliens, devils, and gods who all resist his possession, forcing him to find some other to defeat them.
• Doctor Doom no sells every attempt to mind control him, relying on nothing more than his incredible will power. At one point, he has taken over the world by amplifying the Purple Man's powers; he proves capable of standing unprotected in the same room as the Purple Man and staring him down.
• The Incredible Hulk: The Hulk normally can't be mind-controlled due to the abundance of rage within him. The multiple personality disorder he suffers from has also helped. For this reason, his "Professor" incarnation, originally touted as a "merger" of all the other minds and lacking the others' rage, was vulnerable to mind control for these very reasons. In its quest to codify the Hulk's alternate personality system, Immortal Hulk has implied that the Savage Hulk — the raging brute who speaks in broken sentences — is the only alter that's fully immune to mind control.
• Rond Vidar in the Legion of Super-Heroes cannot be hypnotized; his father is Universo, a villain with hypnosis powers.
• The Punisher once No Selled a sexuality-based mind control power from two villainesses who ordered Spider-Man to attack him (something about his using his reptilian brain more than other brain functions).
• This is downplayed in Savage Dragon. The main character has a Healing Factor that allows him to resist mind control after a time. If the same process is used more than once, he is totally immune. For instance, one story had Horde, a mind-controlling worm, take control of him. Once he was free from his control, he was immune to Horde every other time they met. The same goes for other telepathic villains such as Brain-Ape.
• Sillage: Navis is unique among all species since as a human, she can't read thoughts or be mind controlled to any degree.
• In the "Last of the Rocket Knights" comic from Sonic the Comic, Sparkster from his namesake game is immune to King Gedol's mind-control spell due to his enchanted armor protecting him.
• Static Shock (in both the comic and animated incarnations) reveals the title main character is immune to mind control whether induced by a psychic, or by mechanical means. It apparently has something to do with the Electro-Magnetic field he produces.
• Depending on the Writer, this can be one of Wonder Woman (or the Lasso of Truth she wields)'s powers. It was one of her explicit powers originally, as seen in the pages of Wonder Woman (1942), but this was tied to her low level telepathy which all writers after her creator have left by the wayside.
• X-Men:
  • Magneto has a Cool Helmet that prevents him from being mind-controlled. Definitely comes in handy when your archnemesis (Prof. X) is one of the most accomplished psykers in the world.
    • Perennial X-Men villain Juggernaut has a similar helmet for similar reasons: As Xavier's half-sibling, he expects to fight powerful psychics on a regular basis.
  • Cyclops was raised by the most powerful telepath in the world, married a second telepath (trained by the first), and dated a third telepath after his wife died. He's also has been possessed by several quasi-demonic evil entities on numerous occasions. As a result, he has built up amazing psychic blocks and resistance over years of training, to the point where he was able to take in a shard of The Void and lock it in a room in his mind, where it has yet to be heard from again. He was also able to keep a leash on the Phoenix Force for a surprisingly long time until The Avengers forced him to go full-on Dark Phoenix.
  • Emma Frost's secondary mutation gives her an organic diamond form. While it prevents her from using her own telepathy, it renders her immune to anyone else's.
• Transformers: Generation One: In "The Dark Ages", Mindwipe tries his hypnotism powers of Jetfire, subduing him effortlessly. Then he tries them on Grimlock, figuring if he got Jetfire, Grimlock will be easy street. He doesn't get halfway through saying this before "THWAM!"
  Grimlock: Why everyone underestimate me?

Comic Strips

• In the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip "The First", Historical Domain Character Ernest Shackleton is immune to the psychic paper. He mentions his wife once took him to see a music hall hypnotist, and that didn't work on him either.
• A Thunderbirds comic strip has the Hood brainwash Kyrano, where Kyrano ends up getting ill and demanding to see his brother i.e. the Hood. The Hood gets invited to Tracy Island and tries to use his brainwashing tricks on Kyrano to make him show the Hood the Thunderbirds craft. Unfortunately, the Hood's plan backfires on him - because he's made Kyrano so ill and is now weak, Kyrano now resists the Hood's powers so he cannot show him the Thunderbirds craft.

Fan Works

• In the Both Syllables series, Irkens' ability to use a Paper-Thin Disguise is explained as a combination of mild Compelling Voice and Hypnotic Eyes. About 1 in 1.3 million are immune—including, obviously, Dib and Gaz.
• A Certain Droll Hivemind From "Entry 14", where powers are rated from 1 to 5, from weakest to strongest, this is the meaning of electrical powers stopping a lower-level brain manipulation one:
  Even if 'his tricks' do not work on me. The Network's status as a Level 3 Electromaster protects us from his Level 1 power of Mental Out.
• Child of the Storm: as in canon, Harry is incredibly difficult to control because he's so ridiculously stubborn. After that, his massive Psychic Powers help, but even that isn't it - by the sequel, anything that ends up in his head without permission is exposed to all the horrors and psychic scars, and consequently immediately regrets it.
• Hellsing Ultimate Abridged appears to play this straight in Episode 7, but ultimately plays it for the attempted controller's disgust. During the attack on Hellsing Manor, Zorin uses her illusion powers to break Miller's last stand; her use of a little girl as the diversion fails because of familial and anatomical deficiencies Miller is keenly aware of (no daughters due to vasectomy, no nieces due to no siblings). It's only by unwittingly tapping into his fetishes and manifesting Sonic the Hedgehog with a foot-long erection does she get what she needs.
• In The Chronicles of Narnia fic “Across the Worlds", at one point the heroes, including Susan, Peter, Caspian, the talking Leopard Zaru and Susan's allies Jason, Inara and Elias, arrive on a world where a Djinn has corrupted the population into war between the two native species, claiming that it will grant the wish of one side when the other is totally destroyed. The Djinn briefly takes control of the travellers with promises that their hearts' desires will be fulfilled if they kill at least one of their allies, but Zaru is able to ignore the attempt to control him as the Djinn promised him Aslan's love, which as a Narnian Zaru already has faith that he will receive unless he does something in blatant defiance of Aslan.
• All loopers in The Infinite Loops are unable to be brainwashed or mind controlled for any reason.
• In Mauling Snarks, a Worm fanfic, thanks to Broadcast Administrator and the way snarks communicate, any Master effect that affects Taylor has to get through her snark first, which has the authority to deny the connection or redirect it somewhere else. However, managing the effect puts Taylor's mind in stasis, making her freeze until the effect is stopped or redirected.
• It's mentioned in Son of the Sannin that Orochimaru had protective seals carved into his skull that prevent his mind from being read or tampered with, just in case he found himself at the mercy of members of the Yamanaka clan working at Konoha's Torture and Interrogation department. They're effective enough that he able to shrug off Obito's attempts to use Kotoamatsukami on him with Shisui's stolen eye.
• The fae in Spellbound (Lilafly) are quite resistant to magical mind control effects, since they're naturally magical beings.
  • This has interesting effects when Adrien, a half-fae, is hit by mind-controlling akumas; his human side basically shuts down, leaving him cold, cruel, and capricious, but not actually controlled by the akuma. Upon being hit by Dark Cupid's arrow, he beats Dark Cupid to a pulp and nearly kills him before Ladybug intervenes and breaks the effect.
  • Things get even more complicated when an akuma goes after Sabrina, who is a selkie missing her coat, and thus counts as half-fae. The akuma influences her, and is agonising, but can't actually control her — and then when she gets her coat back, making her a full fae again, the butterfly is driven out of her.
• A Discworld fic by A.A. Pessimal sees a resourceful woman confronting an Elf. She asks the Elf to comment on the quality of the jewellry she is wearing, and explains the ear-rings are made of polished magnetite on steel wire. Her choker necklace is worked haematite. "Only semi-precious stones, if that, but they polish up wonderfully, don't you think?" The Elf hisses in rage and runs away. ^note Haemetite and magnetite both have an extremely high iron content. Most crucially, Elven mind-control is disrupted by the human party wearing a lot of iron next to the head.

