Ambiguous Name: You Call That A Wound

This trope is about important videogame characters who (due to their importance) either cannot be killed or will immediately respawn upon death. The current title does not describe this trope at all, instead just sounding like a generic one-liner for shrugging off an injury.

While the Trope Namer is an example of the trope, getting the reference borders on Fan Myopia. If you don't get the reference, then the name is poorly descriptive of the trope and can easily lead to potential misuse due to getting mistaken for Only a Flesh Wound (see the Monty Python page quote or the TF2 example in the First Person Shooter folder; these are both examples of misuse).

Something like "Invincible Party Member" would be more descriptive (although a little too similar to Gameplay Ally Immortality), but I'm sure someone can come up with a much better name.

While the page itself has a decent number of examples (excluding the two aforementioned problematic misuses), the trope currently only has 26 wicks. I wouldn't be surprised if this may be the result of difficulty locating this particular trope due to its name. I quickly checked through the wicks to list the ones that may not be using it correctly:

• Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun: Cyborgs can have their legs blasted off and still function properly. They can even regenerate back to full health in Tiberium, though losing their legs does slow them down.
  • Unclear. Do the Cyborgs withstand damage and regenerate health because they are considered important characters? If not, then this is Just a Flesh Wound or maybe Implacable Man.
• Command And Conquer Tiberium Series Units: They can have their legs blasted off and still function properly. They can even be regen back to full health in tiberium, though losing their legs does slow them down.
  • See above.
• Ergo Proxy: Upon taking a UV shell to the arm, Ergo Proxy tears off the affected limb and instantly regrows a new one.
  • This is a gameplay trope, so anime is probably disqualified unless it is about videogames. Besides, this doesn't seem to be an example.
• Lagadin's Legacy: Conlon’s injury doesn’t impede his ability to talk, no sir.
  • Not a videogame, and not an example; belongs under Only a Flesh Wound instead.
• Meatgrinder Surgery: This trope is invoked in Warhammer 40,000 by Ork doctors, the painboyz (also known as Doks, or Mad Doks), whose idea of "anesthesia" is giving the patient a violent concussion. Some don't even bother to use anesthetic at all, preferring to have their patient squirming and kicking so they know he's still alive. Orks are so inhumanly tough that they not only survive, but usually fully recover very quickly- which to the doks means they have plenty of leeway for experimentation and personal amusement (successful ork head transplants are entirely possible). Having a Painboy in a unit gives all of its members a chance of ignoring damage- its unclear whether this is because the dok treats the injuries, or if the nearby reminder of what awaits the injured encourages Orks to ignore little things like bullets to the head and missing limbs.
  • Incorrectly-used pothole, better redirected to Only a Flesh Wound instead.
• Star Trek: Also, there's Picard getting a sword through the heart, getting trapped as a program of pure information inside the ship's computers only to be erased in favor of another copy of himself taken just a few seconds ago according to Troi, Barclay merging with the Enterprise, Troi getting mind raped at least twice, Wesley nearly killing his mom at least twice (once on the Holodeck, another time in a collapsing pocket universe), following through on someone else and being fired for it, land developers committing genocide against native sentient grains of photovoltaic sand, Riker getting cloned and his clone joining the Maquis^note that last one took place on DS9, after TNG was over. Anytime Worf deals with anything about his own Proud Warrior Race, he suffers greatly for it, and his spine breaks twice just to prove the Badassery of the episode's Friend to All Living Things. Someone even tried to suck Dr. Crusher's Life-Force or whatever. Data is often damaged, only to casually continue, once even to the point of being decapitated for 400 years. Data is also easily brainwashed, put on trial for disassembly, and impersonated by his Evil Twin. The only one that relatively escapes this is Geordi laForge, until a brainwashed Data puts nano-cortical fibers into his forehead in preparation for Brain Uploading.
  • Not a videogame, and this pothole is not an example; probably belongs under Only a Flesh Wound instead (for whatever degree of "flesh" wound an android can have).
• Video Games: Rosencrantz from Vagrant Story is a smug bastard all the way, who thinks he has the secret of Lea Monde all figured out...and then Ashley whips his ass, and hardly anyone seems to care. Rosencrantz has to yell yield, and Ashley mocks him for it. Not only that, but the game's real Magnificent Bastard gets a shot. After Rosencrantz has ambushed Sydney and Ashley, Rosencrantz demands Sydney name him his heir. Sydney calls him a "worm", and Rosencrantz chops off Sydney's arm. Sydney, bleeding Black Blood, stands up and reattaches his arm. He then demonstrates to Rosencrantz that not only is the man not immune to Sydney's magic like he thought (by making him think he was holding Sydney's severed hand), but Sydney had been manipulating him the entire time. And in the end, Sydney doesn't even kill Rosencrantz. He lets a giant six armed statue of Kali do it for him. Truly, in case you had forgotten the real Chessmaster and Large Ham in the story, Sydney does not fail to remind you that he was eating the scenery first.
  • Incorrectly-used pothole.

At most, that's only 21 correct wicks for this trope, and that number may be even lower at 19 if those first two examples are incorrect. Most of these incorrect wicks are, as I assumed, due to confusion with Only a Flesh Wound.

The good news is that a low number of inbound wicks means that renaming this trope should be easy. Of course, the examples currently listed on the trope page should be cross-wicked.

edited 24th Oct '17 1:33:48 PM by PeabodySam

Locking per New Year Purge.