Nigh Invulnerability / Live-Action TV

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• In Battlestar Galactica (2003), the humanoid Cylons have the ability to "download" and resurrect in shiny new bodies after they're killed, but only when there's a resurrection ship nearby. Even if one manages to make death stick for one of them, though, there are plenty of copies. It is possible to shut an individual Cylon (or even an entire model) down for good, but the only ones with the technology to do this are the other Cylons. This was subverted in Season 4, where the Cylons have lost the ability to resurrect due to the destruction of the resurrection hub.
• Buffyverse:
  • Big Bad Mayor Wilkins regenerated all damage, thanks to a dark ritual performed a hundred days prior to his ascension. The Next Big Bad, Adam, was Made of Diamond; until the finale none of the heroes' attacks even made him flinch. Besides which, he was sustained by a uranium power core, and so could continue functioning without a head; destroying him meant either utterly annihilating his body or destroying the power core. Adam was followed by Glory, a hell goddess who wasn't budged by anything short of semi trucks or the hammer of a troll god. And the only way to actually kill her was to kill Ben, the normal squishy human she shared a body with.
  • Also in the Buffyverse are the Beast, whose hide is so tough that the only thing that can hurt him is a piece of himself; The First, who's made of air; the mystic orbs that the Geek Trio use towards the end of Season 6 — whoever holds them is made of diamond and super strong; and Jasmine, who seemed immune from physical harm except by her parents.
  • And, in the last season of Angel, Marcus Hamilton. Until...
    Hamilton: Let me say this as clearly as I can. You cannot beat me. I am a part of them. The Wolf, Ram, and Hart. Their strength flows through my veins. My blood is filled with their ancient power.
    Angel: [a vampire] Can you pick out the one word there you probably shouldn't have said?
• Ex-demon Cole Turner in Charmed (1998) became functionally invincible after absorbing the power of MANY fallen demons; he was able to use this power to return from beyond the grave so he could be with Phoebe again. Sadly, his immense power now made him a threat to her and her family, so she divorced him. To his dismay, he found that he could not even kill himself while in a stint of depression. He was eventually vanquished during a last-ditch (failed) attempt to win Phoebe back in an alternate timeline.
• Doctor Who:
  • The Daleks are nigh-on invulnerable, generally needing to be out-thought rather than out-fought. However, this often suits the Doctor, who is a classic Technical Pacifist.
    • Aim for the eyepiece! The eye— ZZZAAAPP! Even THAT apparently doesn't work anymore:
      Dalek: [sizzle] My vision is NOT impaired!
    • Their Plot Armor is even stronger than their physical defenses — if even a single Dalek survives extermination, it will inevitably end up traveling back in time and regrowing the whole species. Again and again and again...
  • And the Doctor himself managed a regrowth in New Who: he was able to regrow a severed hand, but only because he'd only just regenerated.
  • Captain Jack Harkness (of Doctor Who and Torchwood) has a direct link to the Heart of the TARDIS, and just regenerates whenever he dies — which he does quite often (over 1,000 times in the twentieth century alone). Eventually Gwen Cooper, the other main character of Torchwood, stops screaming whenever Jack dies, realising that it's really no big deal. However, Jack does age very slowly.
  • "The Tsuranga Conundrum": One of the reasons the Pting is so dangerous is because it is unaffected by most conventional weaponry. The only weapons that do affect it merely stun it for a few seconds.
• In Emerald City, killing a witch in Oz is a singularly difficult proposition as they have a tendency to not stay dead unless killed by another witch. The Wizard thinks he found a way — guns, but it turns out they work no better than any other weapon against witches. The only reason it worked on East is because she herself pulled the trigger, while being tricked to do it by the protagonist (who turns out to be a witch herself).
• First Kill: Legacy vampires are incredibly hard to kill - sunlight doesn't hurt them, staking them through the heart only incapacitates them, and pure silver causes pain but nothing lethal. There is record of a Guild member killing a legacy and living to tell the tale, but the silver spears they allegedly used to do the deed don't work. By the end of the first season there's still no firm way to take out a legacy.
• Heroes:
  • Claire and Peter, for the same reason. Both have healing powers so strong that they both regenerated after being dead for several hours, and Claire proved her resilience by being at the core of a nuclear reaction and having her skin burned off — then having it grow back leaving her perfectly unharmed just ten seconds later. Since Peter's powers are taken from Claire, he has the same potential (though, for full resurrection, she might have to be with him).