Films — Animation

• The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle: During the climax Bullwinkle is seemingly hypnotised by the mind numbing broadcasts RBTV (Really Bad Tele-Vision) but when he casually comments on the quality of ths show, reveals he's not effected by it.
  Narrator: Yes, as cheap as it may seem (and it certainly does seem cheap) Bullwinkle's head was so thick that RBTV had no effect on him whatsoever.
• Barbie & The Diamond Castle: The Big Bad Lydia can hypnotize anyone with her magic flute, but the heroines Liana and Alexa are not affected by such because of the heart-shaped diamonds from the Diamond Castle that they're wearing as necklaces.
• A bizarre example in Home on the Range, where Slim's Villain Song hypnotizes the Cows that he's rustling, including Maggie and Mrs. Calloway, but not Grace. The reason why is because Grace is tone-deaf, which allows her to break her friends free of their hypnosis and rescue themselves before Slim can get away with the other cows.
• Count Dracula from Hotel Transylvania has the ability to mind-control anyone with just one look, but the human Jonathan is not affected due to wearing contacts. In the sequel, he tries this on a camp counselor at a vampire summer camp only for the counselor to remind Drac that he himself is a vampire.
  • His daughter, Mavis, also has this power, as unlocked in the TV series episode "Hypnosferatu", but it has no effect on anyone except Donald, who was weak of mind, thus she cannot use it until she is old enough for it to work properly.
• How to Train Your Dragon 2: All baby dragons are immune to the Bewilderbeast's hypnotic call (because babies "don't listen to anyone"), which is fortunate for the heroes when all their adult dragons are hypnotized and they need a ride to go save them.
• The Jungle Book: Shere Khan is immune to Kaa's the snake hypnotic eyes while the other characters are immediately in a trance.
• Mr. Peabody & Sherman: Mr. Peabody is an expert at hypnosis, but he fails to hypnotize social worker Mrs. Grunion.
• My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Rainbow Rocks:
  • The Dazzlings hypnotize the entire school with their enchanted singing, including Principal Celestia and Vice-Principal Luna, into turning the initially friendly musical showcase into a Battle of the Bands. However, the Rainbooms and Sunset Shimmer, thanks to the the magic of friendship that was imbued into them in the previous movie, are the only ones in the school who aren't mind-controlled into showing animosity towards their schoolmates; in fact, they devise a plan to try to break the Dazzlings' spell on the rest of the school. Double Subverted into that, due to their arguing over little things along the way, the Rainbooms almost fall into the trap of turning on each other and showing ill-will amongst even each other, thus giving the Dazzlings more energy, until Sunset Shimmer tries to reconcile them and bring the band back together again.
  • DJ Pon-3 was also not affected by the Dazzlings' spell because at the time of the song in the cafeteria, she was wearing her headphones and was seen bouncing to her own music, and continues to wear them throughout. She eventually becomes the one whom Spike finds to help the Rainbooms fight back.
• The Twelve Tasks of Asterix: In this film, Asterix and Obelix have to fulfill 12 tasks. One of them is visiting an Egyptian hypnotist who tries to make Asterix believe he's a wild boar. While other clients were easily hypnotized, Asterix remains cool and unfazed and distracts the hypnotist by asking him silly questions which break the man's concentration. Eventually he is so confused that Asterix makes him believe he is a wild boar, whereupon the hypnotist leaves the room grunting on all fours. Thus the task is fulfilled.

Films — Live-Action

• In The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle, Bullwinkle can't be hypnotized because he's just to dumb to fall for it. At least, that's what the narrator says.
• The Avengers (2012): Loki tries to brainwash Tony Stark after he has had enough of Tony's attempt to distract him with an Evil Will Fail lecture. This hilariously fails when his mind control scepter just does a *ping* and shuts down after coming into contact with the arc reactor in Stark's chest. He's so baffled that he even gives it a second try. Still no dice.
• Batman & Robin: When Poison Ivy tries to use her mind control pheromones on Mr. Freeze, he scoffs at the attempt, stating that it doesn't work on the "cold-hearted."
• Doctor Sleep: Snakebite Andi tries to use her Compelling Voice on the True Knot when they pursue her. While it works on Crow, it doesn't work on their leader Rose. Luckily for Andi, they were planning to recruit her, not eat her.
• In Good Will Hunting one of the psychologists they first take Will to tries to hypnotize him. Will pretends to recall an alien abduction for a minute, then jumps up and starts laughing.
• Marvin the Paranoid Android in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005) isn't attacked by the spade-shaped things on Vogsphere that rise from the ground and smack the other characters in the face whenever they have ideas. Word of God explains that this is a psychic creature that feeds on original thought, which is why the Vogons have evolved to be exceptionally dull, and thus become the bureaucrats of the galaxy. Presumably Marvin isn't affected because of his inorganic brain.
• Rasputin Dark Servant Of Destiny (1996). Rasputin the Mad Monk is waiting to see the Tsar, and is staring at the Tsar's doctor (one of his opponents who regards Rasputin as a fraud). The doctor just smirks and says, "You're wasting your time. I can't be hynotized."
• Star Wars: Certain people are immune to Jedi mind tricks. They don't work on the strong-willed (this likely includes properly-trained Jedi and other Force-users), the extremely intelligent, or the extremely stupid. In addition, certain species, including the Hutts, Toydarians and Geonosians, are naturally immune. And in addition it’s been shown others can be trained to resist Jedi mind tricks.
• X-Men Film Series:
  • X2: X-Men United:
    • Professor Xavier, being the world's most powerful telepath, is too powerful for Jason's Mind Manipulation fluid to control him. So Stryker puts a Power Nullifier on Xavier and has Jason telepathically assault him continuously... and even then, it takes the better part of two days for Jason to wear down Xavier.
    • Magneto performs a No Sell of his own, thanks to his telepathy-blocking helmet: while the mind-controlled Xavier is attacking the mutants of the world with his powers, Magneto is completely immune to the psychic attack that has literally every other mutant on Earth writhing on the ground in agony. For good measure, once he's managed to temporarily disable Cerebro and stop the attack, he finds himself face to face with Jason, who makes one final attempt at telepathically attacking him- to no avail; cue horrified stare from Jason, as Magneto smugly taps the side of his helmet by way of explanation.
  • X-Men: First Class: Sebastian Shaw originally used a special helmet that prevents psychic mutants from reading his mind or taking it over. Sure enough, as soon as he loses it in the climax he's finished. This same helmet is later adopted by Magneto, who uses it on multiple occasions throughout the series, particularly against his former partner Professor Xavier.

