Nigh Invulnerability - Television Tropes & Idioms

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.
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.
- Or whenver the writers feel like hurting him.
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.
- Out of all of the Homunculi, the very toughest and hardest to kill is probably the manga version of Sloth. They only manage to temporarily stop him by dousing him in rocket fuel and exposing him to sub-zero weather, causing him to freeze solid.
- Not to mention that our heroes still have no idea how to kill Father. That could be problematic.
Many of the villains in Dragon Ball Z could regenerate. Cell, for example, came back From A Single Cell after being reduced to ashes. 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 reattach 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 continuously 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.
  - Besides that, he had an impressive ability to regenerate beyond shedding, as well as damage resistance. Sasuke threw several attacks at him that should have killed him in the Forest of Death, but none of them did the job, presumably because Orochimaru isn't exactly human anymore.
- Tobi (otherwise known as Madara Uchiha) appears to have some Made of Air qualities. He can make anything simply phase through his 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 have different parts of his body be tangible and intangible at the same time.
  - He is also, if not Made Of Diamond, then at least incredibly durable, being able to block a really freaking huge sword with the just the side of his arm.
- 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... or maybe it's a case of "by proxy" and she's merely sending paper clones of herself to do everything while hiding in a remote location. It's not really made clear. Either way her paper can't unfold very well if it's covered in oil.
- If Kisame is injured, Samehada can fuse with his body and use the chakra it has eaten to heal it, even from injuries as severe as having his chest blown open.
- Outside of Akatsuki (originally), 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 (his skin can become harder than steel, and a hit strong enough to take out a half bowling ball-sized piece of his chest left him out of breath) and can apparently take replacement organs from other people.
- Naruto himself is no slouch on the not dieing front. His Superpowered 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 Rock Lee 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, even when he was a kid.
- Danzo has the power to cheat reality itself through the use of the many Sharingans on his arm. He can turn what would be fatal injuries into illusions, and make illusions into reality. However, it permanently burns out one Sharingan for each use, lasting about 1 minute per eye. Good thing he's got a huge supply.
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.
- Alucard's invulnerability is directly tied to his familiars (undead creatures created from the life stolen from the people whose blood he has drank) of which there are thousands (due to his advanced age and particular bloodlust); while his familiars are contained within himself he possesses their collective life, making him very difficult to permanently injure. When he summons his familiars, he personally becomes more vulnerable, although he can recover from injury by deferring damage to the familiars, at the cost of gradually destroying them.
- At the end, he gains Schrodinger as a familiar and gets rid of all of the others. This gives him the ability to exist so long as he is aware of himself. This moves the already pretty invulnerable Alucard somewhere closer into god territory as the only thing that seems likely to be able to kill Alucard is himself committing suicide. That or maybe an actual god.
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 survived 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 their 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.
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.
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.
- Which she does.
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.
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!".
- 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.
- The zoanoid Aptom has equally impressive regeneration powers, and can also transform into a perfect copy of anyone he's absorbed, complete with powers. One memorable fight scene had him transforming into a swarm of living rockets to distract an opponent, then rebuilding his body out of the ones that didn't hit.
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. In his first shown battle he not only allows his opponent, Kurosaki Ichigo, to make the first attack, but by slashing his sword at his chest as hard 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. His primary means of defense seems to be a shield spell called "Dispel Bound", which produces a number of shields to block any attack aimed at him. 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-regenerate. And he can repair them manually at positively absurd speeds. 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 these defenses, he possesses obscenely powerful healing abilities (of the sort that makes Wolverine look like a girl scout) and finally, he 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 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.
Keitaro in Love Hina is a humorous example, as he's effectively invincible despite suffering constant attacks from all the girls, plus Amusing Injuries such as getting punched off of a third floor balcony or getting hit by a car. It's lampshaded on several occasions when other characters encourage him to jump from a car onto a plane about to take off, telling him not to worry because he's invincible. On another occasion, he jumps off of a cliff to save Naru, and tells her afterward that he would probably survive, but she wouldn't have.

