Unblockable Attack

Protip: if your opponent has dark energy radiating from their body, don't block; run.^note Or make a really cheap jab!

"Plate mail, the skin of the chest, the rib cage, the heart — all useless against the mage who can reach directly for the soul."

— Death Grasp, Magic: The Gathering

Some characters are defensive powerhouses, like the Barrier Warrior who raises the use of Deflector Shields into an unassailable art form. One popular tactic for dealing with such a formidable defense is to use an attack that their defenses can't block, an Unblockable Attack. It can be a punch, weapon, or spell that if it connects breaks whatever defenses the target has and leaves them reeling. This attack is so powerful that even a perfectly timed Block/Counter-Attack won't work, the only choices the target has are dodging (thus dropping their defense) or preemptively attacking before their assailant finishes their attack.

The Unblockable Attack usually has one or more drawbacks to keep it from being naturally overpowering. It may have a Charged Attack mechanic so the defender can potentially survive either by immediately dodging or jabbing very fast to stop the charge-up. Another limitation is it doesn't usually have a lot of Area of Effect or "splash" damage, giving the target plenty of space to run to in order to avoid getting hit. Similarly it will not be an Always Accurate Attack that can home in on targets wherever they may be and even if they dodge (in fact, an Always Accurate Attack will probably do less damage as a tradeoff). If the unblockable attack lacks these drawbacks it gives the attacker an "Instant Death" Radius that makes the game Nintendo Hard and the opponent akin to a god.

The Unblockable Attack is similar to how a spell with No Saving Throw will No-Sell a target's mystic and mental defenses... provided it hits. The difference is that No Saving Throw attacks can be prevented from hitting by certain defenses, while an Unblockable attack can never be intercepted, only avoided or interrupted.

This works equally well on actual physical defenses like fists, swords and shields, as well as intangible ones like a Beehive Barrier. The Boss Battle is likely to have this, and Mooks probably have attacks like this to make sure the player doesn't spend all the fight just blocking. The Unblockable Attack is usually signaled with a special animation.

In Fighting Games, grapple/throw maneuvers tend to be unblockable as a rule, to encourage a player to use their defenses wisely; it also creates a Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors where Defend beats Attack, Throw beats Defend, and Attack beats Throw.

See also Worf Barrage. Compare Invulnerable Attack and Armor-Piercing Attack.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Negima! Magister Negi Magi (and Love Hina) has Zanmaken: Ni no Tachi, a sword attack designed to ignore all and any magic barriers.
• In Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple, when the titular hero fights against Ethan Stanley, he wins with a technique that he learned from The Elder himself and for which there is no defense, at least when the opponent is a non-master-class fighter. However, when Kenichi uses the same technique against Tirawit Koukin, instead of trying to defend himself, simply launches a counter-attack.
• In A Certain Scientific Railgun, a minor villain has the ability "Equal Speed", which causes anything he throws to never lose momentum unless he breaks his concentration. He demonstrates by throwing a marble at a steel door. The marble plows right through it despite it moving so slowly.
• In ∀ Gundam, this is one reason the Moonlight Butterfly is so powerful: it cannot be blocked. At best, some extremely powerful energy barriers were deployed against it and barely slowed it down; the ships generating the barriers succumbed to the attack and were forced down within minutes. And forget about avoiding it: in the backstory, the Turn A covered the entire Earth with it. The Turns are the only MS's that can resist it, due to their own nanomachine repair systems, and even they ended up sealed for eternity by each other's MB.
• In Bleach:
  • Bambietta Basterbine's reishi bombs aren't explosives in and of themselves. Rather, they turn anything they touch into the bomb, so blocking the reishi will simply cause the shield to blow up in the defender's face. The only real defense is to either dodge them or just be tough enough to take the explosions.
  • Äs Nödt's Fear thorns can pass through any barrier, even a wall of ice. The only defense is to dodge or be immune to them.
  • Lille Barro wields a sniper rifle with blockable bullets. However, when he activates his special ability, The X-Axis, his rifle doesn't fire a projectile. Instead, his target and everything between his target and rifle's muzzle simply gets a hole punched through it.
• Naruto has Night Guy, the ultimate Eighth Gate attack. Any attempt at blocking or shielding from it will result in said defense being warped out of the way by the attack's immense speed.
• In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Steel Ball Run, one of these plays integrally to the last two fights. Johnny unlocks Golden Spin, which lets him propel a projectile which is spun in a frequency that induces perpetual motion, effectively giving the attack infinite force. Not only will it bypass any mundane defence, including shooting through twenty feet of solid concrete, but if it hits the target they are effectively dead. The victim is affected by rapid entropy on a cellular level, which follows their very soul to other dimensions and never ends, unless Johnny spins them in the opposite direction. This leads to two encounters: one where a villain tries to bargain and tempt their way out of the situation, and another where the challenge is hitting an agile target before they can get away.