Literature

• On at least two occasions in the Artemis Fowl series, Artemis wears mirrored lenses to protect himself from the fairies' Mesmer power (which requires direct eye contact with the Mesmered individual). Butler is also able to shake off a Mesmer by Heroic Willpower when ordered to do something against his will, though the effort causes him to suffer a near-fatal heart attack.
• In Carpe Jugulum Agnes and Mightily Oats are able to resist the vampires' hypnosis because of their split personalities.
• In Constance Verity Saves the World, Connie just casually reveals that she's immune to mind control, so Siege Perilous' experimental psychic super-soldiers controlling her won't be an issue. After suffering damage from Debra's psychic amplifier, her immunity to mind control and hypnotism starts wearing down, nearly throwing herself into the ocean after prolonged exposure to the sea god's siren song.
• Cradle Series: Once Lindon gets Dross, a mind spirit that can protect him against external influence (plus illusions), he becomes basically immune to any mental attacks that are not much more powerful than him. In general, higher-level practitioners are largely immune to mental assaults from lower-level, but that's more of a Contractual Boss Immunity thing.
• In The Demon Headmaster, the five founding members of SPLAT (Lloyd, Harvey, Ian, Mandy, and Ingrid) are somehow immune to the Headmaster's hypnotic powers. As such, they are exempt from the assemblies (which the Headmaster uses as mass-brainwashing sessions), and sit in detention with the prefects watching over them instead.
• Doom Valley Prep School: Petra is very hard to mind control. Having been transformed from a boy into a girl, and being angry at everything that's happened to her since coming to Doom Valley, psychics don't seem to know how to successfully control her. It also helps that Fate finds Petra amusing.
• The Dresden Files: The Star-Born are immune to a specific type of mind control; they can resist the Outsiders and prevent their corruption from taking hold in their minds.
• A minor character whose car the Master steals in the Doctor Who Past Doctor Adventures novel Face of the Enemy can't be hypnotised. So the Master kills him instead.
• In Firestarter, Andy McGee, whose power of electrical manipulation can affect people's perception and thought processes, mentions how certain people, like those with Down's Syndrome and other serious mental disabilities, cannot be manipulated by his power.
• Richard Hannay is naturally resistant to being hypnotized, which stands him in good stead against the masterminds of Greenmantle and The Three Hostages, both of whom use mysterious Oriental mesmerism techniques on people they want within their control.
• In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire Harry demonstrates resistance to the Imperius curse in Moody's Defense Against the Dark Arts class (which impresses Moody, but it's not clear whether it's because Harry is so young and relatively inexperienced or that he can do it at all). When Voldemort tries it on him he manages to completely No-Sell the spell.
• Hurog: In Dragon Bones, Ward seems to be immune to mind control to some extent. Doesn't help him much, though. The villains have other means. A magician who tried to compel him to do something complained that her magic didn't work on him. She theorized it could be due to his stubborn character and thick skull.
• In InCryptid, Frances Brown and her descendants have resistance to Johrlac mind control. It's revealed in Calculated Risks that this is because she was half-Kairos, a species with natural immunity.
• In The Jungle Book, Mowgli (being human) seems to be the only creature in the jungle who's immune to Kaa's hypnosis.
• Known Space:
  • The Bandersnatchi were created as a food source for the mind-controlling Thrintun by one of their subject races. They were also created as spies immune to the Thrintun's powers. The result was that they were pretty much the only vertebrates to survive the Slavers' mass-suicide command and therefore the oldest sapient race in the galaxy by at least a billion years.
  • Pak Protectors are also immune to Thrintun control, due to their multilobed brain structure. A Thrintun who thinks it's controlling one actually only gets one of the Protector's five brain lobes, reducing its irresistible commands to optional suggestions.
  • Black Priest kzinti are immune to telepathy due to the same gene that gives them their eponymous fur color.
• Max, the protagonist of the Labyrinths of Echo series, is impaled by a magical sword in Dorot, Lord of Manukhs, which remains stuck in his chest, intangible and invisible. From that point onward, Max becomes completely immune to all charms and illusions (including mind control), as the sword materializes again whenever any such magic is used against him, causing enough pain to dispel it... unless it doesn't feel like it on a particular occasion.
• Subverted in the Lensman series by a number of characters who believe that they are immune to mind control (such as Helmuth placing complete trust in his mechanical thought-screen). They end up either learning differently or else getting mind-controlled without realizing it. Played straight in the case of Karen Kinnison, who really is the ultimate in mental defense.
  Mentor: Your mind might, just conceivably, be broken; but it cannot be coerced by any imaginable external force, however applied.
• Mercy Thompson:
  • Downplayed with Mercy. As a Coyote Walker, any mind control used on her is much less effective than it would be on anyone else. A mind control elixer that should last for hours to days only works for a few minutes while a Fairy Queen's spell that should be permanent wears off after a couple of weeks.
  • Werewolves are compelled to follow the commands of an wolf that's more dominant than they are. The exception to this are omega wolves, who are completely immune to this effect or to any other effect related to pack dominance.
• Molly Moon: Hypnosis works through either the voice, eye contact or both; therefore, it can be blocked by wearing goggles, sunglasses, headphones and so on.
• In The Lord of the Rings, the Ring does not strictly control minds, but it does have a strong ability to warp whoever is wearing it into an evil mutant of what they once were. Not Tom Bombadil, however. Tom is a very, very old being who is not impressed by the Ring at all. In fact, Tom just regards the Ring as a somewhat amusing, but ultimately harmless curiosity and casually plays with it before handing it back to Frodo.
• The Machineries of Empire: Kel soldiers who resist the psychic conditioning that forces them to obey the chain of command are called "crashhawks", a pun on the Kel ashhawk emblem, and are usually discharged or executed when discovered. Kel Brezan is one, but made it a point of personal pride to be as good a soldier as possible anyway... until a rogue Kel general pulls rank to hijack the entire fleet he's serving on.
• My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!: As a result of how utterly bizarre her mind is and how she possesses a case of Incorruptible Pure Pureness, all attempts at influencing Catarina's brain will fall flat, not even exaggerating her regular idiocy, as shown through incidents like being the only person who was exactly the same mentally and fully aware something wrong was going on while stuck in a Lotus-Eater Machine, or Raphael Walt not even trying to enflame her sense of jealousy and hatred because she doesn't feel those emotions in the first place. That said, only mind control fails to work, as other mental magics like Forced Sleep, which straight-up shuts off the mind instead of manipulating it, still work normally against her, in contrast to light magic users, who are completely immune to all forms of dark magic.
• Nevermoor: Cadence is a mesmerist, meaning she has a Compelling Voice, and people forget her existence immediately after she leaves their line of sight. However, her ability to pull a Jedi Mind Trick isn't infallible. It's revealed that prolonged exposure can lessen the effects of her powers; her fellow members of Unit 919 begin to remember her after they've been in the same class as her for awhile, and there's no mention of her family ever forgetting her. There are also classes available to teach people how to recognize and resist mesmerist powers—with attendance mandatory for Unit 919. Morrigan, a Wundersmith, is the only person who's completely immune; Cadence is surprised when she realizes Morrigan remembers her on their second meeting, and in general her powers are met with a complete No-Sell. This allows them to become genuine friends much faster than the others.
• Night Chills by Dean Koontz involves a Town with a Dark Secret being used as a testbed for a Mind-Control Conspiracy. The Mad Scientist who developed the Subliminal Seduction technique is abusing his power to rape a woman when her son attacks him and doesn't respond to his Trigger Phrase, because the technique doesn't work on everyone.
• In Rivers of London, Peter Grant has built up a near-total resistance to glamours, due to literally every supernatural creature he meets trying to magically compel him in some fashion or another.
• Pacifica Casull a.k.a. the Scrapped Princess, someone also known as the Providence Breaker is the only human being in the world that is unaffected by Providence, the mind-control of the Peacemakers. Additionally, she can also spread this immunity to others around her further crippling the Peacemakers grip on humanity. This is one of the main reasons that they are so intent on seeing her dead.
• The Stranger Times: Carrying the key to the Church of Old Souls (now the Stranger Times office) will render the wearer immune to magic. This is first demonstrated when Moretti tries to hypnotize Banecroft and the latter shrugs it off. It is the first time Moretti becomes truly flustered.
• The Supernaturals Series: In book 2 (A Nice Quiet Town), it's discovered that two members of the team — Ami Tanaka and Daniel Price — are immune to the vampire's mind control. Ami is immune because at night she becomes a living shadow and thus does not have an actual organic brain to control, while Daniel is immune because he's a werewolf and there are parts of his mind that are too wild to control.
• In That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, there are several ways to avoid becoming a victim of Mind Control.
  • Anyone who has an Ultimate Skill gets passive immunity by default since, in most cases, lower-tier Skills and artifacts just don't work on someone who has one. Milim Nava completely No Sells the Orb of Domination (an artifact containing the most potent of mind-control curses courtesy of his master Kazaream) Clayman prepared, and in fact had to intentionally weaken her own mental defenses when she put it on just to convincingly fake it. The only exceptions would be other Ultimate Skill-level effects such as how "Justice King Michael" can Dominate any Angel-Series Ultimate Skill holder alongside its general mind-controlling ability.
  • Shion after she Came Back Strong obtains the Intrinsic Skill "Perfect Memory", one of the effects of which make any mind manipulation ability fail against her, as proven when Clayman tries to brainwash her during their fight and she just nonchalantly tears her way out of her restraints to punch him.
  • Mariabell's Unique Skill [Greed/Avarice] allows her to control others through manipulating their inner "desires", but there needs to be a minimum level of desire present for her power to take effect, though she can help it along by "encouraging" its growth through close contact. Also, someone whose desires are greater than hers can throw off her control. She finds that to be ludicrous...until it turns out her "minion" Yuuki is one such person who strung her along for his own benefit before killing her and taking the Skill for himself.
• In Touch (2017), Caspar is the only person to ever successfully resist Father's power, which basically acts as Mind Control. Since Casper is The Empath, he managed to focus on the emotions of people around him to dull the overwhelming happiness.
• Villains Don't Date Heroes!: Night Terror, as the supposed leader in the field of mind control, has multiple ways of protecting herself against mind control. Even when something slips past her defenses, she is able to keep her wits enough to plug the hole and become immune again. The fact that this still didn't work and she almost kills herself while under a hypnotist's control is her first clue that CORVAC is planning to betray her soon.
• Wild Cards
  • Morakhs were believed to be virtually immune to mind control. Turns out that they are only incredible resistant to it, and when Blaise - who is an anomaly in that his mind control is impossibly strong at the cost of being unable to use the other mentat powers of his race - comes along he proves that it is possible to force one to submit.
  • Some people infected with the virus have some form of this. It becomes relevant when jumpers start to become a threat.
• In Wizard's First Rule, Kahlan is forced to use the Confessor's power on Richard, which makes the victim love the user so much he'd do anything she commands. Eventually Richard reveals the spell didn't work by refusing to obey one of Kahlan's commands and explains to a shocked Kahlan that, because he already loves her wholeheartedly, the spell essentially did nothing to him.
• In A Wrinkle in Time, the psychic villain, IT, provides the protagonists with a meal, which is actually boring pablum made delicious through its illusions. Charles Wallace, who has more advanced Psychic Powers than the others, complains that he can't taste it, and is told that he needs to drop his resistance and willingly let IT into his mind. He does, which...turns out to have been a bad idea.

