Troperville
Editing Help
Tools
Toys
|
"You didn't hurt me
Nothing can hurt me
You didn't hurt me
Nothing can stop me now"
The famous last words of any villain at the height of their power, just before the tide begins to turn in favor of the heroes and everything starts to go wrong for the villain, who can then scream " Noooo! This can't be happening!"
It's usually followed by the Big Damn Heroes suddenly making their presence known, with a wry statement that says in so many words, "Oh yeah?" just before the climactic battle begins.
No phrase on Earth is as powerful as this one when it comes to invoking Finagles Law, with the possible exception of " At least things can't get any worse".
Heroes, on the other hand, should avoid saying anything like " What Could Possibly Go Wrong?"
See also Retirony and Tempting Fate. Compare Nothing Can Save Us Now.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
- Death Note: Episode 36, the one before the series finale, ends with Light saying "This is my win", and by that revealing himself as Kira, while thinking the SPK members are going to be killed by Mikami's Death Note. They did not, as Near had out-Xanatosed him, and we all know how it ended. Interesting to mention, Light is actually the series' protagonist.
- Lelouch from Code Geass has this happen to him on an almost episodic basis; whenever one of his 'flawless' plans nears completion, Lelouch gloats to himself that, "All the conditions have been cleared." Within seconds, something goes terribly wrong, commonly due to something that Lelouch couldn't have possibly known about beforehand.
- Quattro of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS, after managing to keep the Saint's Cradle running despite the destroyed engine, triumphantly announces "We're not finished yet!". Then Nanoha spots her. Cue Oh Crap moment.
Comic Books
Film
- Though it takes a little longer (probably because it's in a secure conference room) for the full backlash, an Imperial General in Star Wars announces that the Death Star "is now the ultimate power in the universe!" He is nearly choked by Vader moments later, for scoffing at the power of the Force, and we all know what happened to the Death Star...
- Of course, proving that karma often works faster in movies than it does in real life, the Death Star's destruction is heralded by Grand Moff Tarkin's refusal to abandon the station in their "moment of triumph".
- Before that, we get the following line from Darth Vader himself: "This will be a day long remembered. It has seen the end of Kenobi; it will soon see the end of the Rebellion."
- Also when the Emperor says how secure the shield base is on Endor, guarded by a full legion of his best stormtroopers.
- And in "Phantom Menace", a Neimodian states "Nothing can get through our shield", when the ship IS already exploding.
- The best use of "I am invincible" is delivered by Boris Grishenko in the James Bond movie Goldeneye, who has it as his Catch Phrase. When he survives the destruction of Trevelyan's base after the second Goldeneye satellite smacked into the atmosphere, he utters the line, and immediately gets frozen to death by a wave of liquid nitrogen.
- Gundam Wing has an example compared to this in Tsubarov's demise, where Tsubarov is laughing and claiming that his mobile dolls couldn't possibly be defeated. His last words were "I am invincible." The difference is that his mobile dolls had just been destroyed by Wufei Chang and the room he was in was crumbling and clearly about to blow up due to Wufei's berserk attack on the base.
- In The Fifth Element: "Nothing can break through this glass!" (Thirty seconds later, she breaks through the glass)
- In the Sylvester Stallone movie Demolition Man, Wesley Snipes' Big Bad Simon Phoenix has John Spartan at his mercy. Before he kills him with a pole he utters the line "This... is the best day of my life!" Unfortunately for him Spartan has a container of a substance that instantly freezes whatever it touches, which he smashes against the ground and grabs onto a crane to avoid. Phoenix gets frozen and then has his head kicked off when Spartan swings back around on the crane.
- A classic cinematic example occurs at the end of Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry As their car speeds away, Larry declares, "Ain't nothing gonna stop us!" The car then broadsides a freight train and explodes.
- Subverted in A Bridge Too Far - it is a Nazi officer who says in horror "Nothing can stop them now", the 'them' being the Allied tanks crossing the bridge he has just failed to blow up. As it happens they are in fact stopped later and we get a Downer Ending.
- The Love Bug features the villain's henchman telling him "You can't lose, sir! You can't possibly lo...", trailing off as he sees that Herbie (half of him anyway) is passing them right before the finish line. Later the villain tells him "Couldn't lose, I think you said."
- A heroic version occurs twice in Tremors.
- As Val and Earl are leaving Perfection for Bixby:
Val: Now there's nothing, and I mean nothing, between us and Bixby.
[They encounter two dead bodies - the first warning of the Graboid threat]
- After returning to warn Perfection about the murders, they head for Bixby again to get the police:
Earl: There's sure as hell nothing to stop us now. Everybody we know between here and Bixby is already dead.