Fan Works

• Fate of the Clans: Gáe Bolg's first version as a Noble Phantasm will always hit the target no matter where the spear itself aims due to its cause-effect reversal. As soon as Cú Chulainn says its name, your heart's hit. It'll outmaneuver any attempt to defend and even Time Travel or killing Cú Chulainn before it physically hits won't save you. The only things that can is if you stop or kill Cú Chulainn before he says the spear's name or if he changes the tagret to strike the heart of before it's used.
• Bullets fired from guns are considered an unblockable attack in Racer and the Geek. This is because they're actually fairly new technology and no effective counters have been developed for them. Guns and their users are hated almost universally.
• A RWBY Zanpakuto: Aizen's Bankai, Motsuka Kakogetsu, makes anything his sword touches become an illusion that he can dissipate, making any attempt to block it useless.
• The Vasto of White:
  • Shirou has the spear Gae Dearg, an Anti-Magic weapon. Due to its nature, it passes through any construct of spiritual energy, so nothing the Shinigami try can block it except for catching or redirecting it with their own hands.
  • In Shinso's Final Zanpakuto form, it simply points at the enemy and the enemy is annihilated, bypassing anything in its way. Lille Barro turning intangible didn't save him.

Film

• Subverted with the crane kick from The Karate Kid. Completely unstoppable in the first film, but when Daniel tries it in a real fight in the first sequel his opponent just sidesteps it and uses his momentum against him.
• MonsterVerse:
  • Godzilla (2014): One of the main reasons why the U.S. military are so handicapped and useless against the MUTOs is because none of their jets or ships' electronics have any shielding against their overwhelming EMP fields and shockwaves that the creatures generate.
  • Godzilla: King of the Monsters: Fire Godzilla's Nuclear Pulses burn through Ghidorah's wings (which he uses throughout the film as an effective shield) like they're made of notebook paper.
• Star Wars: The Death Star's superlaser. Given that it's designed to one-shot a planet, it's no surprise that a starship's Deflector Shields would offer no effective protection. (It would be like trying to use medieval chain mail to defend against a 21st-century cruise missile.) As Admiral Ackbar says, "Our cruisers can't repel firepower of that magnitude!" Alderaan even had a planetary-scale deflector shield,^note the Expanded Universe's interpretation of a blue glow that can briefly be seen if you step through frames when the superlaser strikes the planet which was only able to hold off the superlaser for a fraction of a second (though granted, given fan calculations of the weapon's firepower, it's pretty impressive it was able to repel it at all).