Live-Action TV

• In Alphas Gary's autism makes him immune to mind control Alpha powers such as Nina's Compelling Voice. Something about his brain being too rigid.
• The Avengers (1960s). In "Man-Eater of Surrey Green", the sentient alien plant uses some kind of electronic signal to bring humans under its control, but anyone wearing a hearing aid is unaffected. Steed speculates that the transistorized circuit acts as a barrier to the signal, so our heroes wear hearing aids when going to take the alien on. Peel gets hers knocked out and ends up fighting Steed.
• In the Babylon 5 episode "The Wheel of Fire", Lyta Alexander demonstrates the ability to mind control an entire room when station security comes to arrest her, claiming, "you cannot stop one who has been Touched by Vorlons". Then Sheridan comes up behind her with a gun, seemingly unaffected since he, too, has been touched by Vorlons, and threatens to blow her skull off.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • In the first season finale, the Master uses hypnosis to immobilize Buffy, then drinks her blood and leaves her to drown in a nearby pool of water. After she's resuscitated, his hypnosis becomes ineffective. Likewise, Drusilla's hypnosis, which she used to immobilize and kill another Slayer, has no effect on Buffy. However, Dracula's mind control apparently works differently, as she's still (somewhat) vulnerable.
  • In the sixth season finale, Anya claims that mind control doesn't work on vengeance demons. Of course, since Dark Willow successfully brainwashes Anya into freeing her from Giles' binding spell, it's either an Informed Ability, or Willow's just that strong.
• In The Dick Van Dyke Show episode "My Husband Is Not a Drunk" Buddy really can't be hypnotized, although he plays along for a couple of minutes. Rob however acts the Hypno Fool.
• Doctor Who:
  • Played with in "The Sea Devils", where the warden claims that his guards are immune to the Master's hypnosis, and even shows one guard shrug off an attempt without even batting an eye for the Doctor's benefit. Whether they actually are or not is a entirely different matter, as he's in cahoots with the Master.
  • In "The Time Monster", the Master tries to hypnotize King Dalios, only for Dalios (who has lived for over 500 years after the chronovore Kronos granted his wish for a long life) to laugh and say he is too old to fall for such tricks.
  • In "The Armageddon Factor", the villain uses mind control devices on Princess Astra and even K9. When one is placed on the Doctor, he is unconcerned and just plucks it off again.
    Shadow: Now, Doctor, you are completely in my power.
    The Doctor: Really? Do you mean because of that?
    Shadow: [hisses in rage]
  • In "Time-Flight", Professor Hately is immune to the Mass Hypnosis going on by virtue of dogged skepticism.
  • In "Planet of Fire", the Master can hypnotize everyone else, but not the Doctor's brassy new companion.
    The Master: You will obey ME.
    Peri Brown: No.
    The Master: I am the Master!
    Peri Brown: S-so what! I'm Perpugilliam Brown, and I can shout as loud as you can!
  • In "The Trial of a Time Lord", the Master tries to hypnotize Glitz using the popular hypnotic pendulum. Unfortunately Glitz is just too focused on the monetary value of the shiny thing to be actually hypnotized by it.
  • In the new series, the psychic paper doesn't work on the following kinds of people:
    • Those with natural psychic abilities, or who've had psychic training, such as the members of Torchwood.
    • The extremely intelligent, like William Shakespeare.
    • Those without any imagination whatsoever, like Fenton the jerkass work supervisor.
  • "The Lie of the Land": Almost everyone on Earth, including the Doctor, is caught in the grip of a mass delusion created by the Prophets of Truth. There are only three exceptions:
    • Bill Potts, the Doctor's companion, is immune because she was the one who accepted the Prophets' offer, which gave them dominion over the Earth in the first place. She did it to save the Doctor, thinking he could defeat the Prophets, and is horrified by what's happened.
    • Nardole, the Doctor's "valet", if you will, is immune because he was on board the TARDIS when the Prophets took control, sick due to a deadly bacteria that could have wiped out all life on Earth if the Doctor hadn't destroyed it.
    • Missy, the Master, was locked inside the Vault as she has been for quite some time when the Prophets took over Earth.
    • Finally, the Doctor turns out to only be pretending to be brainwashed, working to bring the Monks down from the inside.
• Farscape: In "A Clockwork Nebari" a group of Nebari board Moya and subject everyone aboard to their "Mental Cleansing" process to subdue them. John Crichton's Not-So-Imaginary Friend steps in to prevent it working on him. Rygel is also not affected because his three stomachs and higher metabolism almost immediately cleared the drugs from his system.
• The Flash (2014): Subverted for laughs. Nora's understanding of her powers is... imperfect.
  Nora: Well, we'll be fine, because speedsters are immune to mind control, right?
  Barry: Nooooo...
  Nora: Okay, the Flash museum straight up got a lot of stuff wrong!
• Forever Knight
  • Nick and other vamps use a Jedi Mind Trick to keep up The Masquerade, but some people are naturally immune, unrelated to any other character quality (intelligence, strong-mindedness, etc.). Those are the ones who become Secret Keepers, get turned, or are killed.
  • In one episode, a war photographer photographs a vampire feeding off the bodies on a battlefield. Nick is unable to hypnotise him because he only has to look at the photograph for confirmation that he didn't imagine it.
  • Some people are partial resisters, too. Nick fails at hypnotizing Natalie and she becomes a Secret-Keeper, but she is later hypnotized by the older, stronger LaCroix.
• Get Smart. In "The Groovy Guru", Max claims to be immune to the Guru's Mind-Control Music because he can make his mind go blank whenever he wants. 99 agrees with that statement.
• Jessica Jones (2015): Jessica is the only person 100% incapable of being directly controlled by Kilgrave, so he has to resort to controlling those around her to manipulate her. This wasn't always the case, and only happened due to the shock of murdering someone while under his control. It's halfway through the season before Jessica finds this out.
• Played with in an episode of Leave It to Beaver, where Eddie Haskell pretends to be hypnotized by the Beaver; true to form, the writers knew that no one can be hypnotized against their will.
• Lucifer: The titular character has an ability to make someone spit out their innermost desires. This works on all mortals except for Chloe Decker, which is why he is so interested in her. It's later revealed that she was conceived by a literal miracle from God, as a "gift" for Lucifer.
• The Mentalist. Jane needs to get into a locked and guarded room to talk to a prisoner, but the guard can't be hypnotized, so he resorts to sleight of hand to steal the guy's keycard instead.
• The Outpost: Talon, as a result of her asterkinj, isn't affected with Zed's mind control power.
• In the final story of The Sarah Jane Adventures, the title journalist has an interview with a man who is actually a hologram being controlled by aliens. One of the things the aliens can do with the hologram is use it to hypnotize people. So they try to use hypnosis on Sarah Jane. However, Sarah Jane has had experience with hypnosis before (when she was still the Doctor's companion), and has learnt to prevent herself from being hypnotized.
• It varies in Smallville. Sometimes, Clark Kent doesn't even notice people trying to influence him, sometimes it works.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation.
  • In an episode where the entire crew is brainwashed into believing they're at war with another species. Data (who is immune) is deactivated by the same wave which brainwashes them. Another episode has the crew subverted by a mind control device disguised as a VR game. This time Data is deactivated by a brainwashed crew member.
  • Soon after their introduction, it's revealed that the Ferengi are immune to most forms of telepathy and mind-control due to their complex brain structure.
• Star Trek: Voyager:
  • An episode shows a humorous subversion. Someone attempts to hypnotize the Doctor. He calls this ridiculous, because being a hologram rather than a real human, he can't be hypnotized of course. Yet, it succeeds almost immediately. (Perhaps because all this happened within a holo-simulation itself.)
  • Voyager encounters a creature in space that lures starships in so it can eat them by showing the crews what they want and leading them down its gullet. Voyager's crew see it as a wormhole to the Alpha Quadrant, except for the Doctor, Seven-of-Nine, and Naomi Wildman. The Doctor is a hologram, of course, Seven is apprehensive about returning to Earth, and Naomi was born and raised on Voyager so she considers it home more than Earth. In this case, Seven and Naomi start to fall under its control later when they're trying to escape (this of course is a desire it can exploit), and keep thinking they're getting out when they're really going further in. Qatai, an alien who's been fighting the creature for decades, has developed a resistance to its illusions, but still falls victim to it on occasion. The Doctor as a hologram is the only one truly immune to it.
• In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "The Maquis, Part II", Gul Dukat no sells an attempt by a Vulcan to mind-meld with him to mine information from him, which he puts down to Cardassian mental discipline. Dukat mentions in an earlier episode that intense mental training (presumably including mind-control resistance) is a standard part of the Cardassian education system.
• Super Sentai:
  • Hyakujuu Sentai Gaoranger has a Monster of the Week who can control the show’s Humongous Mecha. When he tries to do so to Sixth Ranger Shirogane’s Power Animals, it fails to work. Shirogane puts it down to the three being “lone wolves”.
  • Likewise, Ohsama Sentai King-Ohger's Hilbil Lich is a monster whose Compelling Voice works even on the King-Ohgers. Except for Kaguragi Dybowski, who's such a Manipulative Bastard and Lovable Traitor that he's capable of betraying even himself, meaning he can defy Hilbil's commands with ease.
• In True Blood vampire compulsion doesn't work on Sookie. Humans can also avoid glamoring thanks to anti-glamoring contact lenses.
• In The Vampire Diaries ingesting/wearing vervain protects from vampire compulsion.
• In season 3 of What We Do in the Shadows (2019), the vampires' human familiar, Guillermo turns out to have simply built up a natural immunity to vampire hypnosis over his 12 years of servitude because they wasted pretty much all of it on petty nonsense like making him go back and forth on where to put a book. He just pretends to be hypnotized because it's less trouble that way like when they hypnotize him to never harm any vampire. Guillermo reveals his immunity to his master Nandor in the finale to emphasize he could have killed any of them if he felt like it.
• In Wings, Roy Bigguns uses this strength to his advantage, pretending to be hypnotized to trick others into doing his work for him.