[When they get to where a crew was doing roadwork, they find an avalanche blocking passage and a dead road crew]
- Monsters Vs Aliens had a lot of these.
- Immediately after the Big Bad says "That forcefield is impenetrable." Ginormica rips through it and punches him in the face.
- In the chase scene that followed this, Ginormica easily rammed through several blast doors without even slowing down.
- "You can't crush a cockroach!"
- The AI system of the Alien's ship has a security system that functions just like DDR. After the AI declares her security code unbreakable, Dr. Cockroach busts out the moves and unlocks the system.
- In Batman The Movie (1966), Catwoman says it as Batman is pursuing the submarine in which the villains are escaping.
Literature
- In Soon I Will Be Invincible, (I mean, the book is even named Soon I Will Be Invincible) Doctor Impossible has defeated the heroes and his nemesis and his Doomsday Device is working perfectly...
It feels so good, I just have to say it:
"So much for CoreFire. And so much for those wretched Champions!"
Then, right behind me, someone clears their throat, and I freeze.
"Well, almost."
Live Action TV
- At the end of the Buffy The Vampire Slayer episode "Two To Go", the following occurs:
Dark!Willow: There's no one in the world with the power to stop me now!
Giles: (appears behind her) I'd like to test that theory.
- The above exchange is repeated in an issue of the Buffy Season 8 comic, with a nice twist. It is Willow who delivers the punchline, "As a friend of mine once said, I'd like to test that theory," after the evil villain declares her power.
- An example of this presumed causation working its way into the text: the Buffy The Vampire Slayer episode "Spiral." Dawn reassures Buffy that things can't get worse. Immediately, an arrow flies into their RV. Buffy tells Dawn, "This is your fault for saying that!"
- At first it seems like a subversion, since Giles doesn't stop Willow. She beats him fairly soundly and steals the magical power he was using. But it's actually a straight example, because Giles' defeat was part of his Xanatos Gambit to get Willow to stop herself.
- Lampshaded in Doctor Who, "The Satan Pit":
The Doctor: "'No turning back'? That's as bad as 'Nothing can possibly go wrong'!"
- A So Bad Its Good example from the original series. Outrageously accented Mad Scientist Professor Zaroff cackling "Nuzzink in ze vorld can shtop me now!!!"
- Or the Rani's "I have the Loyhargil! Nothing can stop me now!"
- The Doctor's "I'm the Doctor" speech from "Voyage Of The Damned" falls under this trope, given how spectaculary he fails.
- Except for the bit where he manages to save all six billion people on Earth.
- One from the new series, "Journey's End":
- To be fair, he DID stop every backup plan, which is impressive for a villain.
- In "Parting of the Ways":
Dalek Emperor: I will not die! I CANNOT DIE!!
- In the British automotive series Top Gear, the team of presenters is frequently given an automotive related challenge of some kind (e.g., each one is to purchase a used vehicle, convert it to be amphibious, and then sail it across the English Channel). Usually, on being given the task, presenter Jeremy Clarkson launches into it asking the enthusiastic rhetorical question, "How hard can it be?" Answer: usually very (e.g., both times the Top Gear presenters were challenged to convert vehicles into cat-boats, Richard Hammond's conversion sank).
- Wouldn't the example be an actual subversion, considering that Clarkson in each of these boat challenges, is the only one to actually make a seaworthy vehicle? (and I still think he capsized the "Toyboata" on purpose to allow him to use a more refined design in the next iteration, but I digress...)
- This has been Lampshaded in several episodes. In the first episode of the series' 9th season, (the episode in which Hammond returned after recovering from a serious brain injury sustained in a dragster crash), Clarkson ended his introduction to a challenge with the fateful words
Jeremy Clarkson: ... How hard can it be?
Richard Hammond: [dramatically] Oh, how I've missed the pang of dread every time you say the words "How hard can it be?"
- And in another episode later that season:
Jeremy Clarkson: How hard can it be?
Richard Hammond: Don't say that!
Music
- Nine Inch Nails album The Downward Spiral uses the line 'Nothing can stop me now' in the songs Piggy, Ruiner and Big Man With A Gun. Fitting into the trope is that the concept album ends with the character's suicide.
- Both instances of the line also mark the two distinctive stages of the character's descent into insanity: Piggy's ending marks the beginning of his God-complex, and Ruiner's ending marks the beginning of his purely nihilistic side taking control. Adding even more irony to the situation is the fact that the line is cut short at the end of Ruiner.
- The recurrence of this phrase spills over in the next Album, The Fragile. The Penultimate track on the first disc, La Mer contains the phrase, but this time in Creole French. Rien peut m'arrêter maintenant.