Of course, the original Flying Brick himself, Superman. Can survive in the heart of a supernova. Most versions of him can, anyway, and some also add super-healing and immortality on top of that. Originally, his skin could be pierced by a "bursting artillery shell", but his powers creeped and seeped.
- One of course can't forget his Omnicidal Maniac Alternate Universe version, Superboy-Prime, a relic from a destroyed alternate universe that was left in a paradise dimension with several other refugees, only realizing his destiny as a great hero was "stolen" from him. In the end, it takes two other Supermen, a legion of Green Lanterns, and being thrown through Krypton's sun to weaken him enough to be captured.
  - Partly attributable to his having Pre Crisis power levels, unlike Superman himself.
The Tick, for whom this trope is named. His primary power is always listed as "nigh invulnerability."
While a lot of superheroic characters have some level of invulnerability, the aptly-named Eternals of the Marvel Universe may stand out for special mention: they possess a "psychic lock" on their molecular structure that allows them to restore virtually any injury they can't flat-out ignore.
Madcap in the Marvel Universe has this as his primary power (his secondary power being inducing euphoria in others). He has been dismembered, decapitated, burned to ash, and even vaporized, yet always managed to regenerate within a few hours at most.
The Marvel character Deadpool possesses several forms of nigh-invulnerability, but none work quite as well as they should. He is incapable of dying (sometimes ignored), but that is more of a curse than anything. He can also regenerate from almost any wound, but his healing factor unfortunately seems to work in proportion to how badly he was hurt (in other words, his healing factor would kick in much more quickly and effectively if he simply used a grenade and blew his whole arm off in order to heal some slash wounds on it).
However, possibly the most famous nigh invincible character in the Marvel Universe would have to be Wolverine, who possesses quick regeneration abilities and a skeleton that's pretty much indestructible. He can survive pretty much any attack up to (and probably beyond) a direct hit from a nuclear warhead. The time it takes for him to regenerate depends on the severity of his wounds and who happens to be doing the writing, but chances are, Wolverine will be back up on his by the end of the page.
- This Troper would especially like to point out the example that SHOULD be infamous: The outcome of Nitro's attack on an Elementary School. From the blast, only Wolverine's BRAIN hadn't been completely incinerated because of his Made of Diamond skeleton, and he regenerated even when it was completely implausable that he could be ALIVE, let alone able to regenerate.
- One other notable example is from the Ultimate Wolverine Vs. Hulk series, in which the Hulk rips Logan in half, throwing the lower portion of his body on top of a mountain, necessitating the need for him to climb a mile up with his intestines hanging out of him.
- In Uncanny X-Men Annual #11, Wolverine regenerated completely from a single drop of blood. To be fair, his healing factor was supercharged with the power of the Crystal of Ultimate Vision. We don't talk about what happened to the adamantium.
  - Marvel editors continually beg the question with this: If Wolvie's arm or finger gets cut off, could it grow a new Wolverine?
- Wolverine has survived direct hits (or near enough) from nuclear weapons, at least two times, to this troper's knowledge. Once in a Venom miniseries - while bonded with a clone of the Venom symbiote - and once in Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk.
Immortal Man in The DCU was endlessly reincarnated with his memories intact.
- Also from the DCU is Mitchell Shelley, the Resurrection Man. He has a similar ability to Immortal Man's; every time he dies, he comes back to life with a new superpower. This is actually reincarnation, but when combined with nanotech regeneration, it gets interesting.
In Watchmen, Doctor Manhattan's god-like powers first manifested in the ability to reform himself after the complete disintegration of his original body. He would later demonstrate intangibility and indestructibility as well.
Image Comics super-pensioner Brit is made of some material stronger than diamond — he is totally indestructible. He has no super strength or special abilities other than indestructibility — but when you can strap a nuclear device to your back and drop into enemy territory to detonate it, who needs super strength?
As quoted above, Craig "Mr Immortal" Hollis from the Great Lakes Avengers (a comical offshoot of The Avengers, whose members all had powers considered too useless to be in the main organization). He had no special abilities, no power to withstand damage, but if he actually died, he just stood up again three seconds later, fully healed. Since he was a child, he's been haunted by Deathurge, a psychopomp-like being who convinces people to kill themselves, but decided to take Craig in as a sort of adoptive son. It's been said somewhere that he's destined to be the last living creature in the universe. In the GLA miniseries, he's revealed to be "Homo Supreme", one step beyond mutant (which caused Flatman, who'd just come out as gay, to mutter "Always have to one-up me, don't you?").
The primary power of the title characterPainkiller Jane, a comic turned TV series, is to recover from anything. It still hurts though, hence her name.
Checkmate of Ultimate Muscle is both an example and a subversion at the same time. He's been raised to be immune to pain, so he's able to go far longer than any other wrestler. However, the series plays that notion straight, as it's pointed out that someone immune to pain wouldn't know when they had gone past their limit. This ability magically disappeared, though, when he joined the good guys.
