History Main / TheManTheyCouldntHang

* The Creator/ECComics story "Jury Duty!" (''Crime [=SuspenStories=]'' #6) is centered around a man whose "neck was broken, but the spinal cord wasn't severed!" And using the fact that he was declared legally dead as an odd sort of [[DiplomaticImpunity diplomatic immunity]].

* Legend has it that the Decembrist leader made some wisecrack to the effect that the czarist regime was too incompetent even to pull off a simple hanging, and the Czar decided to prove him wrong.

* Lady Deathstrike was hung from a telephone wire by Nazi soldiers during the Spanish Civil War in a TimeTravel related ''{{Wolverine}}'' storyline. Rather than dying, as one might expect, she flexed her neck to massive proportions, bursting the wires, and proceeded to kill the soldiers' tank...

* Played for laughs in a ''{{Sturmtruppen}}'' strip featuring a man too tall to be hanged by normal means, much to the soldiers' dismay.

* The {{Nightwing}} villain Torque is a grotesque variation of this. His neck was broken when Blockbuster twisted his head 180 degrees, but he survived with a cybernetic neck brace and a backwards head.

* Ygor from ''Film/SonOfFrankenstein'' and ''Film/TheGhostOfFrankenstein'', the character who gave his name to TheIgor.
* In ''Film/BendOfTheRiver'', '''Creator/JamesStewart''', of all people, is one of these.
* Clint Eastwood's character in the movie ''Film/HangEmHigh'', an innocent victim of vigilante justice who seeks revenge on those who strung him up and left him for dead.

* Lord Blackwood in the new ''Film/SherlockHolmes'' lives through hanging [[spoiler: the first time]]. [[spoiler: Though it turns out that he didn't survive through any sort of toughness or special powers, but because his execution was staged; a hook hidden in the noose and a torso rig diverted the weight of his body away from his neck and onto the torso brace. A few feigned twitches and a drug-induced death-like coma completed the illusion]].

* The eponymous villain in ''Film/{{Madman}}'', who survived being hanged by angry villagers and now carries the noose as his secondary weapon.

* Taken UpToEleven in ''Film/TheGoodTheBadAndTheUgly:'' [[{{Bandito}} Tuco]] survives being hanged at least three times.
* After Chris manages to knock Jason out in ''Film/FridayThe13thPartIII'', shes tries kill him by putting a noose around his neck and dropping him from the barn. This doesn't work, and she has give him the axe.
** In ''Film/JasonX'', it is mentioned how officials tried to execute him multiple times, which includes a hanging, before settling for cryogenic imprisonment.
* In ''Film/BackToTheFuture III'', Marty [=McFly=] survives Buford Tannen and his gang attempting to hang him because Doc Brown shoots out the rope. Like Creator/BrendanFraser mentioned above, Creator/MichaelJFox really got hanged during one take when his hand slipped, before resuscitated by a crewmember.

* In ''Film/BackToTheFuture III'', Marty [=McFly=] survives Buford Tannen and his gang attempting to hang him because Doc Brown shoots out the rope.

* Devil Rebirth from ''Manga/FistOfTheNorthStar''. He had his sentence commuted to life imprisonment because Villainy Prison didn't have anything, including rope, capable of killing him. He later meets [[YouAreAlreadyDead Death By Kenshiro]], but survives just long enough to take Jackal, the scumbag who lied to him to get him to fight Kenshiro, with him. The spinoff ''Ten no Haoh'' revealed that Uighur used to be a prisoner of Cassandra who survived five death sentences. He fought Raoh, who ended up making Uighur the new warden of Cassandra because of his ambition and strength.

* Devil Rebirth from ''Manga/FistOfTheNorthStar''. He had his sentence commuted to life imprisonment because Villainy Prison didn't have anything, including rope, capable of killing him. He later meets [[YouAreAlreadyDead Death By Kenshiro]]. The spinoff ''Ten no Haoh'' revealed that Uighur used to be a prisoner of Cassandra who survived five death sentences. He fought Raoh, who ended up making Uighur the new warden of Cassandra because of his ambition and strength.

* Pangloss from ''{{Candide}}''. [[CrapsackWorld It's not sure it was for the better]].

** He's back in the newest DLC, Honest Hearts. He's also...slightly miffed about the whole 'being covered in pitch and thrown in the Grand Canyon whilst aflame' thing. However, he's also TheAtoner and for the most part a polite and well-mannered individual who honestly wants to protect the innocent, albeit [[KnightTemplar in his own way]]. In said DLC, to reflect his truly insanely hard to kill nature, he has an Endurance stat of 10, and the highest DT of any creature in the game at 50, placing him on higher damage threshold than most ''armor piercing rounds'' can penetrate. Additionally, he's one of two [=NPCs=] in the game with a unique "title" in the GECK - [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Destroying Angel]].

* The protagonist of RedNinja, Kurenai, is hanged by her neck using ''iron wire'' with her hands tied behind her back, but her small stature combined with watching her father getting killed right in front of her gives her enough IronWill to survive.

* Celtic rock band [[TheMenTheyCouldntHang The Men They Couldn't Hang]] take their name from this trope, with the added bonus of sounding very anti-establishment.