Podcasts

• Red Panda Adventures:
  • Supervillain the Mad Monkey is one of the few foes the Red Panda faces that is immune to his hypnotic powers. The main reason is that the Monkey himself also has psychic abilities, which give him powerful control over baboons and limited control over humans. Prior to his crime sprees, the Mad Monkey visited numerous hypnotists and psychics to see if any of them could help him with his own gift, but not one could put him under.
  • After a few early incidents in which the Flying Squirrel fell victim to enemy hypnotists, she received training to help her better resist such assaults. When the Mad Monkey attempts to make her attack the Red Panda in "The Golden Idol", Kit's able to fake being under long enough to make the Monkey disregard her. That proves to be a critical mistake.
  • In "The World Next Door", the Red Panda attempts to hypnotize Baboon McSmoothie, a traveler from an Alternate Timeline. This fails because Baboon is friends with his universe's Red Panda, who took steps to guard him against psychic attack. He tries to play along with the hypnosis attempt, but ends up Corpsing partway through.

Radio

• Journey into Space:
  • In The Red Planet, Doc and Peterson are the only members of the Martian expedition who are immune to the Martian conditioning. Doc tells Lemmy that the Director of the Department of Hypnotic Medicine was unable to place him in an hypnotic state when he attended medical college.
  • In The World in Peril, Jet and Lemmy meet Paddy Flynn, who was likewise immune to the Martians' attempts at mind control.

Roleplay

• For the Spirit of Creation: Lilith, being the Scion of Free Will, has this (although she says isn't sure it will work against a being as powerful as the Enslaver). In fact, even using mind control on other people in her vicinity is a bad idea — not only does she have an aura that boosts the willpower of everyone nearby, but she has an attack that, when used on a mind-controlled person, doesn't hurt them, but damages the person controlling them (as well as possibly breaking them free).

Tabletop Games

• Arduin RPG, The Compleat Arduin Book 2: Resources
  • A Unicorn can never be mentally controlled, geased or mesmerized (hypnotized).
  • Angelic beings are immune to being mesmerized (hypnotized), geased or put under the psychic control of another creature.
• Chaosium's supplement All the Worlds' Monsters Volume III. The Leicht Geiste is a glowing pillar of light up to ten feet tall. It is not subject to any form of control.
• Demon: The Fallen: All Demon hosts are immune to all mind-controlling effects including hypnosis, thanks to being already possessed by a demon. They are still susceptible to I Know Your True Name, however. They can also be affected by things that directly affect them biologically rather than mentally, such as drugs or a vampire's Blood Bond.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • Many creatures, such as plants, slimes, insects and other arthropods, Golems and The Undead are immune to hypnosis and all other mind-effecting magic. Depending on the edition there can be specific methods or techniques to bypass the immunities of some of them (such as various Pest Controller options for arthropods) or exceptions to the general rule (for example, in 3E the immunity of plants and arthropods was based on that they don't really have a mind to control in the way animals have — so things or variants that granted them some degree of thought also tended to remove the immunity).
  • The basic protection from evil/good/law/chaos spells, despite being low-level, will block those mind-control effects that rely on a constant link with the controller (mostly charm and domination spells), although they don't prevent the effects from taking hold, and are also quite short-lived.
  • The spell mind blank protects fully against mind-affecting spells and effects, as well as providing some immunities to divination.
  • The spell disobedience from the Complete Scoundrel sourcebook can suppress any mind-control effect, including those already affecting the target, while also tricking the controller into believing its power is still active.
  • The Bard spell empyreal ecstasy induce a pleasurable fuguelike state that renders the subjects immune to mind-affecting spells (but also makes it difficult to concentrate).
• The Madness Dossier: Complete immunity to mind control appears to be impossible; the backdoors planted in the human mind by the monstrous Anunnakku are just too effective. However, the heroic Project SANDMAN is working on various methods for increasing human resistance to manipulation. The snag is, this may make people less human.
• Pathfinder:
  • Prydanus, a type of azatas depicted to fighting against deception and tyranny, emit a thirty-foot aura where all creatures allied to the prydanu gain a sacred bonus to fighting off mind-affecting magic and illusions are automatically dispelled.
  • Hydraggon qlippoth are immune to mind-affecting effects, which shields them from the river Styx's memory-draining properties.
• Shadowrun:
  • Paranormal Animals of North America: The Fideal is basically a magical jellyfish. Because it doesn't have a brain, it's immune to Control Manipulation (mind control) magic.
  • Paranormal Animals of Europe: The Corps Cadavre zombie is immune to all forms of magic that control or influence the mind, including spells and Awakened creature powers.
• Warhammer 40,000: Some characters are immune to psychological effects, whether by possessing the heart of a possibly divine being or being blessed by the magic-hating god of war.

