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alt title(s): Made Of Air; Made Of Diamond; Nigh Invulnerable The Tick: Urgh! Got to....pull myself to...gether! Must....defy....laws of....physics! Arthur: Fight it, Tick! Fight that black hole!
Someone is hella tough. Merely fighting them won't make them go away; if at all possible their defeat requires one to figure out how, which is a legendary quest in and of itself. Usually the ability of the Big Bad in sci-fi and fantasy, few heroes get this one. (Except in Super Hero series, with Superman being the flagship example.)
Either one has to find their Achilles Heel, or else summon up a nuclear-bomb's worth of power in the last episode, either through The Power Of Love or Ki Attacks or really heavy armaments (ie When All You Have Is A Hammer) and hope for Villain Decay.
Sometimes a vaguely defined nigh-invulnerability is just a way to make a hero only as tough as he needs to be to advance the plot.
Someone with Super Strength often also has this, because there isn't much point in being strong enough to punch though a brick wall if you break your arm in the process.
There's a number of ways one can have Nigh Invulnerability.
- God: Face it. Sometimes you CAN'T kill a god. It's physically and theologically impossible. However other gods can sometimes kill gods, so they do technically fit the "nigh" part.
- Divine Protection: The character themself is not a god, but can survive anything due to intervention of a favourable god/guardian angel/spirit of parent that has been 'struck down and become more powerful than you can possibly imagine'.
- Made of Diamond: Way, way beyond Made Of Iron. The power of the Implacable Man and The Juggernaut, nothing does anything to this being. Not a boot to the head, or a bullet to the eye, or a sledgehammer to the groin. Sufficiently strong characters might be able to knock them through a wall or mountain, but just one hit like that won't have any lasting effect.
- Made Of Air: Going the opposite direction, there doesn't seem to be something to fight...but that "something" can fight you. Either they have the power of the Intangible Man completely at will so that you can't attack them, or they may exist in some form that makes direct confrontation just not possible. (A possessing spirit, for example, who jumps from body to body.)
- The Blob, a common variant of this one, is when the character is made of some sort of fluid stuff that makes him tangible, but completely impervious to damage with bludgeoning or piercing weapons.
- Made of Rubber : Somewhere in between the last two, where most attacks just seem to bounce off with little to no effect to the victim.
- Regeneration/Regrowth/Resurrection: They have the truly nasty tendency to recover from anything. Cut off their head, and it grows back. Cut them to pieces, and they just reassemble themselves. Burn them to ashes, and mail them to Mexico, Norway, and Hong Kong, and they'll still just come Back From The Dead. Whether the character can survive being utterly de-atomised varies from fiction to fiction.
- Can Only Kill Part Of Him: Fighting A Shadow. Similar to Regeneration/Regrowth/Resurrection, but basically the whasit that you were fighting was just its..."representation" in the same world. Killing its body in this dimensional plane is a mild setback...if at all, as it can grow that back very quickly or replaced. Technically not that different from Back From The Dead except for semantics. Usually applies to gods, demons, and Cosmic Horror.
- The Proxy: Another example of Fighting A Shadow, but differing in that the individual in question is very much present in the world and very much capable of dying through conventional means. They usually make use of other bodies or identities in order to conceal themselves and reduce the risk of death or injury through direct contact. The proxy could take the form of a skin-covered android, a cloned flesh puppet, or a victim of mind control or possession, and is usually killable. If the proxy is encountered often enough, it can give the semblance of invulnerability.
- External Repair/Spare Body Parts: Like regeneration and/or regrowth, but external, most common with machines but occasionally works for the undead or supernatural foes. Chop off an arm? Meh, if it's too damaged to reattach, no big deal: it's replaceable. Blown into tiny chunks? Allies or drones will show up and rebuild. In some cases, they can modify themselves, or even abandon their body entirely after building a new one to transfer into, or, if they're Made Of Air underneath it, chosing a new one to possess.
- Multiple Bodies: The classic power of the Hive Mind. Killing one body will, at worst, reduce it's cognitive abilities; more often, though, the only way to kill him is to kill all of him, as even one survivor may be able to recreate a whole new army of selves.
- Extreme Luck: The part where the clumsy hero/heroine can dodge everything just because of extreme luck. The only problem is if the extreme luck is unwieldy (50% best and 50% worst).
Examples
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- Ryoga Hibiki of Ranma 1/2. Especially after his Bakusai Tenketsu training. Since he's thrown himself into boulders hundreds of times and gotten hit by subsequent shrapnel just as often, his body is hardened such that most common attacks are utterly useless.
- The warrior Lime, retainer to the Musk Dynasty's prince, is even sturdier.
- The Phoenix King Saffron can regenerate instantly from any injury via his own flame. He has only one weakness: being frozen solid. And even then, that merely stops him, but it won't destroy him: after being frozen and shattered into a million pieces, he regenerated as an egg and hatched immediately afterwards, albeit as a toddler.
- Though it's not his primary defining capability the way it is with Ryoga, Ranma Saotome is fantastically durable himself. He has survived massive Kamehame Hadoken Ki Attacks, falls from fantastic heights, being beaten on by angry mobs, being blown up, and enough general physical abusage to turn a battleship into worthless scrap metal, and always manages to shrug it off and keep on going- even before simply healing the damage. Fans have theorized, after seeing him survive with mere fleshwounds against Ryu Kumon's Vacuum Blade attacks (which, for comparison, cut a 10 meter tall solid stone Buddha statue into pieces), that he is, for all practical purposes, bulletproof.
- Sanosuke Sagara of Rurouni Kenshin. The trademark of his fighting style is to absorb damage from his opponents. He has taken a ball and chain to the face, and was once thrown through both of the dojo's walls, only to remark that the technique used on him was a rubbish technique. He also took a palm slap that embedded the user's hand into solid stone without even flinching.
- Zelgadis of The Slayers is a Made of Diamond version, in the context of his universe. Merged with a demon and a stone golem, his entire body is made from living rock. This makes him superstrong and a lot heavier than he looks, but also extremely difficult to hurt due to the fact that all of his "squishy bits", external and internal, are made from organic granite. It takes incredible concussive force to cause anything resembling internal injuries, and bladed weapons are useless (for obvious reasons). In the third season of the anime, he takes a cannonball to the face at point-blank range and is merely knocked out for a few seconds. Even magic isn't that useful against him- at one point, he claims that only something as powerful as the Sword of Light can hurt him, and that turns out to be a Demon Lord from another universe. The only creatures in the series that have been able to truly hurt him are the native Demon Lords and creatures of their power level.
- All of the homunculi in Fullmetal Alchemist can regenerate; however, certain homunculi have other defenses in addition to this. Greed's Ultimate Shield was Made Of Diamond by using the carbon in his body to cover himself with a layer of material as hard as, and tougher than, diamond. (Ed cleverly got around this by transmuting the carbon into a softer form.) King Bradley's Ultimate Eye lets him see the outcome of any given situation before it happens, so he is very good at dodging just about anything. Sloth can change herself into liquid.
- In the manga Van Hohenheim, like the homunculi, has the ability to regenerate any damage, since he is a living Philosopher's Stone.
- For that matter, Al falls under "external repair." He's a soul bound to a suit of armor by an alchemical rune painted on the inside of his neck. Although he's hampered as you'd expect by damage to other body parts, as long as the rune's undamaged, he's still alive, and with a bit of work, can be repaired through alchemy — although care must be taken not to damage the rune in the process of making the repairs.
- Many of the villains in Dragon Ball Z could regenerate. Cell, for example, came back from being reduced to ashes because a single piece of his central nervous system survived. Buu (who was also The Blob) was blown into a million pieces, and then had each piece vaporized, he regenerated from the vapor.
- On a side note, pretty much every major fighter was also Made Of Diamond, mostly because they could use their gigantic powers to shrug off damage.
- In Naruto, the various members of the Akatsuki exhibit this in all sorts of ways.
- Kakuzu combined his earth-based Made of Diamond technique with four spare hearts.
- He can somehow also reattached the limbs of other members with the remaining fully functional, even Deidara who had not shown to have special healing powers himself.
- His partner, Hidan, was genuinely immortal, and simply needed severed appendages sewn back on. However, it's All There In The Manual that he needed to kill people continuosly to maintain his immortality.
- Pain, the Akatsuki leader, has six bodies; unless all six are killed at once, he can just find new ones to replace the ones that die and come back at full strength later. And it was recently revealed that even that isn't enough, because the six bodies are actually being remotely controlled by a real seventh who doesn't go anywhere near the combat.
- Former member Orochimaru could simply 'shed' his damaged body like a snake, forming a new, intact body. Even if a body is suffering permanent damage he can just get a new one.
- Tobi (otherwise known as Madara Uchiha) appears to have some Made of Air qualities. He can make any limb of his briefly phase through whatever's hitting him. When Shino countered by engulfing him in a swarm of insects, he simply did this with his entire body. Kakashi theorized this involved sending parts or all of his body to either some remote location or another dimension. However, it appears that he's vulnerable when attacking because he can't attack while phasing.
- Sasori, who had made himself into a puppet, combined Spare Body Parts with a backup body.
- Zetsu is apparently able to turn part of himself into (at least his white half) into spores, giving him the backup body method.
- Konan can avoid physical damage by turning into paper. She is still flamable though.
- Outside of Akatsuki, Suigetsu is Made of Air, or rather water (literally), which apparently requires that he drinks a lot.
- And his teammate Jugo is both incredibly durable and can apparently take replacement organs from other people.
- Naruto himself is no slouch on the not dieing front. His Super Powered Evil Side comes with a Made of Diamond energy shield and enhances his Healing Factor considerably, at level one. By level four his regeneration is such that despite being constantly flayed/burned by his power he takes no lasting harm whatsoever. That is, except for a shortened lifespan.