Literature

• The Garseddai gun from Ancillary Justice fires rounds that always penetrate exactly 1.8m into whatever they hit regardless of what material the target is made of or what armour or shielding it has.
• In A Certain Magical Index, One of Fiamma of the Right's powers via the Holy Right is to annihilate anything it hits without any destructive force, resulting in this. And there's no known drawbacks to using it aside from the general weakness that each usage of the Holy Right slowly decays it. The only things that can counter it are Touma's Anti-Magic right hand and the Eldritch Abomination sealed in his body thanks to it.
• In Harry Potter, the Killing Curse Avada Kedavra cannot be blocked by shielding spells, and is an unsurvivable One-Hit Kill under normal circumstances, meriting it the rank of Unforgivable. The only known circumstances that block it are if someone else already made a Heroic Sacrifice specifically to protect you, or if you fire a spell at the same time using a Magic Wand made from the same core as your would-be killer's wand. (The films imply that any offensive spell fired at the same time from any wand can parry Avada Kedavra, creating a Beam-O-War that generates potentially deadly backscatter.) Or you can try to dodge it — assuming you're fast enough. Or block it with a solid object. Okay, it's almost unblockable.
• Overlord (2012):
  • While he was still a gamer, Ainz' build focused on instant-death attacks, few of which really worked for obvious balance reasons. In the New World, he discovered that these limitations are gone, which greatly increases his power. However, he does have an ability that removes any resistance to instant death (so rare he only really discovered it by accident) at the price of delaying the effect... for twelve seconds.
  • Succulent appears to have these, as Climb discovers that no matter how well he blocks, he gets slashed anyway. He quickly figures out that Succulent is actually using illusion magic to make a fake sword arm and make his real sword arm invisible.
• Reign of the Seven Spellblades: The eponymous "Spellblades" are a set of (initially) six offensive techniques merging magic and sword arts, described in an epigraph to volume 1 as "A strike that can be neither dodged nor blocked, thereby guaranteeing death. Fulfill these conditions within the one-step, one-spell distance, and you have what is called a 'spellblade.'" So far, three have been identified in the series.
  • The Second Spellblade, "Creumbra, the self-racing shadow", which exploits the explosive consequences of a mage's failed experiment in magically duplicating himself to disintegrate the opponent. Used by Theodore McFarlane in volume 4 to slay an unidentified man attacking mages with a knife.
  • The Fourth Spellblade, "Angustavia, the thread that crosses the abyss", which explores possible futures to find and reach one where the wielder succeeds in striking down their opponent. Previously learned by Chloe Halford, her son, main character Oliver Horn, is able to use it in extremis by drawing on his mother's Ghost Memory from her soul contained within him. He employs it in a one-cut duel against Darius Grenville in volume 1, and as a Finishing Move against Enrico Forghieri in volume 5.
  • The currently unnamed Seventh Spellblade, with which the wielder uses sheer force of will to simply cut everything between themselves and their target, even the space between them. Invented by Nanao Hibiya in her and Oliver's fight with Vera Miligan, in order to defeat the basilisk eye on Miligan's left hand when she's out of range of a conventional strike. Nanao herself doesn't know how she did it and is so far unable to duplicate it.
• Star Trek: Destiny uses this to explain why the Transphasic Torpedoes introduced in the finale of Voyager are so effective against the Borg. Basically they're Quantum Torpedoes which use subspace to distribute their explosions across all possible shield modulation frequencies. Meaning no single shield can block their full force, only parts of it.

Live-Action TV

• Legend of the Seeker is the TV version of the Sword of Truth books. In the book, the Sword cuts through everything. TV dropped that because sword fights are more exciting.
  • Additionally, subtractive magic. Any subtractive magic.
• Certain Star Trek weapons, like polaron beams and chroniton torpedoes, are designed to penetrate a target's Deflector Shields. Of course, this usually lasts only until The Federation comes up with the right Technobabble to deal with the weapons in question.

Tabletop RPG

• Champions has the No Normal Defense advantage, that makes an attack ignore all points of defense or armor. (Any attack bought with this has to be No-Sell against one exception, eg a gas attack that won't work against the Life Support - Doesn't Breathe power.)
• Dungeons & Dragons, particularly older editions, reveled in all kinds of "no-save" spells, i.e. spells that offered the target no chance to avoid, defend, or even mitigate damage or other effects.
  • Magic Missile especially fits this trope. It has no attack role (so it can't be blocked or dodged) and No Saving Throw (so its effects can't be resisted or mitigated). Furthermore, it deals force damage, which almost nothing resists or is immune to and is one of the few damage types that fully affects ethereal and incorporeal opponents. The only things that can block it are a few specific spells and magic items. The trade-off is that it's one of the weakest-damage spells in the game.
• Exalted has various Charms that make an attack unblockable, undodgeable, or both. Of course, attacks like this will always fail before a perfect defense.
• Magic: The Gathering:
  • The "fear" and "intimidate" keywords cause this. Fear, most common on black creatures, prevents non-black and non-artifact creatures from blocking its attacks. Intimidate works similarly, preventing creatures other than those who share a color with the attacking creature (and, again, artifact creatures) from blocking. However, more recently, these keywords have become obsolete (as they provide certain advantages or disadvantages based directly on which colors your opponents play, which the designers are trying to move away from); Instead, more recently printed creatures just have rules text that state they can't be blocked, or abilities that allow them to become unblockable.
  • Certain spells state that they cannot be countered, which includes both by literal counterspells the opponent might cast and also by the Ward ability of certain cards (an additional cost which an opponent must pay when targeting the card with a spell or ability; since Ward works by countering the spell if the cost isn't paid, a spell that cannot be countered can ignore ward).
• Pathfinder 1E supplement Ultimate Wilderness has the spell iron stake, a decently damaging spell which is not affected by spell resistance.
• Warhammer: Age of Sigmar and the 8th Edition of Warhammer 40,000 have mortal wounds, a game mechanic that represent extremely powerful and/or inevitable damage that a model or unit suffers. Such wounds hit and wound automatically and ignore all regular saves, some special rules allow the chance to save or recover such wounds however.