- In The Protomen, track 5 (Vengeance), Mega Man taunts the enemy with the words "Send your armies, there's no man or machine who can stop me!" As a matter of fact, he's absolutely right, but the trauma of having to kill his turncoat brother Protoman while the crowd does nothing triggers a Heroic BSOD that ends with him turning his back on all of humanity and allowing the remnants of the robot army to slaughter the crowd.
- In this tropers opinion this is the cruelest subverson ever.
- Máire Brennan's Against The Wind:
Defying their leaders
Holding out for free will
The strong dare to echo
Nothing can stop
Nothing can stop us now
- Laibach's B Mashina:
Millions of machines on nitroglycerin
Thunder in us
There is no force no money and no power
To stop us now and change our fate
Before we rise
- Quoth Moby: People they come together/People they fall apart/No one can stop us now/'Cause we are all made of stars.
Musical
- A rare non-villain example is found in Bye Bye Birdie, where Rosie says to herself, "Oh, Rosie, nothing can stop you now!" Cue her fiance's mom walking onto the stage. Probably one of the funniest moments in the play.
Video Games
- This is the first line spoken by Villain Protagonist and Heroic Sociopath Zetta in Makai Kingdom as he effortlessly slaughters his way through guardians of a forbidden library, burning it down around him as he does. Zetta then proceeds to prove the trope right when he causes the netherworld he's standing on and everything on it, himself included, to get Critical Existence Failure in a spectacularly stupid attempt to Screw Destiny.
- Done for laughs using Time Travel in Time Splitters: Future Perfect, by the Big Bad (referring to himself and his past self): "Nothing can stop me now!! I mean, us! Well, me!!" He isn't foiled -immediately- afterwards, however.
- In Halo 2 after Tartarus had brought him the Index, the Prophet of Truth proclaimed nothing, not even the Flood can stop them. Accordingly, A Spartan-II materialised right in front of him.
- Semi-justified, since the appearance of said Spartan did not actually have any eventual effect on whether the Great Journey occurred or not.
- But the Arbiter appearing at the same time near the control room sure did.
- In Halo 3, after Truth's plans to cause galactic omnicide are stopped, Gravemind chimes in that his are still on track:
"Now the gate has been unlatched, headstones pushed aside;
corpses shift and offer room, a fate you must abide!"
Web Animation
- Featured on Homestar Runner. At the end of Issue 8 of "Teen Girl Squad", Cheerleader brags from offscreen "Everybody died 'cept me!" A chomping noise and an "Aw, crap!" from Cheerleader indicate that she was eaten by a shark.
Web Comics
- In Captain SNES, the simple fact of saying "I'm Invincible!" leads to an instant defeat, to the point that tricking the opponent into saying it (such as saying "I'm Invisible" and waiting for them to correct) is a valid battle tactic.
- In this
 B Movie Comic strip, Professor Dr. and Father Captain McKenzie tempt fate scientifically.
Western Animation
Web Original
- Used in KateModern: Precious Blood, where it illustrates the villain's insanity, since his plan consists of blowing up the building and everyone in it.
Steve: It's not going to happen like this, Terrence!
Terrence: See, that's where you're wrong, Steven. This is exactly how it's gonna happen. Nothing can stop me now. I'm invincible, Steven, you hear me?
- From the Evil Overlord List:
24. I will maintain a realistic assessment of my strengths and weaknesses. Even though this takes some of the fun out of the job, at least I will never utter the line "No, this cannot be! I AM INVINCIBLE!!!" (After that, death is usually instantaneous.).
- Brute Chieftain Malwreckus adopts this attitude, laughing triumphantly as his Scarab busts through Horizon's defensive wall... and wanders right into point-blank range of some artillery cannons. BANG.
Real Life
- Before her ill-fated maiden voyage, it was widely boasted that nothing, not even God, could sink the Titanic (a similar line is spoken in the movie as well). Turns out, God loves a challenge...
- Its very telling that after the Titanic, when it came time to build their new invincible warships, the British went with the name "Dreadnought", as in "It shall dread nought but God".
- Similarly, the Hindenburg was frequently billed as "Uncrashable."
- And true to the boast it never crashed. It burned.
- No matter where you go, the prelude to a stunt that will end in catastrophe and humiliation is "Hey, Watch this!".
- This troper owns a book on deaths at the Grand Canyon, and "Watch this!" or "Look what I can do!" are the most frequently cited last words uttered by people listed in the book, almost always immediately followed by a description along the lines of, "They then attempted a cartwheel, and fell off the cliff."
- It'll all be over by Christmas.
- The initial duration of Barbarossa operation was planned to be about 3 months. Boy, these boches never learn anything!
- "My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honor. I believe it is 'peace for our time.' Go home and get a nice quiet sleep." - Neville Chamberlain, 1938.
|
|