- He also counts as Proxy, due to his nearly instinctive habit of using shadow clones.
- Gaara, another Jinchuuriki, has a similar level of invulnerability, such that he can't even hurt himself. It's actually implied that his fight with Sasuke was the first time he had felt physical pain. We even find out that his father, the Kazekage, had actually been trying to kill him for years without any success. Of course, after his Heel Face Turn, that all changes.
- Many characters in Nasuverse have Nigh Invulnerability, though one of the themes of Tsukihime is "death is inescapable". Good thing Shiki's power bypasses most of these entirely...
- Most True Ancestors can locally reverse time to regenerate their bodies, even if they're completely blown apart. Arcueid was even able to revive after being killed Deader Than Dead by Shiki at the beginning of the story, albeit by rebuilding her body from scratch at the cost of most of her available power.
- Ciel is unkillable for the duration of Tsukihime. As explained, because Ciel is the previous host of Roa, and Roa is still alive (knowing Reincarnation and all), the world itself will not let her die to prevent a paradox from occuring. Ciel herself possesses extreme regeneration abilities.
- One of the antagonists, Nero, has a body composed of pure "chaos", and contained within are 666 beasts. If they are killed outside of his body, the chaos will return to his body and regenerate; he only dies when all 666 lives inside are destroyed at once, making him practically indestructible.
- Unless you hit him with the destructive force equivalent of that needed to destroy an entire continent, which even "chaos" can't withstand, or so says Nasu.
- In One Piece, most Logia-type Devil Fruit users get the "made of air" version, with an appropriate Achilles Heel. For example, Eneru's Rumble-Rumble fruit made him living electricity, which could be countered by the protagonist's non-conductive rubber body.
- One weakness they all share though is that eating said fruit causes them to lose the ability to swim, forever(a pretty big deal considering the fact that they're all pirates).
- Unfortunately, a side effect of being able to transform into things like fire and smoke negates this, as being able to fly makes swimming pretty useless.
- It's explained that the inability to swim is due to a particular mineral in the ocean that has adverse effects on Devil Fruit users. While it does not actually negate their powers (Luffy's neck could still stretch underwater), it makes them utterly weak, so they lack the ability to do anything that requires conscious effort, such as transforming into their element. This didn't stop Eneru from surviving a potentially deadly attack coupled with direct exposure to this mineral, however; after he hit the ground, dead, his electricity-based powers restarted his heartbeat. In fact, Eneru's invulnerability was never overcome completely. He was just finally beaten senseless in the normal fashion and sent to the moon.
- Luffy himself recently exhibited a Made of Diamond aspect when he is beaten to within an inch of his life, infected with multiple deadly and painful poisons, and then is given hormones to help him heal. These hormones are said to only work alongside his Will to Live, will destroy and rebuild his body multiple times by increasing the potency of his healing factor, and require three days for the process to complete itself, if he can survive it that long... As it turns out, he doesn't need to, as his Will to Live and rescue his brother gets the process done in under twenty hours. He also bypasses the required 3 day resting period, though he swoons multiple times, in order to help his brother. This is fixed when Iva, a new ally and the guy who gave Luffy the hormones, thanks to his Horu-Horu Fruit power(which in turn provides quite a powerful example of Fetish Fuel), gives him an adrenaline boost, warning that their will be heavy side-effects later.
- Not to mention he's actually Made of Rubber too.
- Titular Mai-chan from guro manga Mai-chan's Everyday Life is a maid with the ability to regenerate from any and all damage taken. Her job is to be rented by her owners to "clients", who then use her to carry out their sadistic desires. Of course, this being guro, you get to see all the details, and it doesn't hurt her any less, she just regenerates in time for the next round of painful mutilation.
- Alucard from Hellsing has extraordinary regenerative powers, being able to build himself back up from a pool of blood.
- Alucard's rival/opposite number Father Anderson is only marginally less resilient, having readily shrugged off large-calibur bullets into the brain.
- Phoenix Ikki from Saint Seiya apparently has regenerative AND resurrective powers. Oh, and he apparenlty gets a levelup every time he comes back to boot.
- Naraku of Inu Yasha goes through almost every form of this. He initially is just a Hive Mind of demon parts that could stay alive (if crippled) with only his head left. After getting his first new body, he could selectively destroy and replace the parts to get stronger, and was a Regenerator that survive being ripped into many pieces only healing slower each time, as well as having a barrier that could keep most people out. Then, he made a sentient Soul Jar that moved him from Regenerator to being practically Made of Air without ever being effected by the wounds in addition to an even stronger shield that hardly anything could get through. Then, after the point the anime ends, he reabsorbs his Soul Jar (who was trying to kill him) to lose the Made of Air quality (going back down to regenerator) in exchange for taking it's henchman's traits of being Made of Diamond (actual diamond and the even harder scales of a giant tortoise yokai).
- The three members of the Quirky Miniboss Squad in Madan Senki Ryukendo are fought and apparently die several times over the course of the series, yet always return. Rock Crimson is the most noticeable. Near the end, it's revealed that the three Ultimate Madan Keys allow them to revive. Once these keys are removed by force, death is final.
- The spare parts thing is a standard ability for cyborgs from ''Gunnm/Battle Angel. If the heart/lung systems are still connected to the brain and neither are _too_ banged up they can survive almost anything and wait indefinitely for repairs (the lead spending literally centuries in a scrapheap after a fall from orbit).
- If a cyborg has a brainchip, ALL bets are off! Such as Alita herself in last order
- 3X3 Eyes: The near-extinct three-eyed mystical creatures known as Sanjiyan Unkara have the ability to bind the souls of mortals to thier own, leaving said mortal with the character "Wu" mystically emprinted on his or her forehead and the ability to regenerate quite literally any degree of damage so long as their master lives.
- Riding Bean: Set in an otherwise highly realistic Chicago, the titular character ([[Main/{{}} Bean Bandit]]... an anime precursor to The Transporter) is capable of poking his hands through car doors, ripping said car doors off their hinges, taking a point-blank short from a .45 to the forehead and showing no worse ill-effects than a mild concussion... and after being imbedded into the side of one car by another car while in that state, it serves only to slap him awake. He retains this sheer awesomeness in the alternate-continuity manga Gunsmith Cats.
- He was wearing a Kevlar headband. Of course, the kinetic energy would have turned his brain to jelly. But he's Bean Bandit. Who'd notice?
- This troper thinks that Bean does not write often to his cousin Marv because Marv is not a car nut.
- This troper, having read A Dame to Kill For, can tell you Marv is a car nut, commenting on his love for Classic Tuckers and disdain for Japanese cars while driving Dwight to safety.
- "The priest was driving a Mercedes... or something that passed for Mercedes these days." Yeah, Marv is established as a car nut from The Hard Goodbye.
- Rin Asougi from Mnemosyne takes the cake with this, as its literally impossible to kill her permanently, not even by pushing her through a JET TURBINE, unless she is devoured by a very specific type of creature, which she has been shown able to handle on her own.
- Well the angels are one thing, but then we have the guy who kills immortals and angels by removing their Time Spores.
- Laura from the same series is probably worse, as despite no immortality and being an ordinary human assassin, she survived having a bullet slung into her eye, her arm stabbed through and then her shoulder SHATTERED, and then being shot three times at point blank range in the heart and chest.
- C.C. from Code Geass, being immortal, literally cannot die. She has survived burnings, tortures, bombings, bullets to the head, not to mention drowning at the bottom of the ocean and being crushed by the massive pressure. The only way to kill her is to take her Code, a mark of immortality, and that requires such specific guidelines that it's practically impossible to do unless she wants to die.
- Virtually all of the Angels in Neon Genesis Evangelion are Nigh Invulnerable in some way. Most are simply Made Of Diamond, but there are variations, such as Made Of Air (Leliel), Hive Mind (Iruel), Regeneration (Sachiel) etc.
- Viral of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann became Nigh Invulnerable after Lord Genome gave him immortality complete with a Healing Factor, although it only sees use once. The Anti-Spiral leader is a Made Of Air Energy Being variant, but that doesn't stop him being killed by a giant hole drilled through his chest.
- Immortals and Lost Souls from Mermaid Saga fit the Regeneration/Resurrection variety, with the only things able to kill them being decapitation or complete destruction of the brain. They also are capable of limb reattachment, which the series often uses for disturbing results (all together now, guys: face replacement!)
- The Book of Darkness' corrupted self-defense program in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha had ridiculous levels of regeneration, coming back from petrification and getting blown to bits by three Wave Motion Guns. It took an even bigger Wave Motion Gun that vaporizes a target by distorting time and space to finally destroy its physical body, and even then, it would have still returned had Reinforce not taken drastic measures to get rid of her Rejuvenation Program.
- Vivio's Sankt Kaiser form took the Made of Diamond route with her Saint's Armor. With it, she can shrug off Nanoha's attacks like they were nothing, despite Nanoha using Blaster Mode. It took five Starlight Breakers fired at the same time, each amped up to even more ridiculous levels by a maxed Blaster Mode, to penetrate her Saint's Armor and destroy the Relic inside her.
- This definetely says something about Nanoha. Being able to single handedly take on one of the Sankt Kaisers, who are considered effectively gods of magic, is pretty damn badass. Nanoha is pretty nigh invulnerable herself: She has outrageous levels of magic resistance, seeing as the only injuries we actually see on her are from physical attacks and from self inflicted deadly upgrades
- Though, admittedly, it was a six-year-old Sankt Kaiser. And one that didn't even want to fight at the only point Nanoha actually succeeded in doing much damage. If it'd been the original, Olivie? Nanoha may have made it... but it would've taken a whole shitload of Heroic Willpower or extra training.
