Unobtainium - Television Tropes & Idioms

Orichalcum (or a variant spelling) is a metal with magical properties that makes appearances in several anime, including The Slayers.
In Digimon, there's Chrome Digizoid (also spelled ChronDigizoid), a super-metal with a silly name that comes in several varieties; Blue Chrome Digizoid, the lightest; Red, the strongest; Gold, which apparently increases a Digimon's offense; and the vaguely described Black Chrome Digizoid. Metal Etemon claims to be made of Chrome Digizoid, but he's silver. Of course, Zudomon's hammer was also made of Chrome Digizoid, so it fast became a moot point.
The metal Gundanium from Gundam Wing becomes, when alloyed with regular metals, almost indestructible.
- It also has a ludicrously high strength-to-weight ratio, such that a 9-story tall giant robot made from the stuff weighs less than an Abrams Tank. May explain how Gundams are able to stand up under Earth's gravity despite the Square Cube Law. Then again, there's still all the other Mobile Suits made of more prosaic things like titanium...
Mazinger Z took the "ridiculously high strength/density ratio" thing to a whole new level when Japanium is alloyed into Super Alloy Z. The titular robot, built from the stuff, stands 18 meters tall, yet weighs a meager 20 tons.
Levistone from Kyouran Kazoku Nikki, a material which makes things hover when electricity runs through it.
Code Geass has Sakuradite, previously found and said to be the "Philosopher's Stone" in medieval times, and found in large amounts in Japan. It's now valued as a superconductor, being liquid in room temperature. It also explodes rather easily...
Various evolution-inducing stones aside, in one episode of Pokemon Team Rocket had a mecha composed of "polished unobtanium", which made it immune to Psychic attacks.
Done with a twist in Laputa where the Levistone (Grade A Unobtainium) is a well-known mineral, commonly found in rocks - however, it rapidly decays when exposed to air and thus serves no practical purpose. The movie's Precursors knew how to refine it and fashion it into durable crystals, with many amazing properties. This technology has been lost and the world's nations will now stop at nothing to lay their hands on the few remaining samples.
One Piece has seastone, which is apparently "a solidified form of the sea." Contact with it will weaken Devil Fruit users, and drain them of their abilities. It's also apparently harder than diamond.
- Wouldn't "solidified sea" be.... ICE??????
  - Salty ice.
- The series throws in another with Adam, a super-strong type of wood.
Vizorium is both the Unobtanium that makes warp-drive possible, and the central plot driver of the Dirty Pair Movie Project Eden.
GEMs in Mai-Otome give Otome their robes (and thus, most of their powers). The Coral and Pearl GEMs used by students are artificially created, but the knowledge of how to create Meister GEMs was lost, making them extremely valuable.
Outlaw Star has dragonite, used for Faster Than Light Travel.

Close Anime and Manga

Naturally, the Marvel Universe has adamantium, but it also has other "magic metals," like vibranium (of which there are two varieties, Wakandan and Antarctic) Uru (the material of Thor's hammer), and netheranium (the material of Damien Hellstrom's trident). The best example, though, would have to be the infamous "unstable molecules" used to make so many heroes' and villains' costumes. Not to forget Captain America's unobtainable unobtainium shield - completely indestructible, but also a handwavy one-off item.
- A number of stories suggest that Cap's shield is an otherwise impossible vibrainium/adamantium alloy reinforced by American righteousness(as opposed to ''self''-righteousness); making Cap's recent assassination an Anvilicious condemnation of current American politics.
  - Freakazoid takes a shot at this in "The Island of Dr. Mystico." Freakazoid and a number of superpowered villains are held in a bamboo cage. When Freakazoid tries to bend the bars, Cave Guy says, "It's no use, we've already tried. It's molecular bamboo."
In the Silver Age DCU, Krypton became a gold mine of unobtainium. Any item, living or not, that originated there would become indestructible under a yellow sun — and would occasionally spawn a new variety of Kryptonite. In addition, promethium is the DCU's equivalent of adamantium, a super hard metal that superstrong superheroes have a tough time damaging, and Nth Metal, or "transuranic iron ore," was the key to Thanagarian technology (as seen frequently in Justice League).
- Irritatingly, promethium is a real metal (element 61), one with no stable isotopes and no special structural properties.
The Tintin adventure The Shooting Star revolves around a mission to retrieve a sample of unobtanium (dubbed "Phostlite") from a fallen meteorite. The only obvious property of the stuff is making mushrooms grow really fast. And other plants. And animals, like butterflies and spiders. Fortunately, germs don't seem to be included.
The first version of the Legion of Super-Heroes used "inertron" for this purpose, an invulnerable metal.
- Other elements that existed in the Pre Crisis DCU included "Supermanium" (created by Superman) and "Amazonium" (the metal Wonder Woman's bracelets were made from), both invulnerable metals akin to inertron.
In an early Marvel/DC crossover featuring the X-Men and the New Teen Titans, the villain Darkseid keeps both teams shackled, and states that Kitty Pryde's shackles are made of a rare metal with molecules so tightly packed, not even she can phaze through them.

