Bio-Armor

Armor care: oil, polish, walkies, treats, spaying or neutering.

"'Spidey Stops Sinister Six... Photos by Peter Parker'!? I-I don't remember any of this! It's — It's like I slept through the — through the whole fight! That wasn't me wearing the suit... This was the suit... wearing my body! This alien is some kind of... symbiote..."

— Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man

There's Powered Armor, and then there's this... thing. The Organic Technology equivalent.

Leaving aside the fact that you're essentially wrapping a living being around yourself, it often forms some sort of symbiotic connection with the wearer, often drawing nutrients from the wearer's blood. Needless to say that might have adverse side effects.

Things can be pretty bad for the wearer if this is combined with Clingy Costume, either because the armor doesn't want to let the user go, or because the process of grafting a living armor suit to a human host is irreversible. An even worse version might be sentient, and capable of taking over.

Might be worn by a Heroic Host. Might sometimes be able to turn into an Animated Armor. Sub-Trope of Organic Technology. Compare Living Weapon, a creature used as a weapon; and Living Clothes, clothing that has a mind of its own, though it may not necessarily be an actual organism in itself.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• The Fortified Armors from Apocalypse Zero are composed of a metal shell and a biological construct that is very much alive (and is created after former victims of the Empire of Japan).
• Daimaju Gekito: Hagane no Oni features two biomechanical Humongous Mecha brought from another dimension.
• In Guardian of Darkness, ancient Japanese deities appear as giant biomechanical monsters, with the protagonist donning one of them as a bio-mecha.
• Guyver is about a high-school kid who falls into possession of a powerful set of technorganic armor that enhances the capabilities of its host and has to fight monsters called Zoanoids. The armor is virtually indestructible and is able to regenerate from pretty much any wound, its only weak point being its Control Metal. As long as the Control Metal is intact, it can rebuild the host from the data stored within, but if it's critically damaged, the suit will eat the host alive.
• Jushin Liger was even retitled Bio Armor Ryger in the West, although it's more of a bio-Humongous Mecha than a mere bio-armor.
• Naruto:
  • Obito Uchiha, having survived being crushed by a massive boulder and rescued by Madara Uchiha, is recuperating at Madara's lair and watched over by White Zetsu and a hollow spiral-faced Zetsu called Tobi. When told that his friends are in danger, he tries to leave to help them but is insufficiently recovered to do so, prompting Tobi to offer to let Obito use him as armor.
  • The Version Two state that Jinchūriki can access — wherein the user is covered by an opaque form-fitting "cloak" of reddish-black Beast chakra, giving them Blank White Eyes and a Jagged Mouth — qualifies, given that the Tailed Beasts are Animalistic Abominations made of chakra. In this state the Jinchūriki can also manifest parts of the Tailed Beast's skeleton to act as armor or augment attacks.
• In Neon Genesis Evangelion, the EVA units are biological Humongous Mecha with organic parts cloned from aliens.