- Colonel Sanders from Mahou Sensei Negima made himself invulnerable by using an illusion during the tournament. In other words, Made Of Air.
- There's also Negi's father Nagi, the most powerful mage alive, who's nigh invulnerable because he's just that awesome.
- Jack Rakan was named: "The Man Who Cannot Die", "The Immortal Fool", "That Damn Guy Who You Can Stab With Swords All You Like And It Won't Do A Thing, Dammit"
 for a good reason. A little mention of "This guy is so broken it's not even funny!".
- There was that time when, just to show Negi just how dangerous Magia Erebea is, he used it himself, pratically blowing himself up.
- And that time when Asuna punched him out of a flying island and he just popped up right behind her, laughing.
- And naturally when, during the final match in the tournament, Rakan took tons of lightning speed attacks, pretended to stay down at the 20 second count, stood up again at the last second, got hit by lightning speed attacks again, had his own power turned against him when Negi absorbed his attack, rammed by Negi's Perfect Lightning Form, got hit by Raika Houken + Rakan Power, stabbed by Negi's Original Spell: Lightning God Lance: Titan Slayer in the form of a lance while getting hit by a Thousand Bolts four times. And still remained standing. And grinning.
- All of this and even more while still being a mere human.
- Evangeline is also pretty much invincible due to the fact that her vampire powers allow her to regenerate any damage. On at least one occasion, she's been impaled by a chunk of rock about an inch narrower than her torso, and she was more mildly annoyed than anything else. Healing does take some effort, though, so it is presumably limited.
- This trope is rampant in Jojos Bizarre Adventure, mostly in the form of regeneration. Dio Brando, his vampire servants, and the Pillar Men who spawned them can regenerate from any amount of damage, and can really only defeated by the sun's power. At the end of Part Two, Cars overcomes even that weakness, becoming completely invincible. He was able to survive even being at the center of a volcanic eruption, and was only defeated by blasting his still-living body into space. Part Five also brings us a notable example in the form of the stand, Notorious B.I.G., which was actually activated by the user's death, and as such could not be killed. It was brainless, but relentless and unstoppable, absorbing any blows and regenerating from any damage. It simply attacked whatever was moving fastest around it, and was never truly defeated. All they could do was ditch it into the middle of the ocean, where it continued attacking whatever was moving fastest around it, perpetually chasing waves. According to the narrator, occasionally ships go missing in that area of the ocean, and it's why.
- Then there is Giorno Giovanna and his ultimate stand, Gold Experience Requiem. Giorno becomes SO broken the stand claims are put in such a way it could even handwave Gurren Lagann's attempts on it. "No matter what ability, it will not happen". This thing HAS no weakness and you'd soon want to commit sepukku than let IT kill you. Truely a terrifying power if it was only given laser beams.
- One of the Seven Stars in Shikabane Hime is made of gas, meaning he can't be hurt by swords or bullets. He can also change what gas he's made of, so he can be sedative or explosive if he likes.
- The Humongous Mecha Mazinkaiser is literally indestructible - it withstands several fights, falling into a volcano and atmospheric reentry (including a crash landing) without a single scratch, at the very least. Eventually the enemy catches on, and devotes their efforts to trying to kill Kouji when he's outside of his machine.
- Sabrac, from the second season of Shakugan No Shana, appears to possess incredible regeneration skills, as he takes blow after blow from Wilhelmina (including being crushed by two apartment buildings before being nuked), yet regenerates each time he hits the ground. Actually, it's more of a case of multiple bodies: Sabrac's real body is hidden beneath the ground, and can recreate the body above ground each time its destroyed.
- In Guyver, the main character, with the aid of his suit, has been shown to survive having a chunk of his brain blown off, to completely obliterated save a few traces of brain matter on his suit's control medal.
- In Bleach, most Shinigami are Made Of Iron. However, 11th Division captain, Zaraki Kenpachi takes it a step further by being Made Of Diamond, as his massive spirit pressure acts like an armor around him. His first shown battle not only allows his opponent, Kurosaki Ichigo to make the first attack, but by slashing his sword at his chest as hrd as he could, he actually made himself bleed by cutting his own hand. It turns out with enough spirit pressure used in the attacks, he can be cut, but he even takes that like a piece of cake, and gets excited.
- In Hell Teacher Nube, Nube, Tamamo, and the schoolgirl Ayumi can all project their astral bodies at will, as well as shape it as they see fit. Nube and Tamamo often use it to pose as elementary schoolkids, while Ayumi simply does it to attend school with her friends... as well as to role-play as a Magical Girl. Since these are purely spiritual projections, they can be twisted, smashed, blown to bits, sliced to ribbons, crushed, and incinerated (and they often are! But always for comedic effect.) They just pop right back, no worse for wear.
- An even more extreme case is with a Buddhist nun who wants revenge upon the mermaid, Hayame. Since she ate mermaid flesh, she is invulnerable to nearly all damage, including blowing half her own head off with grenades, getting burned to a crisp, or getting her torso crushed into a bloody mess. The amount of punishment she goes through (all of which is her own damn fault, since her psychotic methods tend to backfire) would be terrifying and gruesome if it weren't absurd to the point of hilarity.
- Dark Schneider of Bastard!! takes this to ludicrous levels. Possessing a shield spell called "Dispel Bound" each shield can take up to the force of a nuclear blast before breaking. And they can only be targeted one at a time. And they auto-regen. And in the unlikely event that you manage to get through that, you have to deal with his durability which allows him to take attacks that can destroy galaxies. And should you somehow manage to pierce his defense, his possesses obscene healing abilities and still can't be killed unless you destroy his body, spirit and soul in three different dimensions at the same time.
- Akuma Shogun of Kinnikuman uses everything but extreme luck in a single fight. His armor is made from combining the bodies of the Six Devil Knights, and if injured he simply ejects and re-absorbs them to Regenerate. He can change his "Choujin Hardness" to make his body harder or softer as needed. The result is that if caught in a hold, he can become Made of Rubber/The Blob to squirm out of it, or if to power up can become literally Hard as Diamond to strengthen himself. It's shown that within his armor is nothing, meaning his body is actually Made of Air so most techniques can't even harm him because there's no body to harm. To top it all off, he's also a god. His ultimate weakness is his head, which controls all of the above. But even then, getting in a blow strong enough to significantly damage it is no small feat.
- The demons in Chrono Crusade are the Regeneration type, at least the high-power ones. Their ability to heal themselves is so strong that one demon manages to quickly regenerate (with some help from a magical jewel) after being so severely wounded his stomach was sliced open and his intestines were spilling out. They do have some weaknesses (including holy water, grave head injuries, and having their heart removed from their body), but it takes quite a bit to truly kill them.
- Claymore manages to mix Made of Diamond with Made Of Plasticine. Awakened Beings can ignore attacks from people who are capable of slicing solid stone pillars in half, but anything they can't outright ignore goes straight through them.
- The tribe of Heroes in Heroic Age fall under the Made of Diamond category of this trope.
- Accelerator in To Aru Majutsu No Index has the power to change the vectors or force or energy of anything he comes in contact to in any direction he pleases, just so long as he can do the computations in his head to figure out what needs to be done. tl;dr: This guy can not only survive a nuke, but the nukes power will be reflected right back at you plus a little bit from the force his body would have on the nuke. How efficient. Hyouka is the other prime example. She's actually very easy to damage... it's just pointless to do so. She isn't human and only has the outer appearance of one, so if you explode half of her she'll just reform. If you explode all of her, she'll still reform because she's basically a solid projection. It apparently still hurts though. Naturally, both of these are far from invulnerable to The Hero. Hyouka would probably die at mere contact.
- Free is the regenerative type. He's been stabbed, shot, and encased himself in ice (accidentally), and cut in two (unless that part was an illusion, as well as his body lying on the floor afterwards). And he's still around.
Comic Books
- The Yamato battleship is practically Made of Iron. It took many torpedoes and bombs to destroy it. http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=CUl1mAjTTb0&feature=related
- "Practically"? (By the way, I think you mean was)
- T-800 in Terminator 2 is Made Of Diamond, while T-1000's blob-like nature makes him a Regenerator Blob. The T-X a.k.a. Terminatrix has a Made Of Diamond frame with a Regenerator Blob cover, just like the T-1000.
- In addition to diamond-powers, the Agents in The Matrix also manifested by taking over the bodies of those still connected to the Matrix. Due to their abilities, "killing" an Agent is an incredible feat for a human — and all it meant was that the Agent had to move on to the next body. And don't start on Smith, who could take over multiple bodies, including those already controlled by Agents, to make clones of himself.
- The Twins from the sequel combine Made of Air with Regeneration. Not only can they turn intangible at will, but while intagible they almost instantly heal any injuries they have sustained while in corporeal form.
- On the other hand, they can't hurt anyone when intangible either, which the heroes used to their advantage.
- Jason and most other horror movie Psycho Killers — at least the ones who got sequels.
- Basically, any of the daikaiju in Toho's Godzilla series — any degree of firepower short of Applied Phlebotinum (and some of that, too) or other monsters can at best annoy or distract them. Gamera (from competitor studio Daiei) is comparably tough inside his turtle shell, but more recent films have suggested his exposed limbs can be vulnerable to explosives or concentrated fire.
- Godzilla himself can also regenerate from almost anything short of being completely skeletonized or reduced to a radioactive puddle—the two things that actually have killed him in the series. Presumably, this also applies to Biollante and Space Godzilla, however, this is uncertain, as they never return to show that they actually survived the injuries sustained in their respective movies after dissolving into particles of light and fleeing to space.