Close Comic Books

The Core lampshaded this, calling their Unobtainium Unobtainium, which turned heat and pressure into electrical energy. Perfect for a journey through the Earth's molten core. Extremely practical, as all you had to do was to randomly cut supply wires and casually weld them to the substance in question, and you had an energy source that rivaled a nuclear reactor. There are actually Real Life substances that turn pressure into electricity, known as Piezoelectric substances, although they wouldn't work on such a large scale.
- Of course, piezoelectric materials work by flexing, seeing as how the energy has to come from somewhere. This means your core-ship would generate lots of lovely electricity in the process of crumpling into a ball. This is by no means the first instance of ludicrously poor science in this movie.
- Of course, if a Real Life metallurgist with a sense of humor actually managed to make the damn stuff, they might be sorely tempted to call it "unobtanium" or "impossibilium" or something like that.
- The precious substance in Avatar(the Cameron movie) is also called Unobtanium.
Metallic tritium serves this function in the second Spider-Man film. The Big Bad has to make a Deal With The Devil (requiring him to beat the protagonist) in order to get some.
- Or rather, "precious tritium," as it was consistently called in the film to the point that this troper wondered if the element was meant to be named "preshustritium."
- This Troper found it odd that someone would design a fusion reactor that used an ultra-rare substance as fuel. If there is only 25 pounds of precious tritium on the planet then what will the reactors use when its all used up?
  - Perhaps the tritium produced by neutron bombardment of lithium in the reactor's radiation shield? Not that Spider-Man 2 has any right to get THAT technical...
Parodied in the fifties B-movie homage The Lost Skeleton Of Cadavra with Atmospherium, a super-powerful and poorly-defined element capable of operating spacecraft, resurrecting evil skeletons, and delivering actual advances in the field of science.
Quantonium in Monsters Vs Aliens. The Big Bad needs it to power his cloning machine so he can execute the Alien Invasion. The only known supply is absorbed into the body of Susan Murphy, who then suffers from some interesting side effects.
Fluid Karma in Southland Tales. A compound found by drilling in the ocean that apparently can be used to generate electric power. Also, acts as a drug working somewhat like a Green Rock.
Star Trek XI has red matter, which can make black holes on cue.
In Outlander, after establishing that Viking swords aren't strong enough to injure the Moorwen, Kainan salvages some hull metal from his crashed starship, and gives this to the local blacksmith to forge some stronger swords.
Turbinium from Total Recall

Close Film

Cavorite from H.G. Wells' The First Men In The Moon.
Cheddite, from Harry Harrison's 1973 Golden Age SF spoof novel, Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers.
Melange, also called spice, in the Dune novels, extends life and grants limited prescience, allowing Faster Than Light Travel. And other uses. If it seems like something that would be extremely valuable and important, that's because it is.
- Spice is intended to be a Alternate Company Equivalent to oil. And the Freman are Arabs. Paul is Lawrence of Arabia. Well, somewhat anyway.
Iridium, a natural element that is extremely rare on Earth, is often used in more dramatic Sci Fi stories.
The German SF/pulp series Perry Rhodan has over the course of its history collected a fair bit of unobtainium in various forms. Classic examples are Ynkelonium, a metallic element that does not react with antimatter and can to an extent prevent such reactions from occurring in its immediate vicinity, and Luurs-Metal, which always maintains a constant temperature of about 3.4 degrees Celsius. Both materials occur naturally in the universe and cannot be synthesized.
Mithril in The Lord Of The Rings.
Larry Niven's Ringworld has scrith, the material used to make the titular megastructure. It is nearly frictionless, blocks almost all radiation (Which would take about a light-year thickness of lead) and has a tensile strength on the same order of magnitude as the strong nuclear force.
- The unnamed substance the Puppeteers make General Products hulls out of.
- They're actually massive molecules big enough to live in.
In the Star Wars universe we have bacta, tibanna gas, transparisteel and durasteel (which itself is an alloy of carvanium, lommite, carbon, meleenium, neutronium, and zersium)... Well, let's say there are lots of interesting materials and substances in the Star Wars EU.
- Special mention goes to cortosis, which is lightsaber-resistant.
The Uplift Series by David Brin has a material of the name unobtainium.
The hyperdrive of Kevin J. Anderson's Saga of Seven Suns is fueled by "ekti," described as "an allotropic isotope of hydrogen."
Atium, from the Mistborn books. It's only mined in one place, it's extremely rare, and incredibly powerful.
John Ringo's Looking Glass series is so named for the instantaneous transmission portals which were created by what were originally thought to be Higgs bosons. That identification was later corrected, and they were renamed Looking Glass Bosons. The looking glasses of the first book take a secondary role however, after the series takes off into space in a ship powered by a literal black box of alien origin, and when the ship is destroyed in the third book, it is entirely remade by an alien race the ship just saved. This leads to the fourth book where the captain of the ship discovers he is missing a large number of alien made spare parts and lampshades all of this saying, "And now I have to call SpaceCom and explain to them that we're non-mission-capable until a couple of tons of unobtainium parts and tools get found!"
Practically every book in the old Danny Dunn children's scifi series starts out with the discovery of a new form of Unobtainium. Usually because Danny or a friend of his spilled something in the lab.
Tanglestone from the Elizabeth Bear book, Undertow, was only found on the planet named Greene's World, and allowed instant data and material transportation across many light years from the colonies to Earth.
In Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic and The Circle Opens series, there's living metal, which can only be gotten by one character, because it grows on her hand due to an accident involving fire and a staff with a metal top. Later she can make it faster by putting some in a jar and adding some of her blood to it, but she is still the only person who can make it, and thus the only one with consistent access to it.