  • In the second season, we are introduced to Adam, who essentially has the same ability as Claire: he automatically heals all damage. He is also immortal (his body, after his ability emerged, stopped aging). It is also revealed that both Adam and Claire can use their blood to temporarily grant their powers to other people and heal them (including bringing back people from the dead). In fact his power is only thing keeping Adam alive. When he loses it he quickly withers into a pile of dust.
  • In Season 3, Sylar finally gets his hands on Claire's power and becomes immortal as well. Peter, on the other hand, is un-immortal'd due to the sudden alteration of his power (he can only use one at a time, and therefore ages normally whenever he isn't using Claire's power — which is most of the time).
• Kolchak: The Night Stalker: In the episode "The Devil's Platform", Robert Palmer has been granted the power to turn into a dog by Satan. In dog form, he is Immune to Bullets (surviving being shot six times by a police officer). Later, he is completely uninjured from being in a head-on car crash that kills the other driver and that Kolchak himself says he couldn't have walked away from.
• In Lucifer (2016), beings like angels and demons are invulnerable to any sort of mortal weapons, but can be hurt, or even killed, with divine weapons. The one exception to this is Lucifer himself, who can also be made vulnerable when he's near Detective Chloe Decker.
• Lost's Man in Black couldn't be killed until the island was "unplugged" in the finale.
• The Objects from The Lost Room are indestructible as long as they're outside the eponymous room. Including the Occupant.
• In MacGyver (1985), Murdoc survives just about everything. He sometimes seems to be of the "dumb luck" variation.
• The three members of the Quirky Miniboss Squad in Madan Senki Ryukendo are fought and apparently die several times over the course of the series, yet always return. Rock Crimson is the most noticeable. Near the end, it's revealed that the three Ultimate Madan Keys allow them to revive. Once these keys are removed by force, death is final.
• Jesse Kilmartin of Mutant X is both the Made of Air and Made of Diamond version of this trope. His favorite tactic is to wait for someone to hit him, then punch them out while they nurse their now-broken hand. He's also used as cover, since he's not only Immune to Bullets, but he's been shown to reflect lasers and even Brennan's electrical attacks. However, he can only do it as long as he's holding his breath.
• This — specifically the Resurrection version — was what made Big Bad Master Org so hard for the rangers to take down in Power Rangers Wild Force. While they had won a number of prior battles simply by the sheer number of Zords they had available to throw at an enemy, Master Orge was able to absorb all their attacks, regenerate without a scratch, and eventually wear down and destroy 4 different Megazords as well as the leftover stragglers. They get better.
  • Dark Specter, too. He only died after having two planet-destroying weapons launched at him, and still hung on long enough to take the unfortunate Starscream who fired them down with him. Absolutely justified, as he was the show's single biggest Big Bad and a probable Eldritch Abomination.
• In Red Dwarf the hologrammatic Arnold Rimmer starts out as an intangible Virtual Ghost but in Series VI he gets a Hard Light upgrade that he is told makes him virtually indestructible. Indeed, a later episode sees him surviving an act of Jumping on a Grenade. This does not in any way prevent him from being a Dirty Coward.
• There are many examples of this trope in the Stargate-verse — almost every category has an example:
  • Gods: The Ori and the Ancients. They're ascended beings from a higher dimension who are apparently immortal, omniscient and all-powerful, but the Ancients prefer not to mess with mortals, unlike the openly evil Ori. They can wage war on each other and the Ori apparently need prayer, so they can be killed. SG-1 kills off all the ascended Ori with a superweapon at one point.
  • Divine Protection: Ori Priors are immune in this way because if necessary the Ori will interfere directly in the lower plane to protect them. They can also do this the other way around and kill a Prior who betrays them.
  • Made of Diamond: The Kull Warriors can walk away from anything up to a point-blank explosion. Only an Ancient energy weapon has been effective in stopping them.
  • Made of air: The Black Knights.
  • The Blob: Human-form replicators are robotic regenerators made up of millions of smaller cells. Not even weapons fire can harm them, but there's another Ancient energy weapon which can — until they figure out an immunity.
  • Regeneration: The Wraith, the first Unas. The Wraith feed on lifeforce, so as long as they can continue to replenish themselves they are biologically immortal — sufficient gunfire can still take any Wraith down.