- Dorian Gray in The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen (The Movie) is of the Regeneration/Regrowth type.
- The Creeper in Jeepers Creepers is a regenerator with a twist: he cannibalizes his victims for parts. Literally.
- The title character in the Iron Giant combines being "Made of Diamond" (survives heavy weaponry from tanks), as well as a mixture of "Regeneration" and "External Repair" (even after being blown apart, the Iron Giant is capable of self-repair while its pieces crawl back together from various places to rebuild itself).
- WALL-E's cockroach, who survives being squashed by WALL-E (twice!) and nuked by EVE. He just pops right back up after each accident. However, he's otherwise powerless beyond his survival skills; he's just there to be a cute pet.
- ...But...he...but. It's a cockroach! There is nothing cute about those disgusting little bastards, ever.
- No. Just... no. The cockroach is squeaky and huggable!
- Everything in WALL-E is vaugely adorable, including the fat humans. They're like big squishy babies!
- Especially the fat babies!
- From the Gag Dubbed And Edited movie, Kung Pow, Master Pain, also known as Betty. His invulnerability goes so far as including having a show of power by being beaten by several men with pole weapons. This did not go over nearly so well when the 'chosen one' tries to replicate it....
- Aeron from The Chronicles Of Riddick shows off two advantages to the Made of Air version. When she's on a plane another character threatens her while she's standing by an open trap door, (which would make her fall out of the plane) and goes to take a swipe at Aerion with a sword, asking if Aerion (as an Air Elemental) can fly. Aerion goes insubstantial to avoid the sword, then drift across trap door before becoming solid on the other side, where she replies: "No, we can't fly, but we do glide very well." Made all the more awesome by the fact that Aerion is being played by Judi Dench, complete with a little smirk as she says her reply.
- All the immortals from Highlander and The Series have the Healing Factor/Resurrection version of this, vulnerable only to getting made a little shorter.
- Vampires in Twilight are LITERALLY made of diamonds.
- In Terry Pratchett's Only You Can Save Mankind, the titular "mankind" is a race of aliens who are under relentless assault from a hero who Just Won't Die - the hero being a small boy playing a computer game, that of course allows you replay from the last save point whenever you die.
- I think the game it's describing is before there were save points.
- An example from Discworld: Wolfgang von Uberwald in The Fifth Elephant, being a werewolf, survives any number of horrific experiences until Vimes uses a signal flare to destroy him with fire.
- Also in Discworld, vampires can be "killed" but they always come back one day. Some blood falls on their ashes or some such thing and then they are regenerated. This is one of the reasons Vimes hates them.
- Honorary mention to Mr. Shine from Thud!.
- The Wild Cards series had Demise, an undead and equally unhinged assassin whose wild card triggered during a near death experience. He ended up getting a healing factor that allowed him to return from the dead. When his head was chopped off by a similarly psychotic Ace, Dr. Tachyon analyzed the corpse and realized that his head was growing back. He ordered the body cremated, and while Demise hasn't shown up in any other books yet, well...
- Wild Cards also had Golden Boy, a classic comic-book Brick who, when hit by anything up to a 50 millimeter artillery shell, would merely glow yellow instead of getting injured. According to Dr. Tachyon, Golden Boy projected a biological forcefield around his body whenever threatened by imminent danger, whether he was aware of this danger or not.
- Parodied to hell and back in Nuklear Age by Brian Clevinger. The main character Nuke gets thrown into a sun and survives, beyond him there's Atomik lad who has a nifty forcefield that blocks everything, Angus the Iron Scotsman who's covered in iron and never takes damage (apart from one nasty incident where he is found in his suit backwards) and of course theres a guy made of tungsten, and last but not least Superion who can't be destroyed ever thanks to how his powers work.
- Usually when people actually run into one of H.P Lovecraft's Great Old Ones, they end up going insane or getting brutally killed. In the few cases they manage to fight back, it turns out the beings are unkillable by mortal weapons. Sometimes they might be banished, like Nyarlatotep's avatar the Haunter in the Dark, who can't stand bright light, but even then they are likely to come back later. Others fall into the "Made of Air" category, and physical attacks go right through them. Some, like Cthulhu himself, can be harmed, but regenerate an damage within seconds.
- In Call of Cthulhu a boat rams Cthulhu in the face, causing his head to blow apart, yet the only effect is to make him slightly annoyed as his head regenerates right after the boat has passed through it. (He did go back to sleep for another millenium afterwards, so it was a net win for Team Humanity.) In another story (not written by Lovecraft himself) humans try to stop the awakened Cthulhu by firing a ramjet missile carrying a 300 megaton nuclear payload right at him. It doesn't even slow him down.
- Even the "normal" aliens (ie. not the godlike extradimensional ones that destroy worlds on whim) in Lovecraft's fiction are extremely resilient, or made from some exotic matter which makes normal weapon very ineffective against them.
- Not all of them. Deep Ones and Ghouls aren't especially bulletproof, and a one of the Fungi from Yuggoth was killed by dogs.
- The Ringwraiths of The Lord Of The Rings are incredibly difficult, though not impossible, to permanently destroy, and are immortal thanks to the powers of the nine magic rings that sustain them.
- Let's not forget Sauron himself, who can only be destroyed one way...and he figured no one could kill him that way either.
- Lord Voldemort from Harry Potter went the phylactery route to allow his spirit to remain Earthbound even after his body is destroyed. Since he can't regenerate a new body on his own, however, this turns out to be less clever than he thought.
- According to Word Of God, the fear inducing soul sucking Dementors are invincible. The Patronus Charm can drive them off, but they can't be destroyed by any means, magic or otherwise. Fortunately for the Harry Potter verse, Word Of God also stated that Dementors are not immortal and do eventually die.
- In R.A. Salvatore's The Cleric Quintet book 3 The Night Masks, the leader of the titular assassins' guild is Ghost - a scrawny, withered man who doesn't look at all imposing. He combines the Regeneration method (a Ring of Regeneration is hidden in his shoe, presumably around a toe) with the Multiple Bodies trick - he possesses an artifact, a Mirror (I forget its name) that allows him to swap souls with someone, then kills his own fragile body with his victim's hand. When his body dies the victim's soul departs, Ghost then waits for the body to regenerate then uses the artifact to swap back, putting his soul back in his body and leaving the victim unharmed but soulless and therefore dead. The artifact in question is so powerful that it pulls Ghost's soul out of hell and back into his corpse after he is later finally killed, and has to be destroyed by the breath of an ancient red dragon... and the resulting explosion blinds the dragon in question. And if ALL THAT wasn't good enough, he has Vander, a huge giant-like humanoid called a Firbolg, as a slave with whom he will frequently forcefully swap bodies if the situation demands. Yeah.
- In the Xanth series, Bink has the 'extreme luck' form of nigh invulnerability, because his talent protects him from magic attacks using coincidences and so on. The Magician Trent finally figured it out when he was trying to transform Bink and was always missing, to the point of transforming bacteria on Bink's skin instead of Bink.
- This is one of the mutant abilities in Those Who Walk In Darkness by John Ridley, rendering one's skin impenetrable. The standard way of killing these mutants is to overload their pain receptors, but apparently contact poison works as well.
- Jon Remillard, aka Jack the Bodiless, in Julian May's Galactic Milieu books is nigh invulnerable in his native form of a disembodied brain. His brother Marc actually remarks in the book Diamond Mask that nothing had been discovered to harm Jon in that form up to that point.
Live Action TV
- Big Bad Mayor Wilkins of Buffy The Vampire Slayer regenerated all damage, thanks to a dark ritual performed a hundred days prior to his ascension. The Next Big Bad, Adam was Made of Diamond; until the finale none of the heroes' attacks even made him flinch. Besides which, he was sustained by a uranium power core, and so could continue functioning without a head; destroying him meant either utterly annihilating his body or destroying the power core. Adam was followed by Glory, a hell goddess who wasn't budged by anything short of semi trucks or the hammer of a troll god.
- Also in the Buffyverse are the Beast, whose hide is so tough that the only thing that can hurt him is a piece of himself; The First, who's made of air; the mystic orbs that the Geek Trio use towards the end of season 6—whomever holds them is made of diamond and super strong; and Jasmine, whose weaknesses revolve around her blood.
- And, in the last season of Angel, Marcus Hamilton. Until...
Hamilton: Let me say this as clearly as I can. You cannot beat me. I am a part of them. The Wolf, Ram, and Hart. Their strength flows through my veins. My blood is filled with their ancient power.
Angel (a vampire): Can you pick out the one word there you probably shouldn't have said?
- Claire and Peter from Heroes — for the same reason. Both have healing powers so strong that they both regenerated after being dead for several hours, and Claire proved her resilience by being at the core of a nuclear reaction and having her skin burned off - then having it grow back leaving her perfectly unharmed just ten seconds later. Since Peter's powers are taken from Claire, he has the same potential (though, for full resurrection, she might have to be with him).
- In the second season, we are introduced to Adam, who essentially has the same ability as Claire: he automatically heals all damage. He is also immortal (his body, after his ability emerged, stopped aging). It is also revealed that both Adam and Claire can use their blood to temporarily grant their powers to other people and heal them (including bringing back people from the dead).
- In fact his power is only thing keeping Adam alive. When he loses it he quickly withers into a pile of dust.
- Update Season 3, Sylar gains the same healing factor power from Claire (she survives the acquisition process). Peter and Claire are both shown surviving at ground zero of a nuclear explosion.
- The Daleks of Doctor Who are nigh-on invulnerable, generally needing to be out-thought rather than out-fought. However, this often suits The Doctor, who is a classic Technical Pacifist.