Close Literature

Doctor Who - Dalek cases are made of Dalekanium, which makes them Immune To Bullets, although recent episodes showed that they now use a Deflector Shields variant to vaporize bullets before they even reach the case.
- Dalekanium is often called 'bonded polycarbide' when they want it to sound less silly.
- The Doctor states that the TARDIS's door is capable of holding off an army and that absolutely nothing can enter the TARDIS from the outside when it is locked.
  - Except that in the last season we find out that a fully stocked and sane Dalek army can simply break in the door like it was normal wood. Never mind that in season two, the doctor is able to enter a Dalek mothership and simply taunt them as his TARDIS shielded him. Apparently the 'sane' factor is important.
  - the reason the doctor is protected both flying through space at and inside the Dalek mothership is because he is protected by Blon Fel-Fotch's tribophysical waveform macro-kinetic extrapolator, which Captain Jack Harkness deftly wired in with the TARDIS itself.
In Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis, naquahdah is material the Gate is made of. Also, naquadah-enhanced nukes are used to Blow Stuff Up. This is demonstrated magnificently in the season 3 finale of Stargate Atlantis. Its evil twin is naquadriah, which can also be used to Blow Stuff Up, but is "unstable" and has a track record of blowing up its users. The iris on Earth's Stargate is made of a trinium-titanium alloy. Human-form replicators apparently can only be made from neutronium.
- Don't forget the fact that naquadah is also a powerful source of energy (naquadah reactors). Also ZPMs could be seen as a sort of unobtainium given that no one knows how to make them and they're needed to run just about all the Ancient technology in the series (as well as providing a convenient bit of Tim Taylor Technology to the human ships)
The whole of Star Trek is liberally sprinkled with various types and grades of unobtainium; the original (and most frequently recurring) example is dilithium, used in the reactor core of warp drives as a control medium, but there are many others:
- Corbomite, which doesn't actually exist; it was an Ass Pull by James T. Kirk to bluff an enemy — which means that Trek pulled a Lampshade Hanging on their own tendency to invoke unobtanium in one of its earliest episodes.
- Neutronium. This is a real substance: a type of "degenerate matter" composed entirely of neutrons, thought to be what neutron stars are made of — but since even a thimbleful would weigh millions of tons, its usefulness as a material is rather limited.
  - This does not, of course, stop assorted aliens from constructing easily opened doors, buildings on planetary gravity, entire starships and a freaking Dyson Sphere out of the stuff.
  - Note also that astrophysicists rarely if ever use the word "neutronium" for this stuff, preferring terms like neutron-degenerate matter.
- Duranium
- Latinum, a valuable liquid metal, used as a form of hard currency due to its rarity and the fact that replicator technology cannot recreate it.
- Tritanium
- Trilithium, less stable than dilithium, but equally magical.
- Baakonite
- Keiyurium, a Shout Out to the original Dirty Pair.
- Vertenium-Cortenide, a compound of two non-existent substances, used in the warp coils themselves.
- Archerite, another Ass Pull, this time by the Andorian Shran when explaining to another alien commander what he was doing in their territory.
- Transparent aluminum. which gets bonus points, given that a normal modern chemist could apparently figure out what it was just by looking at the atomic structure. Naturally, he would still be helpless to reproduce it without a diagram of said structure.
  - Transparent aluminum exists now. See here
  - Since there are some aluminum-containing crystals (sapphire comes to mind) that could potentially be used for windows and are transparent, this one may be a Justified Trope.
- Cortenide, which comprises Data's skull with duranium, as he describes to a Klingon warrior who almost knocked himself out headbutting him.
Both versions of Battlestar Galactica relied on a fictional element called "tylium" to power their FTL drives.
- And an episode of Star Trek Voyager had an alien species using the same exact fuel by name!
In Power Rangers Time Force, Trizirium Crystals are an very powerful energy source that originally won't be discovered about 200 years from 2001, because of the battles between the Time Force Rangers and Ransik, as well as Bio-Lab trying to reverse-engineer the future tech the early discovery nearly sucked the world into time vortices in the "End of Time" three-part finale.
- Power Rangers RPM has flux overthrusters needed to handle advanced zord control stuff. The first one was lost in the wastelands after the plane it was installed in was shot down. The second... well, it's lucky that that's when the bad guys sent a bot capable of Mega Manning.
The jumpgates and jumpdrives of Babylon 5 relied on an exotic and extremely rare mineral called Quantium-40 to function.
in Knight Rider (the original series), KITT was built out of a material called either Tri-Helical MBS or Plasteel 1000, which rendered the car almost indestructible.
In the TV series of Honey I Shrunk The Kids, it's revealed that an element Wayne named "Szalinskium" is at the core of all his impossible inventions. In another episode it's revealed that he obtained it from the space alien Arnox.