In the game of The Darkness, one of the powers The Darkness grants Jackie Estacado is to protect him from virtually any harm... and if he does manage to die, it just rewinds time to a point when he's alive (the justification for the game's checkpoint system), or sends his spirit to The Otherworld while it rebuilds his body. Presumably, The Darkness has some variation on these powers in the comics, as well, but this editor is not familiar with them.
- Jackie does indeed have that power in the comic. One particular scene that springs to mind is his body being reconstructed from the surrounding organic matter after blowing up a warehouse.
A running gag in Phil Foglio's comics is The Winslow, an immortal, indestructible being that is the epitome of sentient life in the universe, which is the focus of several violent religious sects. It the only one of the Platonic Essences (eternal objects created during the Big Bang of a universe, which will then exist through all the successive Big Crunch/Big Bang cycles) known to be alive, and hence was the first living being to exist — the joke being that Winslow is a small, cute, furry green and yellow alligator-like creature with the attention span of a gnat.
- How indestructible? Well, a couple of times, seekers of The Winslow simply blew up the planet it was currently on, and found him in the ruble.
The Saint of Killers from Preacher. In one issue, a small army is sent to destroy him, and he takes out multiple tanks and helicopters (using a Colt revolver!) without breaking a sweat. So they nuke the battleground... One mushroom cloud later, he's standing at ground zero and his clothes aren't even dirty.
Saint of Killers: Not enough gun.
Marvel Comics' Incredible Hulk is an extreme example; he is both super tough, invunerable to all conventional weapons, and has an extremely fast healing factor, so fast that it was not discovered in the continuity until he was wounded while he was slowed down because he was Joe Fixit. He has healed from being gutted, brain damaged, and once from having the majority of his flesh repelled off of his body.
- When Amadeus Cho accused Reed Richards of killing the Hulk, Richards mantained that was impossible, "Because the Hulk doesn't die."
The Sandman. No, not that one—the Spiderman villain. He could change the density of his body so that one moment he was hard as a rock, and the next moment Spiderman's punches just hit loose sand.
- A situation situation with Hydro-Man. You can't punch or shoot him with projectiles considering they'll just flow through him harmlessly, but you can hit him hard with electricity to induce electrolysis, evaporate him, or contaminate his liquid body mass with a solidifying agent like cement to trap him.
John Byrne's Next Men had a group of teenagers who each had one of the classic 'stock powers'—one guy was super-strong, one was super-fast, one could see the entire electromagnetic spectrum, etc. Bethany was completely invulnerable, of the Made of Diamond type, and the series actually showed some of the logical extremes of this power: she could use a single strand of her hair to saw through an iron bar (and if you try to grab her hair, you lose your fingers), and she eventually lost the ability to feel hot and cold as the series went on.
Partial subversion. From New Mutants to X-Force to X-Men, Sam "Cannonball" Guthrie's power renders him Nigh Invulnerable (as he repeatedly says himself), but only when he's "blasting" — which is to say using his pyro-plasmodic forcefield in flight. And as if that didn't do it, he's also an External (an immortal mutant).
J. Michael Straczynski's Rising Stars series had a character, Peter Dawson, whose special power was that he was effectively indestructible: a microthin energy shield surrounded his entire body, protecting him from literally everything, and also lined the inside of his lungs and stomach, making poisons ineffective, too. However, the usefulness of this power is called into question, and the power as a whole heavily subverted, in the issue where Dawson appears. Since the shield can't tell what is and isn't an attack, he can't feel any sensation whatsoever—the only sense he really has available (besides sight and hearing, of course) is taste, causing him to overeat until he's a pudgy blob. While he was in high school, the football coach tried him out on the team, but as he discovered, Dawson's invulnerability doesn't make him any tougher or stronger—the other team would just run right over him. Dawson later applied to be a bodyguard, a policeman, anything where his ability might conceivably be useful, but his obesity meant he failed all the physicals. The only job he ends up getting is as a mechanic in a local garage.
- Even more interesting, though, is that the only issue in which Dawson appears, he's been murdered. (That's not really a spoiler, since you know it from page one.) The doctor who's been called in takes most of the issue recounting his life before finally revealing how it was done: his killer snuck in at night, while Dawson had fallen asleep in his armchair, and taped his arms and legs to the chair—since Dawson didn't have any feeling, thanks to the shield, he didn't notice. Then the killer simply pulled a plastic bag over Dawson's head and waited. Even though Dawson's shield could filter out inhaled poisons, he still needed oxygen.
The various Miracle-people in Alan Moore's Miracleman all have skin-tight forcefields that render them invulnerable to pretty much anything in the universe. (It's also implied, though never explored, that this forcefield is also what gives them their super strength.)