- Aim for the eyepiece! The eye*ZZZAAAPP!
- And the Doctor himself managed a regrowth recently: he was able to regrow a severed hand, but only because he'd only just regenerated.
- Captain Jack Harkness (first of Doctor Who, now of Torchwood) has a direct link to the Heart of the Tardis, and just regenerates whenever he dies (not so much R/R/R as a projected avatar) - which he does quite often (over 1,000 times in the twentieth century alone). Eventually Gwen Cooper, the other main character of Torchwood, stops screaming whenever Jack dies, realising that it's really no big deal. However, Jack does age very slowly, eventually transforming into the bodyless Face of Boe (Never actually confirmed in the show for sure, but word of god says it's so). However, since he has a lifespan stretching over five billion years, this troper thinks he has a pretty good deal, overall.
- On Battlestar Galactica the humanoid Cylons have the ability to "redownload" and resurrect in shiny new bodies after they're killed; it is possible to shut an individual Cylon (or even an entire model) down for good, but the only ones with the technology to do this are the other Cylons.
- Only when there's a resurrection ship nearby. Even if make death stick for one of them, though, there are plenty of copies.
- As of season 4 subverted, where the Cylons have lost the ability to resurrect due to the destruction of the resurrection hub.
- Morgan Primus from the Star Trek New Frontier series of books is both this and immortal. This takes its logical course when something was strong enough to destroy her body...her consciousness transferred to the ship she was on. She is currently the Andromeda-like avatar for the starship Excalibur.
- Bill on The Red Green Show is a comedic example. Whether he falls off a cliff, gets nailed in the head with a falling rock, gets blown sky-high by an exploding barbecue, or shoots an arrow through his foot, he just shrugs it off, gets up, and tries again. Naturally, he never learns from his mistakes.
- The Kull Warriors in Stargate SG 1 are invulnerable to any sort of ordinary weapon. Be it bullets, blasts from the staff-weapon or even bombs. Earth figures out how to kill them fairly quick, though.
- They aren't actually immune to bombs. While the armour is too tough to be blown apart, the being inside it is certainly not immune to concussion.
- Daniel Jackson, while not actually invulnerable in any reliable or definitive way, has managed to recover from death on a frightening number of occasions. To the point where fannon has him dieing and recovering on a almost monthly basis.
- The Changelings from Star Trek DS 9 are immune to any "regular" damage - they simply liquify and reshift. Odo survives being shattered (while being a glass) and run through in human form. Laas can even travel in vacuum. The only things that can kill them are beam weapons at high setting (it took over 100 hits to finish off the Martok impersonator), radiation and a special virus developed by Section 31.
- Similarly Borg are Made Of Iron (thanks to adaptive shields) and hive-minded.
- Also Q, godlike aliens have weapons to kill each other - which are powerful enough to make stars go supernova as a side effect.
- The Objects from The Lost Room are indestructible as long as they're outside the eponymous room. Including the Occupant.
- Jesse Kilmartin of Mutant X is both the Made of Air and Made of Diamond version of this trope. His favorite tactic is to wait for someone to hit him, then punch them out while they nurse their now-broken hand. He's also used as cover, since he's not only Immune To Bullets, but he's been shown to reflect lasers and even Brennan's electrical attacks.
Tabletop Games
- The Tarrasque, a monster from Dungeons And Dragons is not only incredibly tough but regenerates at a hideous rate and will not stay dead. The only way to kill it is to bring it to -10 hit points (the normal point of death for living creatures in D&D) and cast wish, specifically wishing for the Tarrasque to remain dead.
- Drowning damage isn't subject to regeneration. So if you have a nice dm, you can teleport into their lungs and create water a few times. Or send them to the water plane. Course then you've got blob kings from the water realm after you.
- Last I checked, it's impossible for the Tarrasque to take lethal damage. I assume there's no such thing as nonlethal drowning damage that doesn't heal. Also, lungs are like sponges. You can't go inside them.
- On top of that, Create Water can't be used inside beings. Because, let's face it, it's a 0th-level spell and if you could cast it at people's lungs it would be the biggest Disc One Nuke in the history of magic.
- Read it again. Forcing it to take over 800 points of damage and then wishing it would stay dead is the only way to kill it. There are still other ways to take him out without killing him - for example, get some sanity-draining, untouchable Allips to force him into a coma.
- The 4th edition version of the Tarrasque just plain cannot be killed; reducing it to 0 Hit Points simply banishes it back to its resting place at the core of the world. However, while still incredibly tough on account of massive hit points and all-purpose damage resistance, it no longer regenerates.
- There is a Shout Out to this creature in Starcraft, in which one of the higher-level Zerg units is called a Torrasque. While the character can be killed with conventional weapons (read: bring artillery. Lots of artillery) and regeneration is the Zerg's racial power, it is still quite durable and frequently takes quite a few smaller units with it (read: one-hit kills infantry) before it can be destroyed (read: will rampage over and through everything you have unless you are prepared for it). In addition, in-story its first appearance is presented as being continually reincarnated by a specific cerebrate.
- Another Blizzard-related Shout Out comes from the popular Warcraft 3 map Defense of the Ancients with an item known as the Heart of Tarrasque. Providing a dramatic increase in health total and regeneration, the Hero carrying it becomes difficult to kill except by sustained vicious focus-fire from the enemy team.
- Anarchy Online has a Shout Out to this critter by having it as one of their early endgame bosses which drop bits of its own body that you can turn into armor.
- In the Mirrodin block of Magic The Gathering, there is a substance called darksteel that certain objects, including some artifact creatures, are made of. Anything made of this substance is indestructible, meaning in game terms that it can't be destroyed or killed (although it can be removed through indirect means). A prime example of this is Darksteel Colossus, a huge artificial giant that not only can't be killed by usual means, but if someone manages to actually send it to the graveyard, then it is simply put back into its owner's deck to be drawn again later. The indestructible keyword was retained and used in later blocks, and has been applied to many things not made of darksteel.
- Also in the Magic Universe is Squee, an innocent and friendly goblin who just couldn't stay dead. What started out in the books as him simply not retaining any damage as a form of comedic discontinuity was latter changed into a legitimate supernatural ability, causing him to come back from any level of abuse, even death. Unfortunately for Squee, this is used as a form of torture when Ertai, the Dragon to Big Bad Crovax, kills him over and over again.
- Another MTG example is Lord Konda, the evil daimyo of Kamigawa, who stole a powerful spirit from the otherworld and bound it inside an artifact that granted him eternal life and imperviousness to harm.
- Possibly the oldest example of this trope in MTG is the "Regenerate" mechanic, which (almost always for a cost, though usually a small one) negates the next attempt to kill or destroy the thing being regenerated, presumably by means of a phenomenal Healing Factor. With the right cards and a healthy stockpile of mana, your entire army can essentially become nigh-invulnerable.
- There are a [[http://beta.gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?action=advanced&type=+[%22Creature%22]&subtype=+[%22Phoenix%22] handful of creature cards with the "Phoenix" subtype]], all of which have some ability that allows them, like their legendary namesake, to come back from the dead. The cost and repeatability of this varies, but rest assured if your opponent puts a Phoenix on the battlefield, you'll probably have to kill it at least twice.
- Platinum Angel makes you Nigh Invulnerable, stating quite simply that under no circumstances can you lose the game or your opponents win the game.
- If you can get your life total above 30 *
For those who don't know, you typically start the game at 20. while he's on the field, Rune-Tail, Kisune Ascendant becomes an enchantment that makes all your creatures impervious to any and all forms of damage.
- Honestly, there are lots of cards that confer or possess Nigh Invulnerability, far too many to list here. Yes, this is only a small sampling.
- Not only are Warhammer 40000's Necrons Terminator-like metal skeletons with amazing damage resistance, they have the ability to teleport matter directly to their own system from their tombs for nanites to incorperate into their forms as a self-repair mechanism powerful enough to rebuild them even if cut to pieces. And if you DO manage to get one to stay down, its various component parts will be teleported back to the tomb and rebuilt no matter what sort of damage has occured. The Imperium doesn't even know if there exists weapons that can kill Necrons. And given the kind of weapons that exist in Warhammer 40000, that's saying quite a lot.
- One Necron managed to directly regenerate from bein melted into a puddle of metal. And this was not even a leader, just a Necron mook.
- There is technically a way to kill Necrons and possibly their C'Tan gods — hitting them with weapons of that expose them directly the Warp, since their existence is purely matterial, and they can't survive the Immaterium. That's the purpose of the Blackstone Fortresses aka Talismans of Vaul. The background tends to get retconned with every version release, so this may no longer be valid.
- Daemons aren't so easy to dispose of either. Powerful ones cannot actually be killed (at least with physical weapons), merely banished back into the Warp, and even doing stupendous amounts of damage only make the banishment longer. Kill a daemon, and he'll probably be back in a couple centuries, which isn't much time in Warhammer 40000. Other supernatural entities share similar traits, such as the bodiless "walking armor" soldiers of the Thousand Sons legion of Chaos Space Marines, who have an annoying tendency to come back from the dead.
- Then there are the dwarves from the Warhammer games. While still being mortal and technically still squishy on the inside (So no "Made of" rules) the Blood Bowl rule book comments on their "Stubborn Knack of refusing to Die".
- Makari (Ghazghkull's standard bearer) has the supernatural luck version of this, effectively granting him a great saving throw against pretty much anything. Although the last time this troper read about him was several editions ago, so he may have changed considerably in the interim, or more likely doesn't exist any more...
- "Makari the Grot, luckiest of all his kind, lived to the ripe old age of nine before finally being sat on by his master and subsequently fed to an ill-tempered Squiggoth."