Close Live Action TV

The oldest example would be Orichalcum (Orichalc, orichalcos) which is part of the Atlantis myth - Plato describes it as somewhat reddish, shiny, and hard, and usable both as armor and art. Conspiracy buffs identify it with an alloy of gold and copper from South America that does, in fact, have these properties.
- Perhaps there were a few ancient European examples of gold-copper alloy? Enough to start a legend, but not enough to be easily found by modern archaeologists.
Adamant, which has a legendary hardness dating back centuries, being an older name for diamond. Unfortunately, it also shares a name with an adjective, and so tends to be saddled with suffixes. Look for Adamantine, or for that Sci Fi twist, Adamantium. If you ever have the misfortune to see Adamanite, look away.
The entire premise of ancient and medieval Alchemy was based on the pseudo-scientific search for Unobtainium, usually described as an element which would catalyze the manufacture of gold from base metals.

Close Myth and Legend

During the Cold War, when most of the main producers of titanium were in Soviet territory, aircraft designers sometimes referred to it by this name.
Also during the Cold War, the US Air Force had a strong desire to develop antimatter bombs, perhaps feeling that hydrogen bombs just weren't apocalyptic enough. Fortunately, there is no known source of antimatter and no practical way to make it.
The Spanish Conquistadors actually discovered Cibola, but they didn't realize it at the time. A tribe in the Venezuelan jungle was literally swimming in platinum ore, which they used as makeup and decoration and crafted jewelry out of. It was so common in this isolated community that the tribe did not view it as especially expensive. Unfortunately, the Spaniards killed off the tribe before learning how to smelt it into pure form, a secret that was lost for another 300 years. They killed the tribesmen by working them in gold mines, where was very little gold was to be had, and the tribesmen kept making up stories of the "real Cibola" to get the Spaniards to look for gold elsewhere (a metal the tribe had little interest in) with no luck. Meanwhile, the Spaniards considered the platinum worthless (it was so rare it had no market value and had never been seen before) and piled the platinum ore in slag heaps. When Spain learned of their mistake many years later, they sent expeditions to try and uncover the abandoned platinum ore with no luck.
There are many real world examples of unobtainium, perhaps making this one Truth In Television. While the ideas of Mithril and Vibranium actually existing on our earth may be laughable, the idea of a rare but powerful mineral/resource that only occurs in abundance in one or two areas in the world is almost a historical trope. From wood for ships to uranium for bombs our world is filled with examples of unobtanium, with whichever country having the unobtainium having great power over those which don't. America seems to be especially lucky when it comes to unobtainium (though being bigger than continental Europe with a climate temperate enough to get at most of it doubtlessly helps).
- For example, to ~~smelt~~ electrolyse aluminum from ore requires immense heat - but it can be obtained at (somewhat) lower energy expenditure by dissolving the ore in molten cryolite. Cryolite deposits are mostly limited to Greenland. Fortunately, it doesn't get used up in the process.
- During the Bronze Age, iron was its version of unobtanium, with it being much stronger and durable than bronze.
  - Iron ore was fairly common during the Bronze Age, but nobody knew how to make weapon-grade steel from it. See o Larry Gonick's "Cartoon History Of The Universe" series for reference. Tin was the unobtanium, being essential to make high-quality bronze, but fairly rare.
  - For much of recorded history, steel was the unobtanium of its time. This was mostly due to then-current technology being unable to make steel cheaply and easily.
  - Hence the fascination with Thunderbolt Iron, although this could be a retcon by recent authors unfamiliar with metallurgy, since the impurities in meteoric iron are likely to make it more brittle.
  - A major limiting factor in steel production was the supply of carbon. Charcoal was great for steelmaking, but the supply of trees couldn't keep up. Coal could be used, but it often contained impurities that made the steel brittle and unworkable. The Industrial Revolution in Britain was actually founded on a new "reverberatory" furnace, which enabled the production of good steel with Britain's impure coal.
  - Wootz steel is a very specific case of this. It's made out of crucible-fired sand consisting of iron and tungsten carbide, which only naturally occurs in a very few places, almost all of them in central Asia. The process for making it was lost for centuries after the ore ran out, and was only rediscovered very recently through chemical analysis. By all accounts, wootz steel is both stronger and more flexible than ordinary steel; back when swords were still used as weapons, Indo-Persian swords were highly valued throughout India and the Middle East because of this.
The Washington Monument was capped with a pyramidal ingot of pure aluminum, considered priceless at the time. This was before they figured out the method for making aluminum mentioned above.
- Similarly, Napoleon is said to have had several sets of dinnerware made from aluminum. They were used for his most prestigious guests, with the less important ones having to make do with gold.
- Likewise the statue of Eros in London's Piccadilly Circus. It's safe to say that a time traveller from the 19th century would look at the ubiquity of aluminium in the 21st century the same way we'd look on a world where everything was made of gold.
Oakley calls the material in their sunglasses' nose pads and temple socks Unobtainium, though there's nothing unobtainable about it; it's simply a synthetic rubber whose tackiness increases as it becomes wet.
Pandemonium Chloride is the evil, HAZMAT twin of unobtanium, a material of unspecified composition that greatly endangers human life with the smallest spills or leaks.