  • Can Only Kill Part of Him: Anubis is a half-ascended Energy Being, something less than the Ancients but still effectively immortal. Destroying his physical container or his host only releases his essence, which is indestructible as it's only an avatar of his higher-dimensional form. The only way to positively kill him is by collective vote of the Ancients, which they refuse to do. Trapping him in eternal battle works too, although that technically only deactivates both him and his opponent.
  • Multiple Bodies: Ba'al and the Replicators. The normal spider-like Replicators are a Hive Mind, killing every last one is the only way to stop them or they'll just reproduce. Ba'al cloned himself numerous times over to where being killed more than twenty times onscreen didn't stop him. Both the final clone and the original were finally killed in Stargate: Continuum, although the host survives.
  • Extreme Luck: Apophis survived numerous brushes with death in the first four seasons, including repeatedly being tortured to death then resurrected by one of his enemies, only to end up with a larger army each time.
  • Resurrection: Daniel Jackson, while not actually invulnerable in any reliable or definitive way, has managed to recover from death on a frightening number of occasions, to the point where the fanon has him dying and recovering on an almost monthly basis. It's even lampshaded late in the show's run when it's clear Daniel could not have survived the attack on the enemy. Jack utterly refuses to mourn, search for him or believe he's never coming back and instead says that he expects to see Daniel drop in naked at any moment. Sure enough, Jack's right.
• Star Trek:
  • The Changelings from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine are immune to any "regular" damage — they simply liquify and reshift. Odo survives being shattered (while being a glass) and run through in human form. Laas can even travel in vacuum. The only things that can kill them are beam weapons at high setting (it took over 100 hits to finish off the Martok impersonator), radiation and a special virus developed by Section 31.
  • Subverted when Mirror!Odo is destroyed by a common phaser blast
  • Borg are hive-minded and can quickly adapt to energy weapons, although kinetic weapons can always kill them.
  • Also Q, though godlike aliens have weapons to kill each other — which are powerful enough to make stars go supernova as a side effect.
  • The Emergency Medical Hologram on Star Trek: Voyager, who is simultaneously intangible and Hard Light, is immune to most things that would harm organic beings, a fact that's exploited many times by Voyager's crew.
• A number of types appear in Supernatural:
  • God: Pagan gods can be killed by mere mortals, but the trope does apply to the Big G, since it seems like Death is the only entity that could kill him. In Season 11, we find out that God can be killed by someone other than Death — his sister, who, at full strength, is at the same power level and has similar Nigh-Invulnerability.
  • Divine protection mixed with Resurrection: In Season 5, Sam and Dean are functionally incapable of staying dead. If they do die then the Angels (and in Sam's case, also Satan) will just resurrect them because they can't be used as Angelic vessels if they're dead.^note  After Season 5, this no longer applies, though they are still protected by other forms of Plot Armor.
  • External Repair: Dr. Benton is a scientist who somehow gained immortality, but his body kept on decaying. In order to continue functioning he regularly harvests new organs.
  • Extreme Luck: Whoever acquires the rabbit's foot, at least as long as they have it in their possession.
  • Regeneration: The Leviathans recover from almost anything. The only known means of immobilizing them so far is to chop off the head, and then keeping it absolutely out of reach of the body so it can’t just reattach itself. The only thing that can kill a leviathan is the bone of a righteous person dipped in the blood of the king of hell, an alpha monster, and a fallen angel. These ingredients are nigh impossible to obtain.
• Walker, Texas Ranger: In the 1998 episode "Warriors", a white supremacist hopes to take over the world with an army of superhuman warriors, created using a formula he stole from a scientist who was hoping to use it for medical purposes. The prototype warrior is used to take out the Rangers, and at one point not only is Walker and Trivette unable to harm the warrior, he shrugs off dozens of gunshots as though he were a stone wall. In the end, Walker is able to defeat the warrior... after the scientist stuns it briefly by throwing flammable liquid in its face and then Walker a flaming torch before kicking it into an oil field, where it is blown up.
• Wonder Woman (1975): Bryce Candle, the title Poorly Disguised Pilot hero in "The Man Who Could Not Die", was this. He got shot, thrown three stories up by Wonder Woman, and mauled by a lion with nary a scratch.
• The X-Files has the Alien Bounty Hunter, a shape-shifting alien Terminator with toxic blood. He can only be killed in a very specific manner, at which the protagonists invariably fail. In later seasons, there's the Super Soldiers, half-alien/half-human villains with regenerative metal skeletons.

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