Video Games

• Age of Wonders series: Certain powerful units are outright immune to mind control abilities, while in some games units with high amounts of the right elemental resistance (usually to 'spirit' attacks) are effectively immune unless generous debuffs are applied first.
  • Age of Wonders: Planetfall: Units with the "mindless" keyword (such as robots) are immune to psionic status effects, making them impossible to mind-control using Psychic Powers (though they can still be hijacked by technological means). Xenoplague units have a similar trait called "Ferocious Determination", which simply makes them impossible to mind-control at all.
• City of Heroes has the Big Bad - Lord Recluse as the primary example of this trope. His powers are Super-Intelligence to the level of World's Smartest Man. That alone makes it damn near impossible to take-over his mind or possess him, but being the smartest guy on the face of the planet he also added his own precautions - a Psychic Block Defense he calls "The Seer Network". With a small country's worth of psychics covering him combined with his ultra sophisticated mind, practically nothing can control him.
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2:
  • Yuri's mind control has two weaknesses: animals and robots. Both armies have Attack Dogs, the Allies have Robot Tanks, and the Soviet have Terrordrones, which gives them a bit of a counter against Yuri Clones. Both Tanya and Boris are unaffected by mind-control. In the end of the Soviet campaign in Yuri's Revenge, when the Soviet manage to sabotage Yuri's time machine by adding too many reserved power, he was sent back to the prehistoric time and a T-Rex finished him off since he couldn't mind control it.
  • In addition, the Iron Curtain can make your tanks completely immune to Yuri's mind control, thus an entire tank division can demolish the towers and base before it wears off and get controlled. And since in Soviet Mission 4: Romanov on the Run allows you to build both Demolition Trucks and the Iron Curtain...
  • The Yuri's Revenge Game Mod Mental Omega features extensive use of robotic and cybernetic units in order to counter Yuri and his Epsilon Army's mind-control on the grounds that they don't have controllable minds in the first place. Until Yuri reveals he found a way to control their bodies via psychokinesis...
• Crash Bandicoot has immunity to Neo Cortex's and other villains' mind control devices, and it's a huge blessing considering how often his friends get Brainwashed and Crazy. It's even noted in the first game that Crash has been subjected to the Cortex Vortex — which is what Cortex used to brainwash all his other mutants — multiple times, all to no avail, and it's the reason why the bandicoot was thrown out of the lab as a failed experiment since he couldn't be made into a loyal Super-Soldier. Granted, his future self from It's About Time accidentally sabotaging the Cortex Vortex didn't really help matters...
• In Donkey Kong Country Returns, Kalimba attempts to hypnotize Donkey Kong, to no avail. Diddy Kong and Cranky Kong are similarly immune, and also Rambi, Squawks and Professor Chops.
• Mind Control is a part of forbidden Blood Magic in the Dragon Age universe. In Dragon Age II, a blood mage attempts to mind-control Hawke who can prove immune to it by either belonging to the Mage class themselves or be being a warrior with the Templar Prestige Class. Subverted because a Hawke who is neither a mage nor a templar cannot stop the blood mage on their own, but they can still break free and kill her.
• In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the Dragonborn meets Master Neloth of the Great House Telvanni while the latter is researching a curious mind-controlling effect that has been spreading throughout the island of Solstheim. When asked how he was not gripped by the mind control himself, Neloth replies that he has so many magical defenses against mind control active at any given time, he's not entirely sure which one is responsible for his lucidity. Given that he is a millennia-old master wizard whose primary "peers" are known for their incredible magical potential and utter lack of scruples, this level of defense is perfectly sensible.
• In Family Guy Video Game!, at the end of the second level as Stewie, he must use his mind control ray on Death to have him kill the nurses attending to a hospitalized Peter. If you try to use the ray on the nurses, Stewie will declare "No mind to control, but... you're doing good."
• In Final Fantasy XIV your character and a few other major players like Minfilia and Krile possess the Echo, the blessing of the goddess Hydaelyn. This gift protects the player character from being "tempered" by other godlike beings such as the Primals. Some characters (notably Garuda) have suggested a more sinister explanation: There's a One Curse Limit on tempering, and gods can't steal each other's thralls. Your actions throughout the game have been relentlessly pro-Hydaelyn. What, then, is the difference between "having the Echo" and "being tempered by Hydaelyn"? As far as anyone can tell, you've retained your own free will, but nobody truly knows for sure... at least until meeting Venat in Endwalker, when it's revealed that it really was just a blessing and that Hydaelyn is a transformed and fully benevolent Venat, who's more powerful and ancient than Primals. The hero really is acting of their own accord.
• Beings from the Slug race in FTL: Faster Than Light are telepathic, which -on top of being able to influence minds themselves- renders them immune to mind control. Any ship with a Zoltan Shield is similarly immune to mind control, at least until the shield gets depleted.
• Legacy Of Kain Blood Omen 2: In Kain's first meeting with Marcus, the latter tries to charm the former to do his bidding, but Kain simply shrugs it off, telling Marcus that his mind is too strong for him to charm.
• In Mass Effect 2, Samara's loyalty mission has Shepard pursuing Samara's daughter Morinth, the equivalent of a space vampire. If their Paragon or Renegade score is high enough, Shepard will just laugh off Morinth's attempts at mind control.
• Metroid Prime 2: Echoes gives us A-Voq, the last Sentinel of the Torvus Temple. In his Last Stand, he was subjected to numerous possession attempts by the Ing. All. Failed. The flavor text even comments that to resist such assaults — in addition to the damage he was taking in combat — would require incredible stamina and psychic durability. Downplayed in that he still died anyway.
• In Persona 5 Strikers, the Monarchs brainwash people by stealing their Desires from their Shadows in the Mental World. The Phantom Thieves cannot have their Desires stolen because their Shadows transformed into Personas.
• In Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love, Sagiitta/Cheiron and Rika/Rosita try to hypnotize Subaru (who is quite mysterious and hinted not to be a normal human being). Subaru just thinks it's funny.
• In the Sam & Max: Freelance Police games, Sam has a hypnosis-blocking device built into his hat from Episode 2 onwards, and Max flat-out can't be hypnotized - whether this is because of his sheer insanity or his unawakened psychic abilities is never explained. Max's immunity is so powerful that he's able to hijack Hugh Bliss's hypno-ray, though this has the side effect of turning the world just as crazy as Max, at least for a while.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: Revenge of the Flying Dutchman: Patrick is immune to the Dutchman's hypnosis, likely due to his stupidity, though he willingly goes with him. Spongebob becomes immune to the Dutchman's hypnosis after collecting enough treasures.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • In Sonic Unleashed, it's revealed that Sonic's indomitable will is the sole reason his mind isn't overtaken by Dark Gaia's evil energy upon transforming into the Werehog:
    Sonic (in his Werehog form): Even at night, when I'm like this, I'm still myself. Not like all the other people we've seen. You must have been protecting me this whole time.
    Chip: I haven't done anything, Sonic. You're the reason you haven't changed at all. You're too strong to lose yourself.
  • In Sonic Chronicles, during the battle with the Voxai Overmind, there are four characters who are immune to his control. They are Sonic himself, E-123 Omega, Cream the Rabbit, and Big the Cat. Sonic is immune because he was in possession of a Great Emerald at the time, which gave him some protection, Omega because he's a robot, Big because he's Too Dumb to Fool, and Cream because she's only six years old.
• Nearly every character in the Soul Series have to battle corruption from evil forces, or at the very least, it's a real concern they must worry about. This isn't the case with Taki, the resident demon huntress and ninja, as such things have absolutely no effect on her. She's able to pull out shards of Soul Edge (as in, pieces of the Evil Weapon that corrupts virtually anyone who comes in contact with it) from Sophitia with her bare hands and be affected at all. She's also able to be around the same kind of evil energy that corrupted her master Toki, without being tainted in the slightest. Also, it's why she's able to wield her Mekki-Maru, a blade she fused with a shard of Soul Edge, without issue. For anyone else, the presence would corrupt them immediately, but Taki can use the full benefits of the weapon as an Amplifier Artifact with full control.
• In Star Control II, the Taalo shield can confer this to anyone in proximity to it. Note that the protection isn't complete; the Neo-Dnyarri might not be able to order you to blindly attack the Ur-Quan, but if you question them too deeply about things they don't want to talk about, you will find yourself talking about pretty flowers instead.
• Starcraft II: The Ultralisk has the Frenzied ability, which makes it immune to not only mind control but some slowing effects as well.
• Star Wars: The Old Republic:
  • The Imperial Agent Player Character spends most of Act 2 of their storyline mind-controlled by the Republican Intelligence to do their bidding. Afterwards, one of the perks is to be completely immune to all forms of mind control for the rest of their life. Sadly, this ability never comes up in the story again and there are no enemies who can mind-control the PCs in the game, anyway.
  • All the Badass Normal player characters are immune to Jedi/Sith Mind Tricks, which gives you the chance to rub it in their faces.
    Kellian Jarro: [waves hand] You will drop your weapons and surrender to me.
    Bounty Hunter: [waves hand] You will realize what a complete idiot you are.
  • In 'Knights of the Fallen Empire, Kaliyo has a pain inhibitor installed that gives her a painful jolt whenever she's being mentally coerced, thus snapping her out of it.
• Twisted Wonderland: Jade's Shock the Heart can be resisted by individuals with strong enough willpower as seen in his attempt to use the power on Kalim to investigate his out-of-character behavior. The spell also only works once per victim to boot, meaning anyone he's cast it on will be permanently immune to it afterward.
• Warcraft III: The Charm Person spell doesn't work on heroes, spell-immune units or neutral creatures above a certain level.
• In XCOM 2, Psi Operatives can get an ability called Solace which grants them an any nearby ally complete immunity to all mental debuffs including mind control.