- Of course, there are ways to get around this. When Kid Miracleman, who's a psychopath, finally breaks free and begins tearing London apart, Miracleman, Miraclewoman, a pyrokinetic and two aliens with teleportation powers have to stop him. They throw cars at him, blow up gas mains in his face, throw him through buildings, and nothing does any real damage. One of the aliens tries teleporting KM into the side of a building, but he just busts free a second later: the forcefield doesn't let anything through. So, being the logical type of alien, he just tries the reverse: he picks up a small chunk of rock and teleports it within KM's forcefield, and into his head, which does the trick. After a little while.
Another invulnerable Marvel mutant is the Blob— not The Blob, just a guy with that name— who has stood up to everything from Wolverine's claws, to flamethrowers, to the Hulk's punches.
- Though not, apparently, Wolverine's head-banging in a certain 2009 movie... though this is probably because in the comics his head was always vulnerable compared to the rest of his body.
And the Canadian superheroes Alpha Flight have a villain-turned-hero called Diamond Lil —though she does not have superstrength, she effectively hits twice as hard as normal because her fists absorb none of the impact energy. (Given that she's also a six-and-a-half-foot-tall weightlifter, that's gotta hurt.)
Deconstructed in the story of Element Girl in the The Sandman comics. She is tired of being an invulnerable superhero, but she cannot commit suicide because her body keeps involuntarily changing to a form that will survive each attempt.
- The "divine protection" form is tweaked slightly for Cain. He is not himself invulnerable to harm, but he has a mark from God that makes it clear anyone killing Cain will face God's wrath. The mark is sufficient to warn off deliberate attacks, but probably wouldn't save Cain from accidents and such.
The Juggernaut in the X-Men: it's almost impossible to inflict even minor damage on him, he quickly regenerates in the rare cases (almost always involving magic) that somebody can can hurt him, and once he gets up some steam, he just plows right through any obstacle in his way.
- One time, a demon mystically melted his flesh and organs... and Juggernaut's bones still kept moving forward. The demon was literally too stunned to do anything about that. He's practically a Physical God, as he is an avatar of Cyttorak, an evil god thing.
Emma Frost is LITERALLY Made of Diamond. One of her powers is to take on a diamond form, while losing her psionic powers in the process. This can of course be reverted.
- Before Emma, Penance of Generation X was as hard as diamond, and she couldn't turn it off.
- In a future, Emma Frost and Scott Summers daughter, Ruby, has a similar ability. Contrary to the name, it is just as much diamond as her mother. The red hue is due to her fathers powers.
Invincible and other comics taking place in that universe are teeming with Nigh Invulnerable characters, but Guardians of the Globe member Dupli-Kate is a particularly good example of Hive Mind-style invulnerability. When all her copies are apparently killed in a brawl, her husband, brother and team mourn her death — only to learn that her 'zero' has been holed up in a remote location for, apparently, years as proof against just this kind of scenario.
Unlike Superman, Wonder Woman can be physically wounded (if you can get past her lightning-fast reflexes), but she can still take far, far more damage than normal humans and still keep fighting.
This is the sole power of Turtle in The Legion Of Super Heroes. Literally, he's simply very nearly completely invulnerable. He can be harmed, but not much and not without an excess of effort. He was rejected from the Legion due to his lack of offensive capabilities, but joined the Legion Auxilliary along with Night Girl and his friend Sizzle with the hopes of eventually graduating to the Legion proper.
Cell, one of The Morlocks from X Men-related comics, is a giant single-cell organism, meaning he can regenerate any damage done to him at all and absorb organic matter for nourishment. Basically the only catch to this is that he can't digest inorganic objects, meaning he had a bullet stuck harmlessly in his head for a while. His teammates Shatter and Litterbug, however, were just super-tough; Shatter was made of some kind of super dense obsidian-like rock, while Litterbug had a layered, chitonous exoskeleton.
Butterball, from The Initiative, has a variation on this power; he is completely immutable, and therefore cannot be harmed in anyway. This power is apparently all-encompassing, as he has extreme difficulty learning new subjects, can't lose (or gain, for that matter) weight, can't get in shape, etc, etc....
Man-Thing is both something of a blob (he's a mass of plant matter with no internal organs to damage), and even if something manages to destroy him, he'll simply regrow from swamp matter back home.
- Similar to DC's Swamp Thing. When Alan Moore took on the title he retconned Swamp Thing as a mass of swamp growth with Alec Holland's memories, rather than a transformed Holland. He also explained the character's apparent death in the previous issue and subsequent survival with the summation "You can't kill a vegetable by shooting it through the head". Swamp Thing soon discovered he was the Earth's latest plant elemental (courtesy of John Constantine), and learned how to manipulate the planet's flora through the metaphysical plant-collective plane called the 'Green'; including growing new bodies for himself at an accelerating rate. (Several days with the first attempt, split-seconds soon after.) His invulnerability started at 'Blob' but soon encompassed 'Regeneration', 'Made of air', 'External Repair', 'The Proxy', 'Multiple Bodies', 'Can Only Kill Part of Him', and arguably 'Physical God'. Things only escalated when he absorbed the powers of Earth's other elementals...