Video Games

• Art of Fighting's Ryuko Ranbu couldn't be blocked and was so devastating that only Ryo, Robert, and the game's secret boss Mr. Karate had access to it. It was toned down in The King of Fighters, particularly the later installments where it was made blockable and did considerably less damage. At least, until 2002, where Robert gained an HDM version that has short range (as opposed to the usual fullscreen dash animation), but is again unblockable and drains just over half the opponent's energy.
  • Worth noting that Art of Fighting was the first fighting game to feature unblockable attacks, along with desperation attacks in general.
  • Michelangelo pays homage to Ryuko Ranbu with his own rendition of it in the SNES version of TMNT: Tournament Fighters. As is the case in Art of Fighting, Mikey's "rage gauge" must be full, resulting in a full screen dash and an unblockable beatdown.
• Batman: Arkham Origins: The Shock Gloves that Batman obtains late in the story cannot be blocked (with exception to boss-type enemies at times obviously) by most thugs that he encounters, making taking down armored, stun baton/shield-wielding foes a total breeze whilst the Shock Gloves are active.
• Castlevania: Lords of Shadow gives every monster this mechanic.
• In Distorted Travesty, "death wheels" (late game obstacles/attacks) cannot be dashed through.
• In the Gundam Battle Assault line of games, Beam Saber attacks are unblockable, but slower to strike (and more telegraphed) than normal attacks. Deathscythe Custom's beam scythe, which it uses for its regular attacks, are also unblockable.
• The Mega Man (Classic) series has attacks that can damage Shielded mooks:
  • Mega Man 4 has the Rain Flush, which is a rare case of an Unavoidable Unblockable Attack. It even hit enemies like Metools that are under their helmets!
  • Mega Man 6 has the Power Adaptor's charged attack.
  • Mega Man 9 has the Black Hole Bomb and the Tornado Blow. The former sucks in regular Mooks (including shielded ones), the latter blows everything off the screen (and is also unavoidable).
• In Mega Man Battle Network and Mega Man Star Force, several attacks with the Breaking attribute are both this and Armor-Piercing Attack. They'll smash through armored enemies and Mega's own shielding commands, though Barriers and Auras can still neutralize them.
• In New Horizons, the heavy strike in the Maelstrom-version of the mod requires lots of stamina and hits slowly, but can power through blocks and inflict high damage. Bullets are even worse - unless covered behind something (or someone), or being lucky with armour, they will arm or kill. Impossible to block with blade.
• In Onmyōji (2016), Gaki's "Gei'inbashoku" skill, which may or may not allow her to swallow an enemy whole but still deals damage nonetheless, cannot be blocked even by Seimei's Deflector Shield.
• In Iji, mercy invincibility won't protect you from being hit by the Velocithor, Nuke or Phantom Hammer.
• Ralf Jones (originally from Ikari Warriors) gains in later installments of The King of Fighters a (S)DM (that's KOF terminology for a super) called Galactica Phantom. It's unblockable and does absurd damage off the bat. Using it as a counter deals even more damage to opponents (it can even result in an instant KO), and the move can even bite a chunk out of the bosses' lifebar. The tradeoff? It takes quite a few seconds to fully charge, making it something of a Death or Glory Attack. And even if your opponent gives you the time to muster up your strength, a simple jump or roll is all that's needed to dodge it. The only exception to this is EX2: Howling Blood, where the move has a much shorter charge time (at the expense of some power) and is included as one of Ralf's normal specials.
• Pokémon has several moves that ignore or remove damage mitigation effects.
  • Giratina has a powerful signature move called Shadow Force. Giratina disappears on the first turn and strikes on the next. Shadow Force removes the effects of moves like Protect, Spiky Shield and Detect (and ignores Minimize in the Generation VI games), so to avoid being hit, the target must be on the semi-invulnerable phase of Fly, Dig or Dive, or be immune to Ghost-type moves. Phantom Force, being a weaker version of Shadow Force, has identical effects.
  • Similarly (but less impressively), the move Feint can hit through moves like Protect, Detect, Quick Guard and Spiky Shield, and removes their effects for the rest of the turn.
  • All offensive Z-Moves will also break through Protect and its ilk, albeit for reduced damage. Presumably because, unlike the above moves, you're simply hitting their defenses with overwhelming power rather than getting them to drop their guard through subterfuge. Max Moves in Sword and Shield are also unblockable unless you have a Dynamaxed Pokemon out yourself and have it use Max Guard.
  • There are lesser examples in Brick Break and Psychic Fangs, which hit through Aurora Veil, Reflect and Light Screen for full damage and dispel them.
  • Pokémon that have the ability Infiltrator ignore Safeguard, Mist, Aurora Veil, Reflect, Light Screen and Substitute when attacking.