Comic Books

• The 31st-century setting of Chi-Chian: The Black Seed by Voltaire has the Biologic Suits, Nigh Invulnerable armor only wearable by women that was given by the Japanese rulers of New York to Thailand in order to repel a Chinese invasion. According to the Backstory, the Thai soldiers wearing these suits easily defeated the Chinese by picking up their tanks and throwing them around. Unfortunately, the power went to their heads, so the inventor of the suits, Soma Mitsui, activated a signal that made the suits slither off the bodies of the soldiers, leaving the women buck-naked. The only remaining suit in existence belongs to Chi-Chian, Soma Mitsui's only child.
• Marvel Universe:
  • The symbiotes are amorphous entities — sometimes alien, sometimes not, depending on the continuity — that bond to a host, encasing them in their biomass and acting as a living costume. They provide enhanced strength, durability, and various shapeshifting powers, but often at the cost of becoming a monster. Venom and its offspring Carnage are the most famous examples, though dozens of others — like Toxin and Anti-Venom — have popped up over the years.
    • Even more overt with the "Agent Venom" look for the symbiote, which downplays the "evil Lovecraftian spandex" look inherited from the symbiote's origins as a Spider-Man costume in favour of taking cues from military protective gear. His "Mk III" look◊ — used throughout Venom Vol. 2 — is even more "bio", sporting a more chitinous appearance with spines on his pauldrons, vambraces, and boots, H. R. Giger even being mentioned on the concept art as an influence. Flash continues this, albeit color-inverted, when he becomes Agent Anti-Venom.
    • Venomverse introduces the Poisons, a species that possess and consume both symbiote and host on contact and take their powers. They end up with chitinous plate armor covering their bodies.
  • Marvel Adventures: Iron Man gives Plant-Man a plant-based armor to better fight Iron Man's signature Powered Armor with.
• Spawn: The Hellspawn symbiotes — being demonic riffs on the Venom symbiote and its ilk, above — cover their hosts in a black, red, and white bodysuit, and can manifest fanged jaws and a prehensile tongue. Al Simmons is bonded to one of these symbiotes, by the name of K7-Leetha, though its backstory has been repeatedly retconned over the course of the series.
• Darth Krayt, the main antagonist of Star Wars: Legacy, wears a suit of Yuuzhan Vong armor, which, like all their tech, is organic.

Fan Works

• In Lords Among the Ashes, the Normans find that this was a form of Lost Technology used by the ancient civilization that existed before them on the Dark Continent. Jaune has the armor extensively analyzed to find that it has no effect on the user's soul and that it was enhanced by infusing metal armor with the flesh of Grimm.

Film

• In Independence Day, the small and physically frail aliens wear large and tentacled bio-suits that almost qualify as Mini-Mecha, though even then, they can be knocked out by a sucker punch.
• A non-scientific example appears in True Legend (2010); the Big Bad, Yuan, is a practitioner of the Venomous Fist, and upon reaching the highest levels of his powers, he gains a set of scorpion-like armour growing from his chest, shoulders and back, covering much of his body. In the penultimate confrontation with Su Can, the tide of battle is turned when Su Can manages to rip off entire chunks of Yuan's organic armour, leaving his flesh and internal muscle exposed in a ridiculously graphic manner.

Literature

• God-Emperor Leto Atreides II from the Dune series wears a full-body suit composed of living sand-trout, turning himself into an immortal human-sandworm hybrid. His only weakness is being immersed in water, which is what happens at the end of God-Emperor of Dune.
• The Eight Worlds series features an artificial creature called a Symb, short for "Symbiote", which is essentially a living spacesuit for a single human. A Symb needs only sunlight plus occasional doses of trace elements to sustain both itself and its human partner. It's not intelligent on its own, but it has the ability to 'plug into' its human partner's brain and form a separate personality therein.
• In New Jedi Order, the Yuuzhan Vong wear "Vonduun crabs" as armor, which can stop blaster bolts and even lightsabers. However, they turn out to be fatally allergic to a type of tree pollen, which is later developed into a Synthetic Plague that can kill all Yuuzhan Vong and their Organic Technology.

