History Main / StrongFleshWeakSteel

* Taken to absurd extreme in ''Wolfschanze'' - a rather poorly made WW2 FPS from the same makers of ''{{VideoGame/Mortyr}} [[http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/1999/07/28/ 2093-1944]]'' - in which you can take off a Tank by ''[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDM7cu89Kas kicking it enough times]]''. One Polish magazine that reviewed it dubbed the game "a ChuckNorris simulator" after the fact.

* A conflict very common in ''MagicTheGathering'', where the colours Green and Blue are pitted against each other - the former, which represents life and "nature", is so good at dealing with metallic things that the latter, which represents inovation and is associated with technology, can only defend itself by countering spells. [[AlwaysChaoticEvil Phyrexia]], however, just takes the BodyHorror middle ground, fusing artifice with life in horrific and deadly ways.

*** This has actually carried over into ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft''. The battlegrounds Strand of the Ancients and Isle of Conquest, and the outdoor BG Wintergrasp all included or relied upon the use of several of the above vehicles to achieve certain objectives, the problem was that while player HP and power increased over the course of the Wrath of the Lich King xpac they were introduced, the vehicles themselves' power and Hp remained static and constant. By the end of the WoLK xpac, several of these vehicles were so far behind in terms of health - particularly the Glaives, which had about 35,000 health (about as much as a player) but utterly lacked any of the [=PCs=] defensive options or stats - they could be literally two-shot by any well-geared player. This made these BGs rather frustrating, particularly if you were relying on those Glaives, as even with a strong and vigilant escort force, both available Glaives could be obliterated by a single Rogue or Feral Druid attacking from stealth. The current xpac, Cataclysm, has significantly buffed all these vehicles' damage and health to the point where a single player can no longer easily wipe out a Demolisher in under ten seconds, but it remains to be seen whether increasing PC power will bring us back to where we were at the end of ''[=WoTLK=]''.

* Real Life: Bonesaws. Even though it stands to reason that a mechanical circular blade can easily tear flesh, it is designed to be unable to penetrate through tough tissue, yet it can saw through bones or plaster with ease. Don't let [[VideoGame/TeamFortress2 the Medic]] tell you otherwise.
** Of course, they are ''not'' circular saws. Bonesaws use a rapid back and forth movement small enough to not tear soft tissue, but which rapidly saws through hard materials like bone. In the same way a glass blade would shatter on impact with, say, a rock, while a steel blade would only get a dent.

* The Franchise/DragonBall anime. A bullet to Goku's head makes him say "Ouch!", and an axe to the head gives him a headache - ''shattering the axe''. He blocks rocket-propelled grenades with his arms, jumps through steel-lined floors head-first, destroys the Franchise/{{Terminator}} with a ki blast, and dispatches wave after wave of tanks and helicopters like its ''nothing''.

* In Scott Westerfeld's ''Literature/{{Leviathan}}'' series the Darwinists' "fabricated beasts" often seem to have the advantage over the Clankers' machines. I couple times the titular living airship takes on Clanker planes and zeppelins two-to-one and wins. Of course, its' packed with flechette bats and strafing hawks that can ZergRush the Clankers and breed reinforcements for the next battle.

* Mostly justified in ''Franchise/{{Bioshock}}'', where the Little Sisters, girls all around the age of four or five, are invulnerable to attacks that kill genetically altered adults, combat bots, and the massively armored Big Daddies. This is due to the sea slug which the game is based around, which seems to live symbiotically within the Little Sisters, automatically repairing any and all damage to the girls. However, one would still think a direct hit from a grenade launcher would make them explode in a shower of LudicrousGibs.... May be a case of GameplayAndStorySegregation, since if they were meant to be as invulnerable in-story as they are in gameplay, they'd have no need of their Big Daddy protectors.
** Unless they're to prevent the Little Sisters from being kidnapped, not killed. They may be unkillable but an ordinary Splicer can easily overpower one and steal her ADAM.

** Averted with super-suits and the mechanical androids, but those stop working as Goku gets stronger and the villains are forced to hire more muscle. In DragonBallZ, Dr. Gero finally learns from previous mistakes and actually starts making his death machines out of flesh instead of steel. By that point, Goku's flesh can literally withstand attacks that would [[EarthShatteringKaboom blow up the planet]].

* Blaster rifles in ''Franchise/StarWars'' aren't ''steel'', but this trope comes up in ''LukeSkywalkerAndTheShadowsOfMindor''. Luke, held captive by stormtroopers, is not sufficiently quiet, so one [[BullyingADragon keeps hitting him with a blaster rifle even when Luke politely tells him not to]]. Finally Luke catches the business end of the rifle and it shatters.