The Yamato battleship is practically Nigh Invulnerable. It took many torpedoes and bombs to destroy it.
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.
- Michael Myers, original slasher movie bad villain was inspired by Yul Brenner's character in Westworld.
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 Movie The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen 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.
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.
Freddy Krueger is a combination of Fighting A Shadow and in some movies The Proxy. He can be pulled out of the dream world, and then either made to disappear in a puff of logic, blown up with a pipe bomb shoved into his stomach, or, if the Final Girl is a hot little blonde from Brooklyn◊ who's taken a level in badass, decapitated with a fucking machete.

Vampires in Twilight are LITERALLY made of diamonds.
- Which sparkles.
In Part 2 of Stieg Larssons Girl with the dragon tattoo trilogy, "The girl who plays with fire", her brother the tall blond guy has a condition rendering him insensitive to pain, which along with his enormous physical strength make him able to shrug off broken bones, hits with heavy objects and a pounding by a professional boxer.
In Terry Pratchett's Only You Can Save Mankind, the eponymous "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.
  - Zombies - after all, how do you kill somebody who is already dead? Shoot him with a crossbow, and it'll make him just annoyed. Losing a limb, or even a head is nothing that a few stitches can't fix. (Though this condition doesn't [normally] give you any supernatural durability - when in Witches Abroad an alligator ate Granny Weatherwax's hat, she didn't let Baron Saturday try getting it back, because "Just because you're dead it doesn't mean you have to be in pieces.")
- Honorary mention to Mr. Shine from Thud!.
  - Mr. Shine. Him diamond!
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 Flying Brick (without the flying) 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), there's 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 (i.e. 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 eponymous 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 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.

