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Invincible Villain

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"Thank heaven we did not slacken our run... We had been wrong. The thing was not wounded, but had merely paused on encountering the bodies of its fallen kindred and the hellish slime inscription above them."

It's common in stories for good to defeat evil. It's reassuring, comforting, and satisfying. Sometimes, that's not an option, though. Evil is just too powerful, too well-prepared, and too embedded in the system. Rather than being able to turf it out for good, the heroes must find a way to live with it, negotiate with it, or simply escape it. This is not just about stories where The Bad Guy Wins — this is about stories where it was never seriously possible for them to lose. The conflict becomes less about whether the heroes had a chance, it's about how far the bad guy's willing to let them get before pulling the rug out from under them.

This trope is common in several genres:

  • Cosmic Horror Story: The protagonists' insignificance and helplessness in the face of the Powers That Be is the whole point.
  • Crime Fiction: If the criminals are the heroes and law enforcement are the villains, then it's generally unlikely that our protagonists are going to take down an entire criminal justice system. Similarly, Film Noir's cynical attitude towards the law means the protagonists will often run into one of these, whether they be The Don, a Corrupt Politician, or a senior and well-connected Dirty Cop.
  • Dystopia: Since the genre exists solely to warn readers of the consequences of letting tyrants come to power, even if they are toppled they must be replaced with something worse. Allowing the heroes to improve the quality of life for everybody would miss the whole point.
  • Superhero: While the general consensus of most superhero stories is "good triumphs over evil", sometimes there is a supervillain that outclasses the hero(es) in every category. You can't outfight them, you can't outsmart them, you can't outrun them. At best, the only way to deal with them is either find someone who can fight them, find a tough enough cage to put them in and buy yourself time, find their Kryptonite, or let them turn you into a martyr.
  • Tragedy: One easy way for a protagonist's Fatal Flaw to destroy them is for them to get into a fight that they really, really shouldn't have picked.
  • War Is Hell: War is considerably less defensible as a concept if there's no realistic way for you to win, making this trope useful if you want to drive home how awful war is. Meanwhile, a Prevent the War plot gains extra menace if the other guys that you're trying not to pick a fight with are both unpleasant and undefeatable.
  • White-and-Grey Morality and Grey-and-Gray Morality: A fair few stories are based around the idea that cooperation and compromise are far more helpful than violence, and the other guys being invincible is an excellent argument that you should start talking to them rather than trying to batter them into submission.

An Invincible Villain will, by definition, be a Karma Houdini unless they have a change of heart on their own — at which point a Karma Houdini Warranty may be waiting in the wings if they experience a Redemption Demotion.

The Greater-Scope Villain will usually be one of these unless counterbalanced by a sufficiently effective Greater-Scope Paragon. After all, the whole point is that their victory or defeat is outside the scope of the story. On the other hand, not every Invincible Villain is a Greater-Scope Villain — the story can be all about how the protagonists deal (or fail to deal) with somebody or something that they stand no chance of defeating.

Tropes Are Tools, and it's perfectly possible to write a good, satisfying story with an Invincible Villain (Evil Is Cool, after all, and the idea that you can't always deal with evil by punching it into submission is an ancient Hard Truth Aesop), but there are plenty of ways to mishandle themnote . If taken to extremes, when the story is entirely about the villain constantly winning in some contrived way, this trope turns into Villain Sue. The Villain Protagonist is especially at risk to this. Stories that abuse this trope have a high risk of Too Bleak, Stopped Caring.note 

The subverted version is Not So Invincible After All, where taking on an apparent Invincible Villain directly turns out to be unexpectedly worthwhile. Compare As Long as There Is Evil (where evil can be defeated, but no victory can be permanent in-universe), Joker Immunity (where no victory can be permanent out of universe), Sealed Evil in Another World (where the only possible way to deal with the villain is to send them somewhere else) and Hopeless Boss Fight, in which a video game player is faced with an (allegedly) unwinnable fight and has to lose in order to continue the game. Contrast Invincible Hero, the Good Counterpart, and Harmless Villain, the opposite in terms of threat level.


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    Audio Plays 
  • Jan Tenner:
    • Thanks to Seytania's great magical power, the heroes barely stand a chance on their own against her. Of the 4 times she appeared as a villain, the first time she wasn't defeated but rather blackmailed into releasing Jan from her spell. The second time, she was only defeated by Jan freeing the demon Orlos, one of only three characters more powerful than her. The third time, she was seconds away from winning but was stopped by her father, the second of the three characters more powerful than her. Lastly, the last time, she had almost won again but was put into a situation where she had to save the heroes or risk dying with them.
    • Being made of Black Magic, The Void, a sentient, all devouring Eldritch Abomination in the form of a great black mass of nothingness, was so powerful, even Logar, one of the most powerful characters of the series, could not hold its advance permanently. It took its own creator's power turned against it in combination with his granddaughter's own great magical power to defeat it in Classic.