Close Real Life

Shadowrun, true to its fantasy-scifi-blend form, borrows from myths for its Unobtainium, such as orichalcum, an alloy of copper, gold, silver, and mercury that couldn't even begin to exist if there wasn't magic in the world.
In Warhammer 40000, almost every race has a form of this, from the psychic wraith bone to the ubiquitous armour plate the humans use on tanks, adamantium. Adamantium's properties are never really explained, though, in the books, it seems to suffer from a mineral variation of The Worf Effect ("How could they cut through X many feet of adamantium that easily?!"). This happens a lot with human building materials in that universe, all of which have odd but recognizable names and are supposedly better than what we have now, but which can be reduced to rubble in the first bombardment.
- The technology levels in the setting also cause some rather strange applications for the unobtanium, such as adamantium bayonets fitted to the lasguns of the Imperial Guard.
Obligatory Dungeons And Dragons entry: mithril, adamantine, orichalchum, AND the Philosopher's Stone. Unobtainium overload... and that's the tip of the iceberg.
- Eberron Dragonshards, Khyber Dragonshards, Siberys Dragonshards, Star Metal, Baatorian Steel, Residuum, Arcanite, Byeshk, Ironwood, Bronzewood, Densewood, Soarwood & Riedran Crysteel. Unobtainium overload indeed.
Exalted features the five magical materials, Orichalcum, Moonsilver, Starmetal, some variants of Jade and Soulsteel. All of these are extremely difficult to manufacture (Starmetal is made from the corpse of a dead god, for example), and give special effects to artifacts manufactured from them. Jade is in fact used as a currency - though an extremely high-value one.
The "Perfected Metals" of Mage: the Awakening. They have numerous extremely useful properties (perfected iron, for example, is practically indestructible, capable of cutting through diamond when properly sharpened, and can bend like rubber before returning to its original shape, with absolutely no metal fatigue), and can be used to create all manner of useful alloys (such as the anti-magic "thaumium"). There are only seven of them (only alchemical metals can be perfected), and it takes powerful magic to perfect them and alloy them. Perfecting is also a very expensive process, since it requires only naturally formed samples of metal (rather than transmuted or conjured) and only 10% of the mass yields perfected metal, with the rest being completely lost (hence, you perfect 100 grams of metal and only get 10 grams of perfected metal, with the remainder destroyed).
As well as the lanthanum used in jump drive technology, Traveller features so many varieties of unobtainium that the latest edition lampshades it by including "unobtainium" as a trade good.
Ghost Rock, which burns twice as long and twice as hot as coal, is used for just about all the weird high tech stuff from Deadlands and somehow stopped the collapse of the Confederacy. Oh, and it looks like coal that has had tortured human faces into it, and it moans faintly when burned. Nightmare Fuel indeed...
The various essential elements from GURPS: Magic as well as orichalcum and adamantium in Fantasy and hyperdense matter in Ultra-Tech.

Close Tabletop RPG

The Transformers franchise is a pretty good place to mine for Unobtanium, energon being the most frequent and the best example: transformers need it to live, but too much unstable energon radiation can cause shorting out, not to mention other properties too bizarre and diverse to list. Other Unobtanium-like materials include...
- Electrum (A real substance, actually, but given fictional properties)
- Furmanite (Obscure, used only in one Botcon-exclusive comic)
- Nucleon
- Cybertonium
- Destronium
Bionicle's Matoran world has protodermis (often shortened to just "proto" by the fans), which admittedly isn't really rare because it makes up everything in that world: the water is made of liquid proto, rocks and metal ore are solid proto, and proto even makes up the organic tissues of living beings. Truer examples of Unobtainium that really are hard to obtain include a super-hard variant of metal protodermis called "protosteel" and "energized protodermis": an un-synthesizable liquid that either unpredictably transforms anything it touches or destroys it. Oh, and it turns out energized proto is alive, too.
- Another world, Bara Magna, has its own Unobtainium called Exsidian, though unlike protodermis it doesn't have any special properties beyond better resistance to wear and tear.