Tabletop Games

• The future world shown in Æon has a growing number of armored biological suits called the BioVARG, which enhance strength and allow the wearer to field weapons that would normally be squad support or vehicle-mounted... and yeah, there's something a bit off with the BioVARG.
• CthulhuTech: Being Captain Ersatzes of the Guyvers, the Tagers have shades of this. However, like everything in CthulhuTech, this trope gets the eldritch treatment.
• In the RPG setting The Day After Ragnarok, one of the technologies developed from mining the corpse of the gigantic Midgard Serpent is the Ablative-Metabolic Suit, made out of living snakeskin. The wearer steps into it, and it immediately envelops them and seals itself. It can withstand every environmental temperature and pressure found on Earth and is even an effective spacesuit.
• Eberron has Living Armor in its 5th edition. This is a grotesque chitin suit that burrows into its wearer when attuned and offers a bit of general protection against to psychic and necrotic attacks as well as poison. Being symbiotic in nature, the armor drinks blood from the wearer, and it can't be removed unless they're targeted by a curse removal.
• Living armor is one of Transcendent Technologies Inc.'s products in Hc Svnt Dracones. They allow their users to act like they have Reclamation surgeries. The TTI-Poltergeist even incorporates Transcendent tech, but if injured, they have a habit of freaking out and sucking their users' blood.
• In Mechanical Dream, the flesh-warpers of the Yaki race take the placenta from a newly born Yaki and mold it into a symbiotic armour. It is then grafted to the child and evolves as the Yaki grows, developing various new powers such as wings and burrowing claws. Yakis who have their armour destroyed or are born in a place with no craftsmen capable of making armour become pariahs among the tribes.
• In SLA Industries, the alien Ebon and their related subspecies have black living armour called DeathSuits that give them various abilities. Interestingly, the DeathSuits aren't organic in nature and are instead made of solidified Flux. The suits become living and semi-sentient only because of evolving from the presence of Flux in them and the symbiotic bond the suit has with its wearer.
• Splicers: With technology-devouring nanites circulating through the air, humans are only able to fight robots with alien Organic Technology. Humans are outfitted with armour made with biological material and DNA from various life-forms. As such, abilities such as mighty insect legs growing out an armour's chest are a very real possibility.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • Various armor biomorphs for the Tyranids can be placed and grown on top of their already tough leathery skin or carapace.
  • Because wraithbone is a living, warp-sensitive bio-plastic, all the armor worn by the Eldar is this, with perhaps the most notable being the suits of the Striking Scorpions, which buff up their muscles (earlier versions have them about as strong as Space Marines).

Video Games

• Gorin from DUSK-12 is a Super-Soldier enhanced by the titular viral strain, which besides enhancing his strength and reflexes and granting him telekinetic abilities also forms a layer of spiked, organic armor all over his body. It prompts one of the researchers to call him an "abomination".
• League of Legends:
  • Kai'Sa was a normal human girl before being pulled into the Void, where she bonded with a symbiotic Voidling that formed a living bodysuit with biomechanical rocket pods on her shoulders.
  • Kayn has a mix of this and Demonic Possession, caused by him wielding the living, evil scythe named Rhaast. In addition to whoever they're fighting, the two themselves are locked in a duel for control, so Rhaast has already visibly corrupted one of Kayn's arms and part of his face into a rough, demon-like form.
• In the Metroid series, Samus' Power Suit appears metal at first glance, but is in fact at least partially organic. In Metroid Fusion, the X-Parasites, a species that infect and mimic other organisms, are able to infest and then copy Samus' armor. Metroid Dread has a notably different look to the Fusion Suit from the previous game, described by the series lead as the Power Suit being in a state of "regrowth and repair" from being surgically torn apart in Fusion. The game ends with Samus becoming mostly Metroid, and her suit becomes noticeably more organic in appearance.
• In [PROTOTYPE], Alex Mercer's Armor power covers him in a black carapace that lets him plough through almost anything in his path. James Heller from [PROTOTYPE 2] doesn't have this power, but has an armored form as an alternate skin.
• Sigma Star Saga: The Krill wear living armor called Parasites, which despite the name are completely harmless and even beneficial, since they enhance the wearer's physical capabilities. Humans can wear them just fine as well, with no negative side effects.
• UFO: After Blank: This pops up in Aftermath's late-game, in which the Reticulans all wear weird meaty-looking armour that comes in several variants, some providing a brightly-coloured Deflector Shields bubble to protect the wearer and conveniently indicating the armour's variant. You can engineer your own hybrid armour. Both hybrid and reticulan bio-armour is lightweight and offers the best protection against Energy Weapons, but it's not quite as good against ballistic weapons as man-made armour.

Webcomics

• AsteroidQuest: Bio-armors are scored by a "mortality rate" value, since stronger bio-armors put more strain on the user. In practice, the actual fatalities are much lower, because soldiers are tested first and simply don't put on bio-armor if they can't take it.

Western Animation

• In Adventure Time, Jake can sometimes wrap himself around Finn and act as a suit of armor. It's deconstructed in "Jake Suit", as Finn sometimes forgets that while he doesn't feel any pain while wearing it, Jake certainly does.

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