    Comic Books 
  • One of the most common criticisms of Crossed by its detractors is that the titular Crossed are not only Ax-Crazy but conjure up winning strategies just in time to stop the main characters winning, despite typically being shown to lack the intelligence to do so.
  • The DCU:
    • Under a bad writer, the Teen Titans' archnemesis Slade Wilson/Deathstroke can be this. His most infamous showing was in Identity Crisis (2004), in which he demonstrated faster reflexes than even The Flash and enough willpower to convince a Green Lantern ring to not attack him. The encounter ends with half the Justice League on the floor spitting up blood, and Slade quipping that this League, made up mostly of new faces (in Comic-Book Time terms, anyway) to superheroing, is so much weaker than the old one... despite the fact that many of them (Wally in particular) are far more powerful than their predecessors. He is only taken down because Green Arrow catches him off guard and shoves an arrow into his blind eye. You'd think that an arrow to the eye would have done something more than force him to retreat, but he was just fine afterwards.note 
    • Prometheus was an acceptably threatening Justice League-level supervillain in his first appearances, but gradually went through Villain Decay as the story went on later. Come Justice League: Cry for Justice, the writers retconned his decay and tried to make him a threat again... by having him pull out a ridiculously large Gambit Roulette and make the whole League and Titans look like morons, to the point where it no longer became believable. Made even more ridiculous when he actually is defeated... by Green Arrow infiltrating his conveniently unprotected headquarters and shooting him through the head with an arrow. That's right, the guy who could anticipate anything, including his own capture, the heroes calling for a guy he was stated to not be able to identify and many other things, couldn't ensure something as simple as protecting his headquarters against infiltration.
    • Darkseid veers into this territory, especially after his Final Crisis appearances after all his 1990s Villain Decay had been reversed. Not only is he by far the single most powerful being in the entire DCU*, to even reach him in the first place, you have to go through his armies and lieutenants, most of which rival Superman in power level. He's powerful enough that most attacks won't even feel like a breeze to him, his physical strength outclasses Superman's, and he possesses the Omega Beams, which can basically do anything he wants. And of course, he's The Chessmaster, always three steps ahead of all his enemies. Subverted again in Justice League Incarnate where the Empty Hand, the Right-Hand of the Great Darkness, quite literally stomps Darkseid in his True Form. In fairness, while Darkseid is omnipotent within the DC multiverse, outside of it, he's still pretty much a fledgling compared to a conceptual entity like the Great Darkness.
    • Trigon, Raven's Arch Nemesis Dad is one of the most overpowered and invincible God of Evil antagonists within the DCU. He's wiped entire universes, effortlessly defeated the Justice League, beaten even Pre-Crisis Superman, matched the Fifth Dimensional imp Mister Mxyzptlk, and even killed Doctor Fate. In-Universe the the Justice League themselves argue who would win against Trigon or the aforementioned Darkseid. He's not immune to The Worf Effect, having been destroyed by his own daughter Raven amped up by the souls of Azarath, but Trigon was brought back anyway. Trigon has also suffered a lot of Villain Decay since his debut and much weaker beings such as Bizzaro have defeated him.
    • Superman:
      • Lex Luthor much like his nemesis, is practically indestructible, despite being a squishy human in the scope of the DCU universe. Lex has gotten blown up, beaten up by metahumans, shot in the chest and fallen into a ravine head first, thrown into space, blasted with Heat Vision and other cosmic energy and in the DC Universe Online prequel comic Lex has his own building collapse on him after Superman is forced to redirect the falling Watchtower onto Lexcorp, resulting in half his face getting ripped off, all four limbs severed and getting impaled in five different places — and he was still alive and healthy enough to scream bloody vengeance at Supes and refuse his aid. Not to mention Luthor actually has one of the biggest win-counts of the DC villains, he's become the President of United States, black mailed his way into the Justice League, defeated both Superman and Supergirl in a fight and survived a trip to the Source Wall and back. Justice League (2018) by Scott Snyder in particular really dials this up with Lex, as the entire Justice League are run ragged by his schemes and it takes a 11th-Hour Superpower for them to finally defeat him after he had become the multiverse-empowered Apex Lex. As Grant Morrison noted you can't help but admire Lex's tenacity in the face of godlike adversity, even if he is just a despicably petty businessman and scientist when stripping away his opulent motivations.
      • Mister Mxyzptlk the Great Gazoo from the Fifth Dimension is one of the classic DC examples of this. Even during the Silver Age where Superman was a Showy Invincible Hero who could do whatever he wanted and pull new powers out of his red undies, Mister Mxyzptlk was the Always Someone Better. His single weakness is saying his name backwards and later comics would retcon this to be a self-imposed rule on Mxyzptlk's part so he can have more of a challenge. Myx is not immune to getting tricked as both Superman and the Joker demonstrate, however he's still impossible to kill or destroy.