- While there's not really such a thing as "invulnerability" in the World Of Darkness, Prometheans come pretty damn close. For instance, most mortals and supernatural creatures take wound penalties to all actions after they take a certain amount of damage. Similarly, if their health meters fill with bashing, they have to resist passing out, and if they fill up with lethal, they start bleeding out. Prometheans experience none of this; the only way to put them down is to fill their health meters with aggravated damage. And after that, they can still come back if their Azoth is high enough.
- Similarly, there are the slashers who follow the Mask Undertaking. Any attack against them, be it with a sword, a machine gun, or a flamethrower, only fills one box on their health meter, and it has to fill all the way before they go down (and even then, that's not much of a guarantee).
- The Mummies in World of Darkness are effectivly indistructable. They take damage pretty much the same as any other player character, the difference, they regenerate damage, and have something like 7 wound levels past incapacitated that define various levels of dismemberment to their corpse. The reason? To figure out how long it will take before they can get back up again. The answer is usually, not long.
- Old World of Darkness Mages could also take the 'Immunity' Merit, which could be taken to a level to prevent all damage from all save a progressively rarer source. If taken to a high enough level, this could prevent all damage not from such sources as the Public Domain Artifact of choice or more common sources under more stringent conditions (the book itself lists '(mistletoe dagger wielded by a red-headed woman on the night of the full moon' as a viable option). Unsurprisingly, many Storytellers do not allow it in their games.
- GURPS has the Supernatural Durability advantage that gives the ability to survive any amount of punishment unfazed until you reach -5xhp and even then only one form of damage can truly kill you. The rules do say that being blown to pieces by a single attack is still lethal.
- GURPS has quite a few ways to do this. Intangibility is basically Made of Air, Damage Reduction goes all the way up to the "divide damage by 100" level for Made of Diamond. Unkillable 2 with Regrowth, however, is the only way to make someone who will always eventually come back from anything.
- Several characters in Scion come with Invulnerability, though this almost always has one caveat - a character with higher Legend can damage them. There are some exceptions to even this, however.
- Liches in most games that have them will regenerate from any sort of destruction unless their Soul Jar is broken first.
Video Games
- Minor subversion: Zasalamel in Soul Calibur 3 perfected the art of reincarnation, thus allowing him to die and resurrect multiple times throughout history, retaining all of the skills and knowledge he amassed before then. The subversion is that, instead of being a boon like he thought it would be, it quickly turned into a horrible curse, as his newfound power deprived him of a peaceful death, and the literal sinking feeling that his soul was damned to hell just a little more with every death and revival, and since that revelation he sought the game's MacGuffin to try and undo his hubris.
- Absolute Virtue from Final Fantasy XI is a type of Bonus Boss that has the ability to regenerate instantly, and will do so constantly. It also hits like a semi running over a tin can, will cast the most damaging spells in the entire game(often instantly and repeatedly), and possesses all the Eleventh Hour Superpowers of most job classes in the game. Oh, and it can summon baby dragons. Repeatedly. That cast devastating Area of Effect spells. And blow up. The only way the playerbase has ever beaten this mob is through a exploit, or more recently, a Zerg Rush, both of which were patched quite a while ago. And this thing has been around for years. This troper wonders if the developers just wanted an unbeatable monster, and won't admit it. And now we have Pandemonium Warden, which at first almost took a day to defeat(they gave up), but was finally beaten by Apathy, an endgame group. The reason this is astonishing isn't simply the win, but the fact Square actually approves of the win and didn't patch Pandemonium Warden. They seem to be comfortable with only AV giving them a stiffy.
- The developers finally released a video of them killing Absolute Virtue themselves, in response to no one figuring out the tricks. The trick? When the player uses their own Eleventh Hour Superpowers it blocks Absolute Virtue from using his (making it a battle of wits — the party has to block him from using powers such as Mighty Strikes (every attack is a critical hit) or Benediction (heals user to 100%)). In practice, however, this trick doesn't seem to actually work, leaving AV pretty much undefeated...
- On your first playthrough of Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, all the bosses cannot die unless you draw a specific Magic seal, it gets difficult on the 5th Seal especially against Death and Abaddon, draw the seal wrong and you have to deal more damage before you get the opportunity to try again.
- However in Julius Mode the Bosses die without you having to draw the seal, Maybe the power of the Vampire Killer has the ability to negate the Bosses' Reconstitution due to the seals?
- Chance, The Mole and Final Boss of Syphon Filter 2, wears a special advanced full body armor suit that is not only Immune To Bullets, but also apparently to even the shockwave of grenade explosions at impact(No One Could Survive That in real life, even with a bomb blast suit, I don't think, at least they would suffer internal trauma), and its weight doesn't seem to slow him down, either. His Achilles Heel? The spinning helicopter tail rotor.
- In Star Ocean 2 The Big Bad and his minions cannot be damaged unless you gain the Sword Of Plot Advancement Void matter
- In Devil May Cry 3, the Dullahans have Made Of Diamond shields that can only be penetrated by a hard-to-pull-off attack. The Döppelganger is a shadow-entity that is invincible outside of the light, and Dante's acquisition of it makes it invincible even in light, ie. fully invincible. It probably would laugh at the idea that Good Is Dumb. Boss Vergil in his Devil Trigger state is also invincible, in addition to regenerating any damage he might have sustained in human form. Just-timed usage of Royal Guard also makes Dante invincible to any attack; Perhaps predictably, the cutscenes never show him touching it.
- Dante does use it in the higher-difficulty boss fights against him in Devil May Cry 4, though thankfully he doesn't do it all the time or the game would be Unwinnable.
- Dante actually uses it in ALL difficulties in Devil May Cry 4. Though his use of it is easily defeated by running away or throwing him.
- This troper would like to point out that in Devil may Cry 3, Dante before the first level is impaled several times. Cutscene Dante hardly needs Royal Guard.
- Cutscene Dante definitely doesn't need Royal Guard. He gets impaled at least once in each game minus the second (it's usually several times each game) so it's almost a Running Gag.
- In Romancing Sa Ga the boss Soulgutter cannot die since it has no soul, it can only be resealed.
- However it can still feel pain, so deal 30,000 Damage to it and it will reseal itself to escape pain
- In Planescape: Torment, it is The Nameless One's defining characteristic that he can't stay dead. As a plot point, every time he dies he returns to life as an amnesiac, generating a completely new personality for himself every time. In gameplay terms, it means the game doesn't end when he dies - the player just sees TNO wake up in the closest morgue, and the game continues as before (for gameplay reasons, and Hand Waved in-game, the amnesia doesn't kick in on these deaths). Only a being of godlike power can kill the Nameless One and make it stick, though it's hinted cremation could do the trick as well. The Nameless One also doesn't age, and the total age sum of his lives is likely counted in millennia.
- The Nameless One retaining his memory isn't "hand-waved for gameplay reasons". As part of the story it's explained, by Morte I believe, that The Nameless One gained the ability to retain his memories after death at the start of the game. Though it isn't explained how this happened.
- Archimonde has this in the final mission of Warcraft 3 where the objective is not to kill him but merely to stall his advance for half an hour. Oddly, while his armor is Made Of Diamond, he still takes 1 damage per hit and thus can theoretically be killed by massing archers (though he has an Ankh of Reincarnation and thus must be killed twice).
- The Gnosis in the Xenosaga series would be consinders the 'Made of Air' varitey as the only ways to combat them is to hit them when they making a phase transference to fire their energy weapons, or use of the Hilbert Effect to force them into Real Space from Imaginary Space.
- Also, Albedo is Cursed With Awesome in being immortal and having super regeneration powers; he cuts off his own head to demonstrate. Unfortunately, the realization that other people aren't immortal causes him to go insane. The only one who can kill him is Jr., who was specifically designed to do so... his technobabble cancels out Albedo's.
- Dark Samus from the Metroid Prime subseries posses extreme regenerative power, mainly since "her" (technically its genderless) body essentially consists of pure Phazon. In Metroid Prime 2, Samus fights her multiple times, and after every fight she explodes into a cloud of Phazon particles, only to reassemble herself later. According to one scan of her, only a complete atomic disruption can kill her for good. In the 100% ending it's even shown that she survided the destruction of Dark Aether, somehow reforming in space above Aether. She is finally killed in Metroid Prime 3 when she posesses a cybernetic computer connected to the planet Phaaze, which is made primarily out of Phazon. When Samus destroys this form, all Phazon in the galaxy goes critical, destroying Dark Samus, the entire planet, and ridding the galaxy of Phazon once and for all.
- Many episodes of Final Fantasy feature enemies with likely powers. Though... About all of the main villains show the ability to survive incredible damage...
- The most famous example is the Cactuars. They're incredibly speedy, so they attack often, and they are agile, making attacks on them rarely connect. To make things worse, they use 1000 Needles, which does 1000 damage exactly and will kill any character whose HP is not above 1000.
- In Final Fantasy IV, Golbez regenerates from a mere hand all but the DS remake. A Core unit of the Giant of Bab-il regenerates unless its support unit is destroyed. Zeromus just plain can't be hurt unless one with a pure soul uses the dark crystal on him. Among fandom even Yang and Cid are considered Made of Diamond as they respectively survive the explosion of a giant cannon while standing in it and jumping down some miles, with dynamite attached to him and hitting the ground nice and fast
- In Final Fantasy VI, The Guardian in Vector is nearly impossible to defeat, as is Chupon in the Colosseum.
- In Final Fantasy X both main villains, Seymour and Sin, are able to shrug off death. Seymore sticks around as some freaky ghost, increasing in power with every death. Sin just comes back in a few years due to the method of his death also being his method of Resurrection.