  • Sound-based moves (Hyper Voice, Boomburst, Clanging Scales, etc.) can all hit through Substitute.
  • The signature moves of both Lunala (Moongeist Beam) and Solgaleo (Sunsteel Strike) in Pokémon Sun and Moon will ignore any kind of Ability their target may possess which would normally block an attack.
    • Likewise, Pokémon with the Mold Breaker, Teravolt, or Turboblaze Abilites are able to ignore opponents' Abilities that would negatively affect the success, damage, or effects of their moves. Meaning that, for example, they are able to hit an opponent with Levitate by using an Earth-type move.
  • Urshifu's ability Unseen Fist will break through Protect-type moves with any attack that involves physical contact.
• In Mabinogi's Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors, the Smash attack can break through the Defend move. No melee attack works against the Counter Attack move.
  • The (melee) Windmill attack is uncounterable... but it's very blockable.
• In Vindictus, smash attacks cannot be Guarded by Fiona's shield, but they can be blocked using Heavy Stander.
• Unblockable attacks are a staple of Tekken, with virtually every character having at least one.
  • Most unblockable attacks are typically slow, highly telegraphed, and can be easily ducked or dodged by an alert opponent. Should it land, however, the resulting damage is often quite high. It's also possible to cancel out of them mid-animation, meaning they're likely to get more use as a feint to trip up human opponents and open them to another attack (in either case, they're not especially useful against the CPU).
  • Yoshimitsu is unique in that, until the sixth installment (where he changes his cursed weapon in-story because it starts to pervert his mind), every move that involves his sword is unblockable. Same goes with Kunimitsu and her kunai.
• Soul is much like Tekken in having unblockable attacks being slow but powerful attacks; the same caveats apply to both human and AI opponents. In addition, the Soul Charge ability also present in the games makes some more common attacks unblockable as well. Some special weapons make their characters unable to block any attack, most notably Misturugi and the Damascus Blade. It makes up for it with greatly increased damage.
• Street Fighter:
  • In Street Fighter, the Shoryuken cannot be blocked. To add insult to injury, each of the Shoryuken's 3 hits takes off an entire third of the target's health. Get up close to your opponent and pull it off and the round is yours.
  • Street Fighter EX has Guard Break. By using up a portion of the super bar, the character in question would wind up and deliver a strike that would nullify the opposing player's guard and cause them to stagger around while dazed for a few seconds. If it connected with an airborne player, they would instead be relaunched into the air for another juggle. These moves could also be countered.
  • In Street Fighter IV every character has access to the Focus Attack. When charged to full power, it is unblockable. It also will ignore the first hit you take. Every character also has access to one attack that shuts down the Focus Attack.
• Two Dark creatures Spiral Knights have attacks that cannot be completely shielded. Grimalkins main attack ignores shields and Apocrean Harvesters which deal reduced damage though shields, in a game where shields usually completely block attacks.
• There are quite a few of these in Mortal Kombat. Sheeva is practically a specialist in this, with a jump move that crushes the opponent (but can be easily sidestepped), a ground stomp that hits the entire level (but anyone in the air avoids it), and four separate grab moves.
• Fear Is Vigilance has the body-slam attack — which is slow, but breaks through blocking.
• On top of the usual throws, almost all Final Smash attacks in Super Smash Bros. Brawl are unblockable, even by characters with special countering attacks.
  • In the Wii U/3DS version, Little Mac's KO Punch is notable among standard specials for its ability to ignore both shields and countering moves on top of being quick and extremely deadly. A number of move customizations also can ignore shields, but tend to be very slow and easily dodged.
• Many of the stronger enemies and bosses in Dark Souls have attacks that will hurt you no matter how good your shield is, and many of them ignore parrying..
  • Elemental damage also works this way. If your shield doesn't block magic damage, even the most pathetic Soul Arrow will punch straight through.
  • Also played with a little with some attacks. Getting hit with a high-powered attack (such as a hit from a sword the size of a bus) will always knock you over unless you're using some form of enchantment to keep you stable. However, if you get your shield in front of it and have high enough Endurance, you'll flip in midair and make a Three-Point Landing, taking no additional damage and recovering almost instantly. Of course, you'll probably take a beating to your stamina, but it still looks cool.
  • This also goes for your attacks on enemies as well. An upgraded Zweihander will one-hit crushbliterate any Hollow soldier right through its big, black shield.