* Celtic rock band The Men They Couldn't Hang take their name from this trope, with the added bonus of sounding very anti-establishment.

[[folder: Anime ]]

[[folder: Comic Books ]]

* NemesisTheWarlock once crashed on Earth and group of alien-hating villagers decided the best way to kill him is by hanging. Three days pass before they realize he is still alive, [[spoiler: after every person who wronged him met KarmicDeath]].

[[folder: Film ]]

[[folder: Literature ]]

[[folder: Live Action TV ]]

* ''{{Series/Highlander}}'' ditto with one or two immortals...'Leader of The Pack' for one ep.

[[folder: Music ]]

[[folder: Radio ]]

[[folder: Video Game ]]

[[folder: Web Comic ]]

[[folder: Western Animation ]]

[[folder: Real Life ]]

* In ''Film/MacheteKills'', Machete gets hanged by a racist sheriff near the beginning. To the sheriff's amazement, other than being unable to free himself, Machete is unaffected.

* Devil Rebirth from ''FistOfTheNorthStar''. He had his sentence commuted to life imprisonment because Villainy Prison didn't have anything, including rope, capable of killing him. He later meets [[YouAreAlreadyDead Death By Kenshiro]]. The spinoff ''Ten no Haoh'' revealed that Uighur used to be a prisoner of Cassandra who survived five death sentences. He fought Raoh, who ended up making Uighur the new warden of Cassandra because of his ambition and strength.

* In ''Film/BendOfTheRiver'', '''JamesStewart''', of all people, is one of these.

* Parodied in a ''RenAndStimpy'' episode, where they are hung for horse stealing. Ren just blows in the wind, and Stimpy has no neck.

* In ''BendOfTheRiver'', '''JamesStewart''', of all people, is one of these.
* Clint Eastwood's character in the movie ''HangEmHigh'', an innocent victim of vigilante justice who seeks revenge on those who strung him up and left him for dead.
* Lieutenant Aldo Raine in ''InglouriousBasterds'' has an unexplained rope scar around his neck, suggesting that this trope is somewhere in his backstory. In the part of the country he's from, at the time this movie takes place, [[DisproportionateRetribution didn't take a whole lot]].

* In ''TheImaginariumOfDoctorParnassus'', it's revealed that [[spoiler:Tony has been hung several times, most likely for the various crimes he's committed (including dealings with the mob and selling children's organs on the black market). He survives through a trick in which he swallows a small metal flute, which prevents his throat from being crushed. He ultimately dies when Parnassus swaps the flute with a fake, breakable one.]]

* In ''Film/JasonX'', it is mentioned how officials tried to execute him multiple times, which includes a hanging, before settling for cryogenic imprisonment.

* In ''NightCreatures'', [[spoiler: Peter Cushing's kindly vicar is actually a retired pirate thought to have been hanged, complete with scar. It's implied that his right-hand man, Mr. Mipps, was the hangman and made sure he was in no real danger.]]

->''"He's got a strange way o' holdin his neck, stiff-like an' twisted, like he bin hanged, on'y the hangin didn't take."''

[[AC:{{Anime}}]]

[[AC:ComicBooks]]

[[AC:{{Film}}]]

[[AC:{{Literature}}]]

* Lloyd Shepherd's ''The English Monster; Or, the Melancholy Transactions of William Ablass'' opens with the title character, hanged for piracy and murder, wondering why another man is carrying on a DeadPersonConversation with him. The rest of the novel explains why Ablass is apparently immortal.

[[AC:LiveActionTV]]

[[AC:{{Music}}]]

[[AC:{{Radio}}]]

[[AC: Video Game]]

[[AC: Web Comic]]

[[AC:WesternAnimation]]

[[AC: Real Life]]

* Stuntmen can prevent the noose from tightening with an invisible knot. This allows them to hang for a while and stay alive. This stunt is very dangerous as it's easy to snap the neck, the preferred method is a harness under the clothes and a fake noose on the neck.

----

* [[http://asylums.insanejournal.com/scans_daily/231589.html#cutid1 This]] old mystery comic story is centered around a man whose "neck was broken, but the spinal cord wasn't severed!" And using the fact that he was declared legally dead as an odd sort of [[DiplomaticImpunity diplomatic immunity]].

* Half Cocked Jack of Creator/NealStephenson's ''Literature/TheBaroqueCycle'' [[spoiler: survives a hanging by being pulled down by an angry mob.]]

* In ''ASongOfIceAndFire'' one of Beric Dondarrion's numerous rumored deaths is being hanged. As it turns out, he was, and died. He just came back after.

* An ''Series/{{Angel}}'' flashback episode dealt with Angel attempting to get rid of a demon in the Hyperion (the hotel he now owns) that manipulates peoples emotions causing them to kill each other. Unfortunately the angry hotel guests target him and hang him from the chandelier. After they leave the lobby he cuts himself down and gives a big fuck you to the guests, telling the demon he can have them.

* Charlie, on ''{{Lost}}'', managed to (barely) survive a hanging, but that might have been the cause of [[spoiler:his demise in Season 3.]]

* In Jean Zimmern's ''The Orphanmaster,'' the female protagonist's servant, Antony Angola, survived hanging because no rope was strong enough to hold him.