** And most of the mechanical units in the game are, indeed, more fragile than biological units. Demolishers, Glaive Throwers, Meat Wagons, Obsidian Statues and Flying Machines are all fragile, easily killed units. Mechanical units' only real advantage is that they cannot be targeted by most offensive spells, although that also means that most healing spells don't benefit them. And although they can be repaired by workers(at a cost), they don't naturally heal over time like biological units do. However, this is averted hard with the Dwarven Steam Tank/Engine which has a lot of health and heavy ''fortified'' armor, the kind that is normally only found on ''buildings''.

* Inverted by [[PlanescapeTorment Zerthimon's]] Scripture of Steel, which tells of the prophet's encounter with a corpse whose head had been bisected by an axe, leading him to the realization that while the [[StarfishAliens Illithids]] ''know'' flesh, they do not ''know'' steel...

** This is mostly in the original Dawn Of War game and its expansions; by DoW2, you'll see weapons doing about what you'd expect (lascannons making unarmored infantry explode into a fine, red mist, for instance) but make up for it in rate of fire; lascannons and plasma cannons will only fire once every two to three seconds and are useless against hordes, while heavy bolters actually do ''less'' damage per shot than normal ones but tend to fire about 3 or 4 times as fast depending on the individual weapon's modifiers.

->''"Steel isn't strong, boy...'' [[SnakeTalk Flesssh]] ''is stronger."''

* The ''StarWars'' RTS ''EmpireAtWar'' abuses this trope to the fullest with its heroes classes (based on major and minor characters in the movie) - in particular the Jedi and Sith characters which can indeed be used as meat shields. [=AT-ATs=] can mow over enemy vehicles but are practically useless against enemy infantry unless they deploy their own, and Star Destroyers without TIE Fighter escort are pretty much fodder for any Y-Wings around.

* Taken to absurd extreme in ''Wolfschanze'' - a rather poorly made WW2 FPS from the same makers of ''[[http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/1999/07/28/ Mortyr 2093-1944]]'' - in which you can take off a Tank by ''[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDM7cu89Kas kicking it enough times]]''. One Polish magazine that reviewed it dubbed the game "a ChuckNorris simulator" after the fact.

* In ''{{Halo 2}}'' on Legendary difficulty, a sniper shot to any part of your armored super-soldier body would kill you. Your marine allies with their much less advanced armor could survive multiple shots.

** And most of the mechanical units in the game are, indeed, more fragile than biological units. Demolishers, Glaive Throwers, Meat Wagons, Obsidian Statues and Flying Machines are all fragile, easily killed units. Mechanical units' only real advantage is that they cannot be targeted by most offensive spells, although that also means that most healing spells don't benefit them. And although they can be repaired by workers(at a cost), they don't naturally heal over time like biological units do.

* There's an ability ''named'' Strong Flesh Weak Steel in ''DawnOfWar II''. It lets a [[SuperSoldier Space Marine]] [[AuthorityEqualsAsskicking Force Commander]] stun vehicles for over 5 seconds. Though, while armed with a PowerFist, so it kinda works.

* ''DissidiaFinalFantasy'' and its stage destructibility. Lunar rock formations, the core of the planet, ancient shrines to an elder god, a laboratory dedicated to profaning everything good in the world, and the castle of the shrieking damned versus some mortal schmuck who, sixteen times out of twenty-two, isn't even wearing metal armor? MalevolentArchitecture doesn't stand a snowball's chance.
* Always true to some extent in DungeonsAndDragons thanks to HitPoints, but it's particularly notable in 4th Edition. According to the DMG, a Large iron statue should have about 120 hit points, a total easily achievable by the time a character leaves Heroic levels, and lower than a Solo goblin. A statue that's actually fighting back (an Iron Golem), however, has HitPoints of almost 400.

* Used to ridiculous levels in the ''WildArms'' series - characters will trade dozens of bullets, usually hitting, but in the next cutscene, the loser will be kneeling or knocked out instead of the intended profuse bleeding and eventual death.

* ''{{Warcraft}} III'' has different armor and attack classes. The armor classes are Unarmored, Light, Medium, Heavy, Fortified, and Hero; the attack classes are Normal, Piercing, Siege, Magic, Hero, and Chaos. Each attack class is usually effective only against certain defense classes and has reduced efficiency against others. For instance, Siege attacks are effective against buildings and unarmored units, but hardly useful against units with medium armor and heroes. Interestingly, some units with the "unarmored" armor type still have armor rating for balance reasons.