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 Jack implies it). 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 one manages to 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.
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.
- Borg are Made Of Diamond (thanks to adaptive shields) and hive-minded.
- Also Q, though 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.
Ex-demon Cole Turner in Charmed became functionally invincible after absorbing the power of MANY fallen demons; he was able to use this power to return from beyond the grave so he could be with Phoebe again. Sadly, his immense power now made him a threat to her and her family, so she divorced him. To his dismay, he found that he could not even kill himself while in a stint of depression. He was eventually ~~killed~~ vanquished during a last-ditch (failed) attempt to win Phoebe back in an alternate timeline.

Bionicle featured Vezon and Fenrakk. When cursed by the Mask of Life, they gained the power to absorb any energy tossed at them and get stronger. Even throwing them in lava did not help, they just came out bigger. They were stopped by freezing time and removing the mask, but even after that, Vezon still has a knack for not dying.

Kazuyuki Fujita's skull.

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.
- 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 also 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 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.
  - "Under no circumstances"? You can still concede the game, or lose due to a judge ruling. And, of course, you can still lose normally if the Angel leaves the battlefield.
- 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 it 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 being 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 that expose them directly to 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.
- Space Marines almost constantly wear armour better than most tanks, underneath which is a three-metre-tall Super Soldier with a bullet-proof chest and multiple spare organs. Even severe damage near to the point of death doesn't stop them, as they are wired into a Dreadnought and continue fighting.
- Da Orks are already ridiculously tough, being hulking brutes with physical strength equal to or greater than a fully equipped Space Marine, but they are further resilient due to being animals with a symbiotic relationship to fungi, almost completely devoid of vital organs and any injury short of missing limbs being superficial (it is thought that bolters, self-propelled explosive rounds, were invented originally to combat Orks). There are reports of Orks being decapitated, killing the person who decapitated them then reattaching their own severed head, with no problems whatsoever. Datz reel Orky.
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 is 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.
- In GURPS: Supers on the discussion of cosmic scale characters buying enough Damage Reduction to divide an attack's damage by one billion is noted as being "alarmingly cheap" at just 1350 points. Consider that the destruction of Hiroshima required not even a hundred thousand points of damage.
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.
In Nobilis, all Nobles know a simple rite that renders them immune to a certain level of mortal harm. Unusually, as the character gets more powerful, the rite will start to include less severe damage. So, a weak Noble will walk out of a (mundane) nuclear explosion unharmed, but be completely vulnerable to bullets. True masters of this rite can't even be insulted by mortals.