Visual Novels

• Amnesia: Memories plays with this trope. The heroine is completely immune to Ikki's eyes because she's currently merged with a spirit called Orion. Although Ikki's route proves that, without Orion around, the heroine was just as susceptible to his eyes as any other woman the first time around... and then chose to not get affected by his eyes anymore through sheer willpower.

Web Animation

• Spooky Month: Anyone who looks at the Eyes Of the Universe becomes a teal-eyed, slack-jawed shivering husk. Skid, however, is the one exception to this rule, for some reason. Especially weird since his best bud Pump is also affected, at least for a time.

Webcomics

• Blood Bank features a protagonist who is immune to the pheromones that vampires have been using to enslave humankind for centuries. His mother is later revealed to have been a vampire.
• Dominic Deegan: Quilt doesn't have a brain (he's a Golem), which renders him immune to abilities that target the mind (since he technically doesn't have one). "No brain to wash!"
• El Goonish Shive: The French Aberration had the ability to hypnotize women so it could eat them. Nanase is immune to this ability, which allowed her to save Susan's life. It's possible that her innate magic resistance protected her, but Susan suspected that it's actually because Nanase is an (at the time in-denial) lesbian.
• Girl Genius:
  • The slaver wasps don't work on Sparks — or at least, they didn't until a single Spark wasp was made by one of Lucrezia's servants and ended up wasping Baron Wulfenbach.
  • No-one's found a wasp that works on Jägers, which is useful since they're used for fighting in slaver-infected towns, and they generally eat the wasps instead.
  • Tarvek's potion, invented after studying with Lucrezia and working out how her wasps work, makes people this trope — even if they get wasped, it doesn't affect them. After the timeskip, it appears that it's standard for everyone in the Wulfenbach forces to be inoculated against slaver infection.
• Harry Potter Comics: Sheriff Ned is shown to be immune to memory charms and functionally immune to the Imperius Curse (he's resistant to the point that repeated applications of the curse would fry his mind before it took control). Ned's father is shown to have the same resistance. His deputy, Bart^note Or at least, the version of him from an alternate future, has had so many memory charm spells used on him, not only has he built up a resistance, he can tell when someone's cast a memory charm on him.
• Homestuck:
  • Vriska finds out that humans are (mostly) immune to her Mind Control powers. Presumably this is because troll and human brain waves just don't jive very well. Instead, when she attempts to control a human the most she can do is make them fall asleep. She still finds ways to make good use of this ability, though.
  • Andrew Hussie's book 4 commentary reveals that everyone on the hemospectrum above and including Terezi are fully immune to Vriska's mind powers. Due to their unusually powerful Psychic Powers Aradia and Sollux have some resistance and half immunity respectively.
  • Finally both Karkat and Kanaya seem to be immune. The former possibly due to his unique Alien Blood or that fact his mind is unpalatable, the latter either because of her rare blood type or her temperament (Hussie leaves that an open question).
• In Last Res0rt both species with keen hearing (such as talmi and anyr) and Light Children are resistant to the Celeste's Tone ability. It's implied to be a case of hearing the subliminal bits consciously.
• In Minion, the vampire Prince Charming Wannabe Count Antonie tries to use his Hypnotic Eyes on Meryl, with predictable results.
  Meryl: (PUNCH) I'm a dark witch you moron! Did you honestly think I didn't know about that stupid "Hypno-Eye" of yours?!
• In Wilde Life, the witch Zulime can mind control people if she knows their name. It turns out that this doesn't work on more powerful witches like Eliza.
• Captain Safana from Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic owns an anti-charm amulet making her immune to mind-control attempts. She makes it crystal clear from the moment she's introduced that nobody but her give orders aboard her ship, be they royalty, priestesses or wizards.

Web Original

• Because they wrote their names in the glowing blue algae in the entrance to Malacus, Tommy and Charlie in The New Narnia are mentally immune to the Nanny's full infantilizing effects. While it does effect them psychologically, taking pleasure in the use of baby toys, breastfeeding and some of the other things that babies do, they otherwise retain memories of what it was like before the Nanny's influence and don't regress completely.