Close Toys

Eve Online has an entire player economy built around mining for a rather long list of made up materials. And the rarer types are very hard to get. Bonus points for using "Tritanium", which is the most sought after element in high security space.
- However, most of the asteroids that refined minerals come from are made up of either real-world minerals (such as veldspar and gneiss) or slightly renamed versions of real minerals (like hemorphite and hedbergite).
Two kinds of unobtainium are mentioned in the game manuals of the Halo series:
- An "unknown alloy" (read as: The writers couldn't think of a cool name) used to make the shields of the Hunters.
- The impressively resistant construction material used to make the Halos and other Forerunner structures, described as being incredibly dense and accurately carved to the molecule. The author of this article from Gamasutra, a PhD., goes to the trouble of calculating just how much unobtanium would be needed to build the Halo , plus other stats you never knew you wanted to know.
Various one-off missions in the MMORPG City Of Heroes had the player retrieve various Mac Guffins, including one actually called Inobtainium. Fittingly enough, it's an alloy of Yeahritium and Nosuchium.
- Played more straight in the game is Impervium, a metal found as a rare form of salvage (Enchanted Impervium is one of the most valuable drops), which the Vanguard soldiers are said in their profiles to be armored with.
- Orichalcum shows up too, also as a salvage material for crafting.
A recurring element in the Mega Man series is a metal called "Ceratanium" (in the original Japanese, simply "Ceramic Titanium"). Its exact properties are unknown, but it seems to be involved in making all the Mega Mans' armor, and in Mega Man Zero 4, where you can collect parts and get the engineer to make special helmets, body armor and boots out of them, the Ceratanium is found once in a fixed spot each stage and goes exactly once into each piece of body armor you can make.
- Although I'm not sure it's genuinely mentioned in any of the games, it's generally assumed that met armor and plasma shields (and other such tools for Invincible Minor Minions) are made of an appropriately named material that's immune to plasma bullets. There's also officially "Bassnium," the power supply Wily says he used to make Bass, which this editor finds really silly.
Orichalcum, seen elsewhere in this article, also turned up in Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.
- It also shows up in various Harvest Moon titles (usually used to make gift jewelry). They also feature Mystrle and Mythic Ore - used to give tools semi-magical properties.
- And plain ol' Mythril in Harvest Moon's spin-off title 'Rune Factory'.
Command And Conquer and its sequels feature Tiberium, an apparently plant-like (in growth patterns and behaviour) but actually crystalline substance of extraterrestrial origin, as a harvestable resource and Global Currency. It's name derives from where it was first encountered - the impact site of the meteor that carried it to Earth at the Tiber River.. ergo, it was called Tiberium.^*
^{The Brotherhood of Nod would like you to note that the quoted name origin was part of a faked discovery story created for anti-Nod propaganda. The true discoverer of Tiberium, the Benevolent and Mighty Kane, named the substance in honour of Tiberius Caesar, but GDI propagandists insisted on altering every detail of the story.}
It's also terribly, terribly toxic, potentially radioactive (depending on what it leeches or assimilates) and generally so dangerous that it explodes violently if processed properly or stored in large enough quantities.
- It's apparently a crystal that leeches various elements out of anything it touches, and makes more of itself. Certain materials are more resistant to being turned into Green Rocks, but all of them degrade eventually. Of course, with flesh, crystallization happens almost instantly...
- Nevermind the fact there's blue (canonical) and red/orange (semi-canonical) variants that are pretty much Made Of Explodium - as if the green stuff didn't explode enough to begin with. With a bit of SCIENCE, you can turn tiberium (or tiberium-related substances, such as tiberium veins) into a chemical weapon that puts some of the deadliest stuff today to shame, or an explosive that makes a heavy-duty fuel air bomb look like a firecracker.
- Makes a lot more fictional sense if you know that C&C was itself based on the very first real-time 4X game, Dune, which had you harvesting spice out of the ground.
Cleria, Emelas, etc. in the Ys series.
Starcraft, likewise, had "minerals" of an unspecified type and "Vespene Gas," which each of the playable races uses in a different way to produce its various units and buildings.
- Neosteel, the material of Terran construction, is another example.
The first two games of the X-Com series had Elerium, an element that formed in yellow crystals and had an atomic number of 115 (such an element has been actually created already). Since the third game, Elerium could be manufactured by humans.
- The second game reveals that Elerium-115 becomes inert if submerged in salt-water for too long, and since X-Com 2 is titled "Terror from the Deep", that's a bit of a problem. The new source of power is Zrbite - apparently, an artificial material created through molecular manipulation. Following the victory in X-Com 2, however, the aliens' Molecular Manipulation network collapses, and all remaining Zrbite becomes inert. It maintains its Unobtainium status, however, and Inert Zrbite is later used to build FTL-drive engines (with Elerium-115 as fuel).
Kingdom Hearts requires the player to collect various exotic metals and crystals such as mythril, orichalcum, lightning stones, power crystals, and serenity gems in order to create items, eventually including the most powerful weapon in the game.
- This editor remembers spending hours, perhaps even days, trying to collect Mystery Goo, a rare material extracted from the fickle and mushroom-esque enemies of the first game. Mystery Goo was required to make many of the high-end items, among them the Infinity Plus One Sword. This lead to the coined phrase, "Huntin' shrooms for Mystery Goo."