- The comic-book-genre-based MMORPG City Of Heroes includes the Made Of Diamond, Made Of Air (sort of), and Regeneration variants all as power sets for melee fighter player characters, as "Invulnerability", "Super Reflexes", and "Regeneration" respectively, as well as the "Willpower" set which combines elements of all three. In addition, some powers can create a state of intangibility, in which the affected character can neither affect nor be affected by anything.
- In the science fiction MMORPG EVE Online, players are known in-game as pod pilots, named for the biostatic capsules or "pods" they use to control their ships (allowing them to replace bridge crews). A side benefit of quicker reflexes is that capsuleers are virtually immortal - whenever their pods are destroyed, a clone of theirs wakes up immediately at a cloning facility. Clones have a limited memory capacity, and if a player doesn't update his clone properly, he may lose some skills. In fiction, capsuleers may also be killed outside of their pods, or if their clone malfunctions and doesn't activate (the latter is the assumed fate of deleted characters), but as far as game mechanics go, capsuleers are immortal.
- The infamous "Cardboard Immortality" trick from the Mega Man Battle Network games requires only three components (a Wood-element Style Change, the Under Shirt status/Navi Customizer Program, and a Grass Panel or nine) and combines constant regeneration with the ability to survive an otherwise lethal hit with one hit point. The only way to combat this is the alter the stage. Fortunately for anyone facing this setup, Grass Panels get burned away by Fire attacks (doing double damage in the process), which Wood-element enemies take double damage from.
- Final Fantasy Tactics Advance has Llednar Twem. For all your encounters with him except for the last, he's protected by a special law that makes any and all attacks against him useless.
- If you're a Fire Emblem Villain (or The Dragon to the villain) you're made of Diamond to anyone that isn't wielding the legendary weapon of this game. Those that aren't made of diamond by an ability are made of Diamond by having RIDICULOUS Stats.
- The demon morph Super Mode in Painkiller has invincibility to everything except falling to death and the final boss's attacks.
- The Blind Rage Super Mode from Scarface: The World Is Yours gives Tony invincibility.
- In Pokemon, while one would believe the main characters of the franchise have Super Drowning Skills for their unwillingness to enter any body of water without a living raft, the third game introduced the HM Dive, which brought the player underwater where they could somehow stay indefinitely without any visible source of air until choosing to resurface. This also would touch on the player's invulnerability to crushing injuries, as dive can take the player to an area so deep normal people needed a submersible to access it.
- Also in how the main character and pokemon are never seen to require any kind of food or drink in order to live.
- You're asking a question that could be applied to virtually any game, even something "realistic".
- In the final stage of Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, the party splits up into two teams. Each one ends up fighting a boss with ridiculously powerful shields at one point. When Knuckles' team faces the Gizoid Centurions, you have to survive two or three turns against them and their shields before you get a cut scene of them losing; then Sonic's team seeks out some inactive Centurions and Tails studies them to understand how the shields work and is able to jam them, allowing Knux and crew to fight them for real. After that, Sonic's crew encounters Prefect Charyb underwater, where he has a humongous advantage (plus you can't use POW Moves. After three turns, you get another cut scene, and action switches to Knuckles' team. After beating Prefect Scylla, Knuckles is able to reach the drainage switch for the room the others are in, allowing Sonic to fight Charyb for real.
- Wario in the Wario Land and Wario Ware games. In Wario Land 2 and 3, he was actually completely invulnerable to taking any kind of damage whatsoever, and the only punishment for being hit by an enemy was dropping a few coins and being knocked back. And while the games after 3 gave him an actual life meter, apparently various dangerous effects (being smashed by a factory pounder or set on fire or the like), simply transform him into various other forms, without causing any damage whatsoever. Heck, the Damage Discrimination alone means he can withstand various effects without harm that completely vapourise the enemy Mooks, and yeah.
- Paper Mario has Bowser and Tubba Blubba. Bowser uses the Star Rod to get diamond defense that prevents all damage and status effects until the defense is taken down by the Star Spirits' power. Tubba Blubba's method is a Soul Jar in the form of his heart, locked behind a door opened by a key he closely guards. Oddly enough, it might have made sense if Tubba Blubba had sent his heart to Bowser. Granted, the Boos were the ones holding Tubba Blubba's Star Spirit, but they would only have released him upon Tubba Blubba's defeat, and if Bowser and Tubba Blubba guarded each other's methods of Nigh Invulnerability, there would be nothing to stop Tubba Blubba from wiping the Boos off the map *or* deadlocking Mario's quest.
- Clive Barkers Jericho has Hanne Lichthammer, who, it seems, cannot be harmed (or, at the very least, cannot be killed) by bullets. It only takes Church's blood magic to trap her, and even then she has to be killed in a blood ritual.
- Dead Space has the Hunter, a Necromorph who can regenerate any lost body parts and is damn near impossible to kill. He is only killed when Isaac lures him into the path of the engines of a shuttle and test fires them, roasting the Hunter.
- Lord British of the Ultima series. He can be killed through and that's a trope in and of itself.
- Metal Gear games might have one here or there, most notably Fortune (whose "luck" means bullets cannot hit her and grenades are all duds) and The Sorrow and his army of people you killed (who are all still dead, and you can't exactly shoot a ghost).
- Prototype's Alex Mercer has a potent Regeneration ability, he can also consume people and monsters (although those must be weakened first) to regain health, he can grow shields and armor from his own body mass, and he even regenerates himself from death by a nuclear explosion.
- Even without the eating people to gain health thing, instory he's pretty much indestructable. If the game were closer to it's story, there wouldn't be a healthbar because you wouldn't need it.
- Mokou Fujiwara, the Bonus Boss of Imperishable Night, is an immortal who automatically resurrects immediately after she "dies". She surrenders after getting "killed" 11 times, though.
- One of the powerful creatures in {{Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor}} for DS, the Immortal Lord of the Demons Beldr is not only incredibly strong, but also the first time protagonists meet him he's virtually immortal (duh), but also starts the first round by attacking everyone and sucking life of every creature he hit. Since it's impossible to kill him, heroes are forced to run for their lives or retreat immediately.
- He is however, according to the legends, vulnerable to Devil's Fuge, a talisman made of wood.
- Alyx in the Half Life 2 games. She can be killed, but the programmers made it where her health regenerates extremely fast, most likely to prevent frustrating players from making Alyx an Escort Mission. This also applies to Father Gigori.
- The House Of The Dead 4 has Temperance, a morbidly obese, several-stories-tall zombie whose lifebar doesn't drain. You kill him by dropping a huge clock face on him.
Web Comics
- In Yosh!, Phil takes advantage of this in odd ways, like falling multiple stories because it's faster than the stairs.
- The necromancer Helixa in Dominic Deegan, Oracle For Hire had such control over death with her magic that any attempt to kill her caused her to resurrect where she wished. Klo Tark attempted to get around this with an attack that paralyzed her for three hours before killing her, which would ensure she was there to interrogate when he was done with the current crisis; she bit through her tongue and choked on her blood to escape. After that one, though, she ended up Deader Than Dead. Miranda Deegan, her old rival, killed her with an angelic gauntlet; its magics canceled Helixa's necromancy, and Helixa was thus Killed Off For Real. And for good measure her soul was destroyed during the "War in Hell" arc.
- The same War in Hell introduced Sirellith, the Demon Lady of Treachery, who could "betray death" and come back from the dead. The only way to kill her for real was to "use her treachery against her" and kill her with part of her own body; Karnak did so by snapping a horn off of her and stabbing her with it.
- A more comical version of the constant regeneration type is Ran Cossack of Bob And George. He was made out of cheap Soviet parts, so he dies from even light physical contact, but the parts were so cheap a new body with a copy of his memories would just instantly be built and teleported back. He is effectively immortal as long as they don't destroy the production machine (as he puts it "You can kill me, but you can't stop me"). The only way to defend from this is to block the teleportation with a shield. He also gets a powerful but unstable weapons that always kills him, but it can be stolen from him to make an infinite number from his respawning, and also makes him a powerful explosive or "Ran-bomb".
- Amorphs in Schlock Mercenary are classic Blobs, with some impressive (if rather disturbing) regenerative abilities. Schlock himself has not only recovered from being blown up, poured down drains, sliced into pieces splattered into droplets, but in one case, immediately returned to the fight after stopping for a quick bite of minced comrade-in-arms (I told you it was disturbing - don't worry, he saved their heads for later recovery) to gain enough extra mass to beat the creatures which did it to him in the first place.
- There are also the Peteys, a massive Hive Mind comprised of a mix of A.I. and organic bodies. At one point, Petey (along with the rest of the Fleetmind) ponders the fact that despite this, they aren't quite immortal - yet.
- Petey has also been working on a way to grant immortality to some of his favorite organics using Nanomachines that not only repair the body from everything incuding most forms of death, but can morph their benificiary into an armored Super Soldier form when needed.
- In Order of the Stick the evil lich Xykon can regenerate from his philo... phylia... soul hidey place (phylactery) as long as it is kept intact.
- Nesuko of The Adventures of Boschen and Nesuko eventually proves to have the regenerative version of this power, taken to its logical conclusion- her severed limbs and organs try to grow back new bodies.
- Sluggy Freelance villains provide a number of examples.
- Satan's kittens - Made of Diamond, not showing any signs of damage after taking grenades and shotgun blasts at point blank range.
- K'Z'K - When possessing Gwynn he was a regenerator, able to pull himself together even after being run through a meat grinder. After assuming his true form he is Made of Diamond; since we never see anything hurt him in this form, we can't be sure whether he retains his regeneration.
- Lord Horribus - Can only be killed through decapitation or stabbing the very center of his soul with an enchanted weapon. In fact, most demons are Made of Diamond, enough so that swords clang harmlessly off their skin.