Western Animation

• Aladdin: The Series: In the episode "I Never Mechanism I Didn’t Like", Mechanikles builds a robot named Gregarious that is able to infiltrate the palace in the form of a gift for the Sultan. The robot makes quick work of hypnotizing the palace inhabitants so Mechanikles can invade and take over Agrabah with next to no resistance. The only ones not affected by Gregarious' hypnosis are Genie and Carpet, due to them being magical in nature.
  Genie: Most cheap parlor tricks don't work on us magical-types.
• The Awesomes: Both Mr. Awesome and his son Prock have a natural immunity to mind control (the one power Prock inherited). Teleportation Larry also turns out to be immune to Malocchio's mind control eyes, but only because his constant inebriation makes him unable to focus his vision.
• Ben 10: Omniverse: Ben seems to be immune to Lord Transyl's Hypnotic Eyes, at least as Whampire, his genetic duplicate. Ben's also been hypnotized before, and it's unknown if Lord Transyl's Corrupturas would have worked on him.
  Lord Transyl: No one is immune to my power!
  Whampire: I don't go in for the whole mind slave thing.
  Lord Transyl: Hmm. Your will is strong, but your flesh is weak!
• In an episode of Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, Booster subverts this trope at first after being taken hostage by Torque, and apparently brainwashed with a stolen personality adjusting helmet. As he later takes Mira and XR hostage, he double subverts this trope by revealing that his personality isn't stored in his head, and he was really pretending to be brainwashed in order to try to ambush Torque off-guard.
• Captain Planet and the Planeteers: In "The Conqueror", Ma-Ti's ring grants him protection from Zarm's tricks, making him the Only Sane Man of the episode.
• Code Lyoko: When XANA develops the ability to XANAfy people in season 2, it quickly turns out all the Lyoko-Warriors, with the exception of Jérémie, are immune to it. They theorize this is because their travels on Lyoko and fight against XANA's monsters have helped them build a resistance to XANA's control, and as such Jérémie is taken on Lyoko to fix his vulnerability. Seeing how XANA never took control of him again, they were probably right.
• Danny Phantom: Danny and Sam are immune to Ember's mind controlling music, Danny thanks to his half-ghost status and Sam because she was wearing Fenton tech earpieces that filter out ghostly powers. After Ember gets a power boost, Sam retains her immunity, but Danny doesn't.
• Zigzagged with Mandrake in Defenders of the Earth. Though he is able to resist being hypnotised, he is not entirely immune, as can be seen in "The Lost Jewels of Tibet". When he, Lothar and Atascadero find the titular Jewels (which are actually dragon eggs), Mandrake is the first to fall under their spell, closely followed by his two companions. It takes being hit by falling rocks to bring him to his senses, enabling him to break the control the Jewels/eggs have over Lothar and Atascadero. But, when the dragon which laid the Jewels/eggs appears on the scene, Mandrake, Lothar and Atascadero are quickly re-hypnotised; it is Rick's intervention that saves them from walking to their doom.
• Detentionaire: Lee Ping and Biffy Goldstein are the only students in A. Nigma that are immune to the brainwashing effects of the Prank Song which is used in a greater scheme to brainwash the students, The Amazing Finnwich's hypnosis, etc. While Biffy's case is unknown, Lee's immunity was due to being a descendant of an excised founder of Mann, Wurst, Finnwich that was given this power by "His Eminence" through a Distinguishing Mark. Kimmie McAdams subverts this as she shares the same Distinguishing Mark (hidden by makeup) but is still susceptible.
• Dragons: Riders of Berk: The Death Song lures its prey in with a hypnotic song; Thunderdrums are unaffected since they have terrible hearing.
• In the Ed, Edd n Eddy episode where Eddy tries hypnotizing everyone in the cul-de-sac, his attempts to hypnotize Lee Kanker don't work. Why? Eddy thinks it's because her hair is blocking her view, but she says it's because "I eat my roughage!". In the same episode, Eddy tries to hypnotize Johnny, but fails at first. However, it instantly works on Plank.
• Futurama:
  • The Brainspawn are a species of floating brains that travel around the universe, making every other species stupid and eventually destroying it. Fry, it turns out, is The Chosen One because he doesn't have any Delta Brain Waves, instead cobbling together a mostly-working mind from other kinds. A later episode does some Arc Welding, revealing that this is a result of him becoming his own grandfather via Time Travel and incest.
  • Similarly, when the world's cats hypnotize everyone with Cuteness Proximity, Amy is immune due to her allergies making her dislike cats, while Nibbler has enough experience using this trick to see right through it.
• In the Go Away, Unicorn! episode "Snap Out Of It, Unicorn!", Alice is called onstage by a hypnotist and tries to hypnotize her, but to his surprise, she is unaffected...but the spell works on Unicorn instead. Justified, as he tries hypnosis by just snapping his fingers instead of using any induction technique first (ie. a Hypno Pendulum or hypnotic screen).
• The Godzilla Power Hour has an unusual example. A giant cobra-like monster named "Axor" hypnotizes humans by firing at them with laser beams from his eyes. He does this to the crew of the Calico, except for Pete and Godzooky, who are back at the ship recovering from a cold they came down with overnight. The kids soon find out about this and shenanigans ensue until Axor eventually captures, corners, and tries to hypnotize Pete. However his hypnotic ray has no effect on him due to his cold "blocking out" the ray. Additionally once Godzilla arrives and battles Axor himself, Axor attempts to hypnotize him as well but fails, this time with no explanation given.
• Invader Zim:
  • Tak has Hypnotic Eyes that don't affect Dib or Gaz; she comments that this is because they're "smarter than the rest." It also doesn't do anything to Zim or GIR; in the latter case especially, it might be a case of Too Dumb to Fool.
  • Note that Dib, Zim and GIR are all able to be mind controlled by Pustulio, Zim's hypnotic zit, though Zim and Dib both seem to be able to fight it off somewhat. Gaz never fell under its power because she wouldn't look up from her video game.
• In Masters of the Universe, Beast Man can control animals through training, technology, or some kind of magic control depending on the iteration of the series. The one animal he's never been able to control is Cringer/Battle Cat, thanks to Cringer being given the Power of Grayskull.
• Miraculous Ladybug subverts this. The Butterfly Miraculous holder (in this case, Hawk Moth/Papillon) can akumatize/evillize just about any living sentient thing using a butterfly that can detect an upset person, then using their negative emotions to transform them into an Akuma. Initially, to the audience, it seems that Marinette/Ladybug and Adrien/Cat Noir are immune because they're Miraculous holders, but Word of God later stated that the only reason why they had yet to be targeted was because Marinette is often an optimistic person and Adrien is used to disappointment (combined with the later reveal that Hawk Moth is Adrien's father, so he probably doesn't want to akumatize his own son). Sure enough, the introduction of Bee Miraculous holder Queen Bee, who soon gets akumatized into Queen Wasp, and Marinette nearly getting targeted a few times only for something to interrupt the process (getting as far as Marinette almost giving up her earrings while Hawk Moth was introducing himself to her) proves it.
• In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "The Return of Harmony, Part 1", Discord hypnotizes the Mane characters (except Twilight Sparkle) into acting contrary to their Elements of Harmony by taking advantage of their weaknesses (e.g. showing Applejack, the element of honesty, a future she can't believe and claiming it's the truth, making Pinkie Pie (element of laughter) think her friends are laughing at her rather than with her). However, Fluttershy is the only one who doesn't fall for his tricks. Subverted in that she is hypnotized by brute force by Discord. Humorously, Fluttershy has no clue that Discord (who is incognito at the time) is trying to brainwash her. He fails to brainwash her because she politely agrees with everything he says about her.
  Discord: Well... it must be so upsetting to know how weak and helpless [your friends] think you are.
  Fluttershy: Not at all. I am weak and helpless and I appreciate their understanding.
  Discord: [getting frustrated] Yes, well surely it burns you up that they're always pointing out your flaws!
  Fluttershy: Not really, in fact, I think I'm awfully lucky to have friends who want me to be the best that I can be!
  Discord: [changes back into himself] OH FOR GOODNESS' SAKE!
• The Rocketeer: In "Hypnotic Hughesville", the villainous magician Orsino can hypnotize others to act like their favorite animals, but Kit/The Rocketeer was unaffected, because her Team Pet Butch was highly intelligent and was the only dog present. Also it's because a dog is Kit's favorite animal, but the Rocketeer does not have any favorite animals themselves.
• Played for Laughs on South Park, as seen here (skip to about 1:50 in).
• The season 2 finale of Strange Hill High has the villainess of the week (Terpsichore) use hypnosis against the students. During the episode, Mitchell and Becky discover that the only other student (aside from themselves) who has not been hypnotised is Matthews. He explains to Mitchell and Becky that for some reason, Terpsichore's hypnosis did not work on him.
• In Teen Titans (2003): Cyborg apparently can't be controlled by Brother Blood because half of his brain is electronic. As a result, Brother Blood becomes obsessed with him, even making himself a cyborg in order to amplify his powers. It still doesn't work, which makes Cyborg realize (yet again) that his true strength comes from his humanity, not his robotic additions.
• Trolls: TrollsTopia: In "Smooth Operator", Chaz hypnotizes every Troll alike to resort to only liking jazz music. However, his music has no effect on Keith, because it does not work on child Trolls, allowing him to break the spell.
• In Young Justice (2010), the Light create "Starro-tech", which combines Starro's biology with Magitek to completely Mind Control anyone from magical beings to robots. Thankfully, the Team is able to reverse-engineer "Cure-tech," which can be used not only to free anybody affected, but make people immune to Starro-tech, thus making any attempt to infect them pointless.
• In the Z-O-M-B-I-E-S (2018) short series "Addison's Moonstone Mystery", Addison is strangely the only one unaffected by the vampire Vanna's hypnosis.

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