  • In Dark Souls III, the Darkdrift katana's weapon art causes it to deliver a strike that cannot be blocked by anything. Often used in PvP to punish turtlers who constantly hide behind shields.
• El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron has a Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors weapon system for the player, with a sword, bow and shield. The shield is slow, has a minuscule range, and has no super speed moves, but it not only allows to move while blocking, it can block otherwise unblockable attacks even from bosses! Granted, some of the bosses do have unblockable attacks (or that eventually wear down the weapon's durability and break it mid block) but the shield averts this trope in relation to the other weapons.
• Low blows in Fight Night are unblockable because there is no "Guard Family Jewels" button. While ordinarily this will get you disqualified, it often take 2-3 for the referee to do it, so you can safely knock a guy out once with a cheap shot. Or you can turn Disqualification off entirely and crotch-punch your way to the championship.
  • Averted in Fight Night Champion- the ref will always act if you hit someone with a foul when they are stunned, even when Foul Awareness has been turned off, meaning you cannot knock someone down with a foul.
• Some artes in the Tales Series have the ability to break through guards at a certain rate, and abilities that allow you to charge your attacks can often add this property to them, as well. Bosses also frequently have them to encourage to use of side/backsteps or free run to avoid damage instead.
• Exists in the fighting game installments of Touhou Project, usually come from Remilia (ginormous penetrator spear), or Marisa (Wave-Motion Gun).
• The wall of fire Dogadon creates in his battle with Chunky Kong in Donkey Kong 64 (it can still be dodged).
• Playstation All Stars Battle Royale has Charged Attacks, like Kratos' Head of Helios and Spike's Magic Punch. Cinematic Level 3 Supers (like the ones used by Spike, PaRappa and Heihachi) combine this with Always Accurate Attack and Smart Bomb.
• In most Final Fantasy games, the Defend command only works against physical damage, so all magic is unblockable (as well as other damage types, such as special damage in Final Fantasy X). On a similar note, some enemies have the ability to cause a status effect, even if you're wearing gear that is supposed to block said effects.
  • About 40% of all attacks in Final Fantasy VI break defenses.
  • The Titanic Block ability in Final Fantasy XVI can block attacks (also allowing Counter Attacks if the player is skilled) with an arm of rock. However, some enemy attacks break through the arm and still do damage.
  • Dissidia Final Fantasy has multiple tiers of priority for attacks and blocks, so determining what constitutes a proper Unblockable Attack is a bit tricky. But if your character has no moves with blocking property, then all HP attacks and some Braves are unblockable, if your character has a good-priority blocking move then HP attacks are unblockable, if you're Jecht, then nothing is unblockable but the high-priority ones will stagger you too, and if you're Exdeath, nothing is unblockable, full stop. And to mix things up a bit, there's the Emperor's Starfall attack: essentially no matter who you are, if he finishes casting Starfall, you are getting hit. If he finishes—Starfall requires about eight seconds to charge. Cloud's Ex-Mode gives him the "Guard Crush" ability, which makes all of his attacks unblockable. Given he hits like a Mack truck, it's a good idea to stay the hell out of his reach while he's in this state.
• Flip Dimensions: Super Slash and Ultra Slash deal massive damage to guarding targets. The player is expected to take advantage of these skills against enemies that have a set pattern where they guard.
• Pick a Shin Megami Tensei game and you'll spot this trope. Persona 3 has the infamous (and aptly named) "Armageddon" attack, which cannot miss, cannot be blocked, and can destroy almost any opponent in a rather spectacular fashion. If it's a invokedThat One Boss, it almost always can inflict Almighty damage, giving the boss the option of wiping out the party immediately or — in the more sadistic variant — when the boss gets bored and the player has come to believe victory is possible. The bonus bosses break the game's damage limit. Aside from Armageddon, however, it is possible to miss and/or dodge an Almighty attack; these attacks simply can't be blocked by anything.
• World of Warcraft: While any attack can become this if the attacker has enough hit rating, tanking classes generally get abilities that always hit to ensure that they can keep the attention of bosses. The Warriors Overpower is notable for being usable mostly AFTER an enemy has avoided one of their other attacks.
  • Old tank mechanics produced an odd variation for enemy attacks. Due to the way damage was calculated Critical Hits and the now defunct Crushing Blows could only land if the attack was not dodged blocked or parried. It wasn't so much that crits and crushes were unblockable, but merely that they could only land if the player failed to block or parry.