World Of Warcraft has frightening amounts of Unobtainium, starting out around the time the player starts mining mithril ore and finally capping in weapons and armor made from the metals Khorium and Eternium. To quote a recent Penny Arcade post on the subject, "What's next? Awesomite?"
- There's also the equally-mundane Titanium, its enchanted cousin Titansteel, and the more fantastic Saronite, the latter of which is speculated to be connected to the Eldritch Abomination Yog-Saron.
- World Of Warcraft is also littered with mundanely-named minerals that possess properties far greater than their real-life counterparts.
Mass Effect also has its own form of Unobtainium, better known as Element Zero or "eezo" in the Mass Effect 'verse. This material is responsible for basically all of the technology in-game, as it has the ability to manipulate mass, which makes it valuable for propulsion systems, projectile weapons, kinetic force fields, artificial gravity, and a powerful, convenient method of Faster Than Light travel. Indeed, "eezo" is a key element of virtually every advanced galactic technology.
- The "biotic powers" in the game come from being exposed in the womb to Element Zero. But if it doesn't work, it usually gives the fetus fatal cancer. Plus, the computer hardware that makes biotics useful in combat has some serious side effects, everything from nosebleeds, to occasional migraine headaches, to full-on insanity.
- As the title quote notes, bad guys make Element Zero into a drug called "Red Sand." It's like cocaine, but it gives you limited biotic powers. Oh, and it's highly addictive, and addicts who can't pay for their habit are sometimes sold into slavery.
The Final Fantasy series is also known to have various forms of Unobtainium, such as orichalcum or adamantite. In fact, pretty much every RPG ever made by Square Enix has something like that, often in the same relation as the Kingdom Hearts example.
- Final Fantasy Tactics A 2 lives this trope to the full! Not only has it scores of metallic unobtanium, but also plenty of both chitinous (bones) and dendritious (wood).
The Crusader games had two.
- Di-corellium, a mineral that is apparently better for use in nuclear reactors than plutonium—to the point that it almost became a metaphor for petroleum, and at the very least for energy crises in general, what with the increasing scarcity of it and power shortages on Earth because of it—and of which vast quantities, about half of all known reserves, are on the moon.
- Polonium—yes, ''that' polonium—an element than in real life is unstable, highly radioactive, and extremely toxic, is used as...body armor.
The Metroid Prime games feature Phazon, which is a highly-mutagenic, violently unstable, sentient mineral. Being a bit more specific, there is an incredibly resistant metal made from it known as Phazite.
- In addition, visor scans can identify the chemical properties of certain structures. When you see names such as "Talloric Alloy" and "Bendenzium" in the description of a destructible obstacle, it is usually an indication as to which weapon you will need to use to proceed.
Dwarf Fortress has a rather extensive simulation of real-world geology and metallurgy, including creating simple alloys such as bronze and electrum. It also has Adamantine, an incredibly rare ore that is extremely difficult to come by without cheating, but can be processed into various forms that allow it to be used in almost any type of construction imaginable - weapons, armour, tools, clothing, furniture, building material...about the only things you can't make out of it are beds and food.
The Myst series has the artificial stones nara and deretheni. There is also a tawny stone found on Riven, used for ornamental purposes.
Spice in Spore, as a reference to Dune. It can literally be used for anything - it's a food, dietary supplement, fuel source, cleaning product, narcotic...
Parodied in the Ratchet And Clank Games, where the material Raritanium is really rare and totally useless (in part one) or easy to get and used to purchase spaceship upgrades (in part two)...
The Null Fragments in zOMG!, when in use, were like this. These little purple gems could be used to make pretty much anything you could think of, from tattoos, to figurines, to feather boas, to the armor of an alien species, to... you get the idea.
The browser game Skyrates includes Unobtainium (in fact, portrayed as Green Rocks ) as a trade good, and is also used in role play and player discussion as a reasoning for hard to explain occurrences, jokingly or otherwise.
A little-known RTS called Submarine Titans has "Corium-296"... which appears to suggest that it is an extremely heavy element. Corium is very important to achieving the advanced technologies in the game, but is not naturally found on Earth: the enormous comet that forced humanity under the seas was made of the stuff, and small deposits (fragments of the comet) are found all over the place.
In The Legend Of Zelda: Phantom Hourglas, you need the three pure metals (each corresponding to one of the creator godesses) to create a blade that turns the titular hourglas into the Phantom Sword. It's required by the plot, since the Phantom sword is the only thing that can hurt Bellum.
Psitanium from Psychonauts. High grade unobtanium - a meteorite that grants anything alive psychic powers and is the plot device for any number of absurd things in the game.
In Golden Sun, there are nine forgeable materials: in increasing order of power, Tear Stone, Star Dust, Sylph Feather, Dragon Skin, Salamander Tail, Golem Core, Mythril Silver, Dark Matter and Orihalcon.
Master Of Orion 2 invokes this trope in the form of Xentronium. It cannot be invented by the player and must instead be plundered from the Antarans, either by capturing and reverse engineering one of their warships or by defeating the Orion Guardian (both very difficult to pull off, and each only gives you a ~30% chance of acquiring the technology). If you're successful, you're rewarded with the best armor plating in existence (Xentronium edges out the best player-researchable armor by a 5:4 factor).
Snoopy vs The Red Baron for the Playstation Portable does this bald-facedly. In order to make a superweapon called the Doodlebug, the Red Baron needs, what else? "Unobtainium." Subtle.