Touhou Project: The main protagonist, Reimu, has a Spell Card called Fantasy Heaven, which makes her completely impossible to touch. It's even implied by secondary character Kirisame Marisa that the best strategy against this ability is simply to run away. However, Reimu rarely, if ever, uses this Spell Card, and it only appears twice in the series: in Imperishable Night, where it's essentially an unlockable bonus boss (you have to dodge all her attacks within a time limit) and Scarlet Weather Rhapsody, where it's probably the most powerful Spell Card in the game. In SWR's update, Hisoutensoku, it's turned into a One-Hit K.O. move, as the damage it deals is several times a character's lifebar. However, it's rarely if ever actually used as the restrictions are rather ludicrous: Reimu has to first invoke the Spell Card, and then hit the opponent with melee-damage seven times within a time limit. While this SEEMS simple enough, Reimu's melee combat ability is only just barely adequate, and the game places high emphasis on dodging and evasion. Any reasonably able player would be able to avoid getting hit incredibly easily. It has been stated by both Marisa and Word Of God that Reimu was born with this ability, and it's one that she never has to use. The implications are that being intangible is simply a natural state of being for her, and that she holds back on purpose. That's right, if she wanted to, she could defeat ANY boss ANY time without getting hit ONCE. However, that wouldn't make for a very fun game, so she's almost always in a tangible state.
- A long time ago, when she was still a citizen of the moon, Eirin made the Hourai Elixer, which makes the drinker absolutely immortal by effectively removing their death. Kaguya and her "rival" Mokou (and possibly Eirin herself) are the only characters known to have drank it, and as a result haved lived for almost two millenia (and counting) and are impossible to kill. When fighting the latter, a character with the explicit ability to kill anything wasn't able to kill her, and in the end she only stops fighting because of the pain (she instantly regenerates all damage, but it still hurts).
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...
  - Both (AV and Pandemonium Warden) have been beaten solo by a guy named Gradius0. Then again, here he might be nigh invulnerable himself.
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?
Ganon from The Legend Of Zelda definently counts. He has been killed (each time more painfully and unbelievably than the last) and he still manages to come back even stronger despite being killed over 9 times! Though this is probably because of his god status derived from his triforce of power, though Link can still die rather easily despite having his own piece of the triforce.
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, and its weight doesn't seem to slow him down, either. His Achilles Heel? The spinning helicopter tail rotor.
- Also, Rhoemer in the first game is impervious to bullets and explosions for no apparent reason, and must be taken out with a gas grenade.
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, i.e. 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 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.
- 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.
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 ia the 'Made of Air' variety as the only way 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.
Saya, in Saya no Uta.
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 V, a few late-game enemies (and one boss trio) will automatically revive from KO within a single turn (with full HP) unless/until the player is able to land a finishing blow to the whole group simultaneously.
  - Also, for some reason, no one could kill Exdeath until he lost control of the Void.
- In Final Fantasy VI, The Guardian in Vector is nearly impossible to defeat, as is Chupon in the Colosseum.
- Guys. Final Fantasy VII. Sephiroth. Seriously. Bastard gets half of his body dissolved, he comes back. He gets killed at the end of the game and his will is shitkicked by Cloud's in a mental battle. He comes back. He has Jenova's regeneration powers, to boot. It seems like the only way to kill him even temporarily is to do incredible damage to nearly every part of his body in a short space of time, such as with Cloud's Omnislash attack.
- 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.
- In Final Fantasy Tactics, the Lucavi possess people with the use of ancient gemstones. They are rumored to keep reappearing throughout Ivalice's history and wreaking havoc. They also have ridiculous amounts of strength and HP. How the hero is going to stop them for good doesn't even occur to him. The problem is apparently solved when the stones become stuck in an alternate dimension where the Lucavi leader's spirit was imprisoned.
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 to 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 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.
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.
- Also, the Armored Harriors from the second game. The only way to damage these hard-heads is to knock one into the other.
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.
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). Not to mention Vamp, whose already potent regeneration abilities were enhanced with nanomachines.
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.
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.
The GMan in Half Life. The only characters who were able to stop him at all only temporarily restrained him, and even that didn't last long.
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.
In Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories, before you fight Marluxia in the final battle, you fight what is "merely an illusion of [him]."
In many rail shooters with a Take Cover mechanic, the cover/shield your character can hide behind will withstand pretty much everything the enemy can throw at it, even superweapons of mass destruction.

The Werewolves in Cry Havoc survive ALOT of automatic weapons fire. Skoll shrugs off rifle, machine gun, grenade launcher, and cannon rounds all durring one charge.
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 weapon 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.

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 phlebotinium 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.
"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!

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), Big Chill (Made of Air), Chromastone (Made of Diamond), Echo Echo (Multiple Bodies), Goop (The Blob), and Swampfire (Regeneration).
In Disney's Gargoyles, Demona and MacBeth 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 MacBeth 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 title 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 The 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 eponymous 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 PAKs. 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 metals that allowed The Massive to go through a star 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.
The Fairly Oddparents has the Crimson Chin, a Superman parody. Timmy himself became this when he wished for superpowers.
The DCAU version of Superman isn't quite as tough as his comics counterpart, but is still monstrously hard to kill.

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