• Momentum spell from Elements allows creature to pass through all enemy's defences. This not only includes shields that reduces damage or block attacks - creatures under this spell doesn't take damage from damaging shields (fire shield), don't get affected by shields, that put negative effects on the attacker, don't miss, and can even attack enemy, when he is airborn or shifted into another dimension. Sapphire chargers and weapon Titan has this by default.
• In From the Depths, almost every type of weapon has some sort of active or passive countermeasure (such as angled armor against projectiles or IR smoke against lasers), but not with Particle Cannons. These huge energy weapons fling charged particles at a significant fraction of light speed and can bore straight through lightly armored ships with no countermeasure other than 'more armor'. Luckily, particle cannons are huge, power-hungry, fragile, and if its acceleration tubes are damaged the particles can exit within the ship and rip it apart from within.
• In Marvel: Contest of Champions, all level 3 Super Attacks are unblockable and unavoidable. When one is used, it triggers a cutscene where the aggressor unleashes a long string of heavy attacks against their opponent.
• Guacamelee! indicates attacks that you cannot use your dodge roll to avoid with fire in the original version, or a purple glow in the Super Turbo Championship Edition version.
• Command & Conquer: Generals is all over the place. Some large projectiles (truck-launched SCUDs and Tomahawk missiles) can be shot down, while the US Paladin tank has a laser that can shoot down unit-launched missiles. Superweapons are unblockable (the building itself needs to be destroyed/depowered), and while the air-launched General powers (A-10 strike, fuel-air / EMP / anthrax bomb) can be shot down with enough guns, only the Chinese artillery barrage is entirely unblockable (you can hear it firing, and with enough map coverage you'll see the incoming shells on the minimap, but the only defense is to keep your units moving and dispersed).
• Fire Emblem: Thracia 776: The "Luna" Skill allows any unit that possess it to have a top 20% (25% if wielding a skill boosting weapon) chance to not miss the attack and deplete the enemy of all defense (either magical or physical) for that one attack; same concept applied for the "Solar" Skill, but instead of neglecting the enemy its defense, the amount of damage inflicted will be absorbed by the attacker.
• Nasuverse:
  • Fate/stay night gives us Gae Bolg, Lancer's spear which has an Always Accurate One-Hit Kill attack. When its ability activates the spear pierces the target's heart and reality is then rewritten to match that outcome. If you have a high enough Luck Stat or Divinity, it's possible to avoid having your heart pierced and 'only' take an almost-unhealable hit elsewhere on your body.
  • Fate/Grand Order: One of the buffs your Servants or your enemies can gain lets them ignore the opponent's Invincibility buffs, damaging them normally whereas any other attack (even a Noble Phantasm) would do nothing for as long as the buff is up. Curiously, the Pierce Invincibility buff also allows a unit to attack an enemy with Evasion, though this might have to do with the fact that Invincibility is treated as a strictly better version of Evasion in terms of gameplay. (There's also a Sure-Hit buff that ignores Evasion, but not Invincibility, which is consequently a step down from its Pierce Invincibility counterpart.) Of course, even this can be countered by the "Anti-Purge Defense" buff.
• The usual methods of warding off dragon fire in RuneScape are ineffective against the Queen Black Dragon's regular breath attacks. Regular anti-fire potions and the base anti-dragon shield, which normally reduce damage from dragon breath, do literally nothing unless used together. Super strength anti-fire potions, which normally grant complete immunity, reduce the damage. However, in her last phase, the Queen Black Dragon has an even hotter breath weapon that even super anti-fire won't stop; you have to run to the edges of the arena to even take reduced damage. And you have to deliberately stand in the middle of it, unarmed, taking full damage, to forge the Royal Crossbow.
• In the Fable games:
  • Flourishes are Charged Attacks that break through an enemy's Block, deal extra damage, and can cause Knockback. In Fable and III, they can always be performed, while in Fable II, the ability needs to be purchased through the skill tree.
  • In Fable, the Berserk spell Hulks Out the player character and makes all his attacks unblockable.
• Them's Fightin' Herds: Arizona's EX Earthquake affects the entire ground and can not be blocked, making jumping or teleporting (if they can) in the air the only ways to avoid damage.
• In Event Horizon, a fully charged Heavy Antimatter Torpedo cannot be shot down by enemy's point defense.
• In Dark Devotion, many bosses and more than a few regular enemies have attacks which cannot be blocked. If a red glyph suddenly appears above your character's head, it means such an attack is coming, so get ready to dodge.
• In Bonfire, Area of Effect attacks ignore Riposte, Protect, and untargetable statuses, making them impossible to avoid.