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The Inexplicable Adventures Of Bob has borfomite, a rare substance that becomes an unstoppable weapon when chemically combined with caramel.

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Whateley Universe has plenty of Unobtainium. They've stolen adamantium from the Marvel Universe, and they've included some of the mystical variants, including orichalcium and mithril. Oddly enough, at the Super Hero School Whateley Academy, mithril no longer counts as true Unobtainium, because there's a side character (Silver, a girl from India) who sweats mithril. The school has had to set up a mithril brokerage.
A beautiful example is the wonderflonium of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, so salient it's essentially a lampshade.
The League Of Intergalactic Cosmic Champions had Plotonium as a generic whatever-the-plot-required supermetal. Also a building block of the universe that allowed people to have superpowers was Nevesytrof (much more stable then the Sub-Reality or Super-Reality of other universes.)
Protectors Of The Plot Continuum has Generic Surface. A material created when locations and surfaces in fanfics are given little or no description, the Flowers have used it to build PPC Headquarters due to its durability, structural integrity, and the fact that there is a readily available supply to make such a huge building out of.
- Not a metal, but falling under this heading, is Bleeprin and its derivatives. Bleeprin is a mixture of bleach and aspirin, advertised as 'brain bleach', which erases the memory of a bad fanfic and then the headache it gave the agents. Derivatives include Bleepka (Bleeprin and synthetic vodka, a very popular derivative, often used for making cocktails), Bleepolate (Bleeprin and chocolate), and Bleepsinthe (Bleeprin and synthetic absinthe). Bleeprin's only real downside is that it explodes when mixed with real alcohol, hence the use of synthesised substitutes.
The SCP Foundation has SCP-148, also known as Telekill. This stuff is incredibly useful, but the Foundation hasn't been able to fully analyse it, let alone make more of the stuff.
The inventions of The Spoony Experiment's Doctor Insano are powered by Raritanium.

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The Powerpuff Girls employs this in the making of the show's namesake heroes. The Unobtainium here is the mysterious Chemical X (a fancy name for the contents of a Can Of Whoop Ass). It also produced the show's biggest recurring villain, and drove several single-episode plots. Demashita Powerpuff Girls Z upgrades it to Chemical Z.
One arc on Rocky And Bullwinkle involved a search for a mountain full of "Upsidaisium", an anti-gravity metal.
The Flintstones had an episode featuring Urgonium - a mineral that exploded on solid impact.
Justice League has Nth Metal, which amoung other abilities is capable of generating electrical currents and disrupting magic.
- Don't forget the meson-graviton inversion. :)
The first 2009 episode of The Colbert Report's Show Within A Show Tek Jansen has the Big Bad enslaving some tiny doughboy aliens to mine Scarcerarium.
Duck Dodgers went to Planet X to find Aludium Phozdex, the Shaving Cream Atom, in his classic 50s adventure.
Spiral Zone has Neutron-90, the rare material that the Zone Riders' uniforms are made from; it protects the soldiers from the Spiral Zone's Mind Control effect. and at the begining of the series, there's only enough of it to make five suits. Later, enough Neutron-90 is discovered to make two additional uniforms, and so Ned Tucker and Ben Franklin are able to join the team.
The Thundercats' machines were powered by Thundrilium.
In "Phineas And Ferb's Quantum Boogaloo", Phineas and Ferb need a wood and steel fusing tool, which apparently won't be invented for 20 years.

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