*** This has actually carried over into WorldOfWarcraft. The battlegrounds Strand of the Ancients and Isle of Conquest, and the outdoor BG Wintergrasp all included or relied upon the use of several of the above vehicles to achieve certain objectives, the problem was that while player HP and power increased over the course of the Wrath of the Lich King xpac they were introduced, the vehicles themselves' power and Hp remained static and constant. By the end of the WoLK xpac, several of these vehicles were so far behind in terms of health - particularly the Glaives, which had about 35,000 health (about as much as a player) but utterly lacked any of the [=PCs=] defensive options or stats - they could be literally two-shot by any well-geared player. This made these BGs rather frustrating, particularly if you were relying on those Glaives, as even with a strong and vigilant escort force, both available Glaives could be obliterated by a single Rogue or Feral Druid attacking from stealth. The current xpac, Cataclysm, has significantly buffed all these vehicles' damage and health to the point where a single player can no longer easily wipe out a Demolisher in under ten seconds, but it remains to be seen whether increasing PC power will bring us back to where we were at the end of WoTLK.
* Something like the above two examples tends to crop up in pretty much all RealTimeStrategy games for balance reasons, but ''TotalAnnihilation'' and its SpiritualSuccessor ''VideoGame/SupremeCommander'' neatly avert this trope by making specialised weapons effective even though they do the same amount of damage to all targets. For example, anti-air missiles do very low damage to anything, making them pretty useless against ground forces, but are the only things fast enough to hit planes (which have very few hit points); meanwhile anti-armor rockets are good against big tanks because they do huge damage, but are too slow-firing to be of use against small, faster units.

* Fairly evident in the ''TimeCrisis'' series, when dealing with bosses. Most enemies go down in one or two shots, despite many wearing body armour. Several, wearing heavy armour, can take longer. Tanks and Vehicles can be blown up with several rounds of ammo. Meanwhile, some bosses (notably the second Level boss in Game 2, the first level boss in Game 3, and the second level boss in Game 4) often don't wear anything beyond a simple shirt or tank top. Despite this, they can take hundreds upon hundreds of shots to kill, and can endure grenade rounds to the face. The second level boss in Game 4 is particularly aggravating, since even after emptying nearly all your machine gun and shotgun ammo into him, it takes a punch to finally knock him out. And he still taunts you with information on the BigBad's plan before passing out.

* Averted in ''VideoGame/TheGodfather: The Game'', as pretty much a departure of nearly every game of its type. No matter how powerful the boss, how much armor they have, how powerful their weapons are, or how much dramatic fanfare they get when they appear, a shot to head will still be a shot to the head. Of course, the danger lies in having mobs of enemies to fight against.
** Similar things can be said about the first VideoGame/DeusEx, where there are several amusing ways to turn TheDragon into an AnticlimaxBoss because, even if he has heavy augmentations, he is still human, so you can snipe him, fire a rocket or toss a grenade at him or simply cut him in the head with your Nanosword and he's done for.

* The ''CommandAndConquer'' series of RealTimeStrategy games are notorious for specializing anti-armor infantry to the point that they can't kill a single approaching infantryman with a rifle, even though they may fire off dozens of [=RPGs=] trying to. And it's not even that they can't ''hit'' the target (though the rules.ini file uses that as a HandWave for why); it just doesn't do any major damage if it's not a tank.
** Tanks have the same problem - they can run over infantry with expected results, but if they can't manage that they're going to be [[DeathOfAThousandCuts taken down even by riflemen]] while their big tank cannons are doing next to no damage in return.
** In ''Red Alert 3'', the Tankbusters' energy weapon is [[HandWave "calibrated to leave only light burns on flesh"]], reportedly for security purposes. But strangely, that doesn't make it able to blast through an Allied Peacekeeper's bulletproof shield...

* Franchise/{{Superman}}. He can stop a bullet with his eye, and the bullet would break from the impact. For comparison, the Cyborg-Superman. [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin He has Kryptonian powers and is a cyborg.]] You would think his metal bits would be an advantage, but they're actually ''weaker'' than his flesh.
* In ''Anime/MobileFighterGGundam'', Master Asia can effortlessly destroy giant robots with his bare hands. And his [[ImprobableWeaponUser scarf]].

* ''VideoGame/ThePunisher''. One of Ma Gnucci's sons is noted as wearing kevlar, so chest shots won't work. It still takes many shots to the head to bring him down.
* Fighting games often abuse this trope as well. Sektor, Smoke, and Cyrax in ''MortalKombat'' are no more durable than other characters, despite the fact that they are cyborgs. Similarly, the various Jacks from ''{{Tekken}}'', though they are very hard-hitting, take about as much damage from a punch as any other character.
** Even worse in ''Mortal Kombat'' is Stryker, who can pull out a handgun which still only does about as much damage as hitting someone.
** Stryker also has grenades, but any opponent can easily eat 5 or 6 of those in a round without dying.