Web Comics

• The Long Gun from Schlock Mercenary, which is a city-sized plasma cannon that generates a wormhole that it fires into. This causes a giant beam of braided plasma to travel through and emerge wherever the wormhole opens up again, usually inside whatever target the user aimed it at, and annihilating it utterly. It is so feared because it can fire from pretty much anywhere in the galaxy to hit any coordinate in the galaxy the user wishes with pinpoint accuracy, ignoring armouring, Deflector Shields, teraport denials and every other known form of defence. The only way to defend against a Long Gun attack is, simply, to not be near the wormhole exit when it fires, which requires either blinding the foe or moving completely at random so the shot emerges slightly off-target. The final arcs of the comic reveal that the invention and proliferation of Long Guns amongst galactic powers is a surefire sign of the end of a cycle of Recursive Precursors due to Mutually Assured Destruction becoming Assured Mutual Destruction.

Web Original

• Flechette of Worm can make any object she touches completely ignore most of the laws of physics for a short time, which allows any projectiles she uses to bypass any and all defenses until they are already inside her target.
  • This falls into Reality Warper territory as it even overrides No-Sell defensive abilities like "automatically undo my death with time travel". This allows her to kill Gray Boy and Scion. It's revealed the Eldritch Abominations that the settings powers come from use this power as their primary weapon against each other.
• The Ballad of Edgardo: Raw Spirit couldn't be blocked or resisted in any way. Normally, this was counterbalanced by the fact that it also dealt minimal damage compared to elemental attacks and the Spirit Cap prevented anyone from building up enough Spirit to do too much damage. Edgardo, however, had a perk that removed the Spirit Cap, meaning that if he had time to build up enough Spirit he could throw a punch that dealt enough irresistible damage to One-Hit Kill any enemy.

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