- Evil Aylee (actually Cloney) - Her head and her shell are Made of Diamond, with her (retractable) neck her only vulnerable point.
- Oasis and Kusari - Resurrection. They've been blown up, shot through the head, decapitated, stabbed through the chest, and confirmed dead by medical proffesionals, but they always come back, completely uninjured. How they do this is one of the series's big mysteries.
- The eromakasi (eaters of light) in Carnivores of Light and Darkness, Into Thinking Kingdoms, and the Journey of the Catechist series in general (by Alan Dean Foster) can only be killed by eromakadi, because they are basically mist, and need to be sucked in. The most powerful mage in the world has two of them as bodyguards. Good luck taking that guy down. That isn't the only nigh invincible creature around either, the wall, a several mile long incredibly durable wall that can walk is also next to invincible, with the main characters just running under it. Not that that's a strategy that works for the country who the wall is busy moving towards.
- Best. Offensive. Strategy. Ever.
- The Wom Wom Coconut in The Egregious Adventures of the Wom Wom Coconut suffers many deaths. The hit invariably turns out to have been taken by a member of the Stunt Nut Corps, a numberless horde of coconuts identical to each other and the hero. Both the coconut and the coconut's arch-rival, Space Durian, are capable of instant reincarnation. Death is shrugged off in the same panel it occurs in.
- The Mows of Dan And Mabs Furry Adventures are completely invincible. They're immune to magic, can't be harmed physically, and are too stupid (IQ: 3) for psychic attacks to have any effect. Oh, and they're adorable. Mows are basically furry Servbots.
- The fae also seem to be invincible. If in-comic information is trustworthy, they can only die when they choose to.
- Lampshaded in Everyday Heroes when Mr. Mighty and Matt O'Morph get into a Brick vs. Blob sparring match.
- Grace in El Goonish Shive is a Tyke Bomb Super Soldier that regnerates fast enough to be fire-proof.
Web Original
- In the Whateley Universe, they have all of the above. Lancer (and plenty of the villains) is Made Of Diamond. Phase and Jinn Sinclair are Made Of Air (due to completely different powers). Aqueous is The Blob, being composed of living water. Jody Cooms is Made Of Rubber and even calls herself Plastic Girl. Carmilla and Tennyo have the regeneration thing down: Carmilla has been torn in half, and another time decapitated (she was meditating and literally didn't notice until she found the decapitated head which also hadn't died); both fall into the projected avatar/Fighting A Shadow category. The unstoppable supervillain Deathlist is of the Good Thing You Can Heal type: he's a forcefield-protected head on a robot body with the ability to teleport the head to safety in the worst case scenario; he has killed more superheroes than any other villain in history.
- This troper is writing a series of short stories about aliens and humans and invasions and whatever else... to the point...: Honor The commander of an Alien army is attempting to keep two extremely overpowered applied phlebonium infested humans in check. The Prison warden is attempting to keep them controlled when the commander asks why don't they just toss them into a black hole. This quote sums it up.
"The warden didn't turn as he typed rapidly into his console. "This is top secret. We've tried that already. Remember Black Hole from your history of the universe class, that horrible, genocidal madman? The original creator of the technology that bears his name? We tossed him into a white dwarf. He made it go supernova. Then we got him again by landing a MOON on him. Next we tossed him into a black hole. He got out of that a little more powerful and, if possible, crazier than before. Finally we encased him the same titanium that encloses those two. Then we shot him towards the edge of the universe. QUADRILLIONS of light years before the nearest star we knew of in that direction. We found him later on, twenty-eight years later. He had died of old age on a no-name planet that had just been discovered. We can't kill Black Holes, just contain them."
- While it's not up yet (due to a desire to have it all finished before posting any of it), This Troper is currently working on a story involving beings called Schrödingers. They're just as hard (or easy, depending on how you look at it, especially from the perspectives of the Maschalismos and its Agents, who can punch through steel) to hurt as a regular person, but they're completely impossible to actually KILL, because... Well, to make the a long story short, they just can't die. There's something along the lines of a physical force which acts as a grim reaper of sorts, and which is essential to actually ~killing~ someone, but it doesn't affect Schrödingers.
- Boom is completely immune to almost any and all damage because he managed to absorb all of the awesome from the first explosion ever, to the point where he weilds ridiculously powerful weaponry because the knockback from then won't even shift him. In the end, it takes an entire planet made of space fuel going off in one big explosion to kill him, and he was the one who set it off!
Western Animation
- Parodied in Drawn Together, by the character Captain Hero, especially in an episode in which he and Foxxy Love go through an extreme form of BDSM relationship: because Captain Hero was indestructible, Foxxy could act out her most violent desires without fear of injuring him permanently (this disregarding the fact that all of the characters in the series die on a frequent basis, only to return shortly afterwards as if nothing had happened).
- The Transformers are a nigh-invulnerable race, generally of the "Spare Body Parts" variety. They don't generally regenerate on their own, though some can, but pretty much any damage can be repaired; the line between what can be repaired and what's fatal, however, is nebulous at best.
- When Animated Starscream is revived by a piece of the Allspark lodged in his head, he gains the resurrection method. Anytime that he is killed, the Allspark resurrects him. Discovering this, the Autobots opt to just capture him.
- Then, of course, he is Killed Off For Real when he has the Allspark fragment removed at the end of the show.
- Let's not forget in the G1 continuity that Starscream's spark is immortal, allowing him to possess other transformers, and apparently float through time and space since he turns up in Beast Wars too.
- An ability that was copied into BW Rampage. Rampage can regenerate, but he's later killed by a spike of raw energon going through his spark. In an earlier episode, a processed energon knife cutting parts of his spark did not do the job (though Megatron says it would've killed anyone else, and he takes it as proof of Rampage's immortality) however. It's unknown whether Starscream could be similarly killed.
- Animated Soundwave also deserves mention, being able to take Spare Body Parts an order of magnitude further than your average Cybertronian (and, indeed, he's not Cybertronian. Possibly that has something to do with it). Twice now he's been reduced to a component the size of a human hand and remained online.
- This ability is somewhat balanced out by his tendency to shatter if you hit him hard enough. The downside of a body without any Cybertronian alloys in it.
- Vilgax from Ben 10 is not only Made Of Diamond to the point where he lived through being attached to a nuclear warhead as it was used to blow up his ship, but he has a tank full of healing fluid in case his next ship blows up partially, giving him Regeneration while he's in there. He's the Implacable Man's Implacable Man.
- Don't forget Diamondhead, who is literally Made of Diamond, Ghostfreak (Made of Air), Up-Grade (The Blob), Ditto (Multiple Bodies, although they feel each other's pain), Big Chill (Made of Air), Chromastone (Made of Diamond), Echo Echo (Multiple Bodies), Goop (The Blob), and Swampfire (Regeneration).
- Killing one Ditto kills them all, however (this is how they take down Animo's Stinkfly-Dittos: attack one and the others vanish with a poof). This seems to have been fixed with Echo Echo, or at least not made a point of. Cannonbolt is Made Of Irong to the point of being able to survive twice the heat of reentry when curled into a ball, and Fourarms and Heatblast were also pretty close to Made Of Iron on occasion, being able to survive being tossed through buildings and getting right back up.
- In Disney's Gargoyles, Demona and Mac Beth are essentially immortal. Due to a pact they made back in Medieval Europe, when one dies they both die. However, due to some weird twist of logic with the pact (or just the "Weird Sisters" reviving one of them), since one of them wasn't killed directly they both come back to life shortly afterward (Elisa Maza once temporarily killed Demona to keep her from fighting Mac Beth so she could talk to him). Allegedly, the only way for them to permanently die is to kill each other.
- In the Futurama straight-to-DVD film "The Beast With a Billion Backs," the titular beast is from another universe and made of "electromatter," which the professor describes as "normal matter's bad-ass grandma." Nothing can hurt it except something else made of electromatter.
- Most characters from Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry can survive vicious beatings, gunshot wounds, falling from cliffs, and explosions unless the creators want the character to die
- Subverted in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? with Dip, a mixture of various solvents that broke down the ink that Toons are drawn from in what is essentially permanent death for them.
- Professor Impossible from Venture Brothers is seemingly unkillable due to his body having the properties of elastic. He once swallowed an explosion meant to destroy an entire island in a failed attempt at suicide.
- Signature power of the Mysteron Agents and the titular Phlebotinum Rebel in both incarnations of Captain Scarlet, although the method varies: the original series has them as classic Made Of Diamond Implacable Men, while in the remake they're more vulnerable but will still get up again right after being put down. Both versions also mix in shades of the Fighting A Shadow version since the Agents are merely cloned puppets and the Mysterons themselves remain aloof and untouchable no matter how many plots Spectrum foils.
- In Invader Zim, it's specifically stated that their consciousness, personality, emotions and memory are all stored in their PA Ks. In a fully scripted but never animated episode, Zim could take over Dib this way; his physical body would be dead, but his mind would be in a new body, so that's okay. This theoretically applies for every single member of the Irken race, which would make them all immortals who change bodies every so often (as it's unlikely their best soldiers would be allowed to die when they're still usable). Since a PAK can attach to someone even after you killed the body hosting it and is made of the same Irken alloy that allowed The Massive to go through the sun without being heavily damaged, the only way to kill an Irken is to either take the PAK to Irk and have it be erased by the Control Brains or hide it away from all living life. And according to Word of God, we mean ALL living life. A PAK could attach itself to a rat if given an opportunity, and it has legs and built in jetpack technology. Basically, if Zim wasn't such an idiot, he'd be nigh unstoppable.
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