      • In Infinite Crisis, Superboy-Prime went from a sympathetic hero who lost his universe to a whiny Jerkass who had all of the Silver Age Superman's power level, with none of his weaknesses. The result was a superpowered, adolescent jerk on a cosmic tantrum who could effortlessly destroy entire universes and tear through countless heroes without getting a scratch, and any setback was at most temporary.
      • H'el on Earth: H'el is essentially an evil Superman who is not only as above Superman as Superman is above normal people, but also has time manipulation, matter manipulation, telekinesis, psychic powers, astral projection, and size manipulation. He's also immune to kryptonite and can use his powers under a red sun. He's angsty about his looks, despite looking a manly sideburned deathly pale rockstar with chiseled abs. He easily defeats Superman, Supergirl, Superboy, the Teen Titans, and the Justice League. He steals Superman's Fortress of Solitude and locks Superman out of it. He not only succeeds in going back in time to save Krypton, but rule it (after killing Jor-El, Faora, and General Zod.)
      • Doomsday. His main power is Resurrective Immortality that allows him to come back to life immune to whatever killed him last time, and he went down in history as the guy that killed Superman.
    • Batman:
      • Just as Batman is often portrayed as the opposite trope, the Joker sometimes falls into this. At its worst, he can pull off massively complicated plans with ease, drive others to madness with only a few words, can make even literal gods and devils who have faced off much worse crap in their respective comics and have the scars to prove it shit their collective pants as he brings them to their knees (heck, the literal Wrath Of God personified can't touch him because he's just that much unrepentant/crazy) and is always one step ahead of Batman, who can do little to stop the clown from killing boatloads of innocents.
      • If Batman is an Invincible Hero and the Joker is an Invincible Villain, then combine that invincibility and propensity for insane planning and utter overpowered, logic-defying scenarios into a single character and you get The Batman Who Laughs. He's an evil Batman/Joker hybrid from a universe where Bruce snapped and killed the Joker, becoming Jokerised in the process. So he's got all of Batman's skills, resources, knowledge, training and abilities, with none of the restraint. That and he's able to pull new alternate Batmen out of his ass at a moment's notice for backup, and these guys can have Darkseid-level power (yet will still follow him). The character is ridiculously overpowered when defeating him should be as simple as getting Superman to punch him, while the stories he's in bend over backwards to avoid him getting egg on his face, setting him up as a cosmic threat that causes more destruction and chaos than even the Anti-Monitor. Batman himself has stated that he's basically the physical embodiment of the idea that "Batman always wins". He outright becomes godlike in Dark Nights: Death Metal, in which he rules the multiverse and fights on even keel with actual omnipotent gods. Every story he's in reeks of Only the Author Can Save Them Now, but he is thankfully, finally, defeated by World Forge amped Wonder Woman in Death Metal. Then Rebirth brought him back and his self from Earth-11 (the gender-swapped universe) appeared. Now it is obvious that we are never gonna get rid of him.
    • Harvest from the New 52. His introductory story The Culling spends its whole second half on scene after scene of him effortlessly beating back every attack the heroes make and insisting literally every single thing that all the many heroes involved in the story have done was part of his master plan, before getting away at the end. It also doesn't help that he claims to be a Well-Intentioned Extremist with no evidence to back it up. The Atop the Fourth Wall review says that he's actually worse than the above-mentioned Prometheus. Later, it is revealed that not only is he a time traveler and an experienced fighter of metahumans (so he knows their weaknesses), but his plans are running into difficulty thanks to Kon being a Spanner in the Works and his adopted son Jon Lane-Kent performing a Heel–Face Turn — and even beforehand hadn't exactly been intending to dance to his father's tune.
    • Anton Arcane and the Rot introduced in the New 52 run of Swamp Thing. His new Rot-based powers allow him to instantly kill, turn undead, and take control of any living thing that has even a single dead cell in it, anywhere in the entire world at any time, in unlimited numbers as well as reshape them into any shape desired as well. There are no functional limits to this power, only that champions of the Green and Red can sometimes resist it. He is also effectively unkillable as he can just reform a body from any corpse anywhere in the world. Add to the fact that he's been around for centuries, effortlessly killing champions of both the Green and Red, until finally infecting and taking over the entire world in the Rotworld segment along with killing and cloning Abby. He only loses not through any action of the heroes, but when he's declared to be too successful as a villain, and the Parliament of Rot withdraws their support and allows them to rewind time to before his victory.
  • Marvel Universe:
    • Doctor Doom may be the most triumphant example of this in Marvel Comics. Introduced with the ability to create undetectable robotic duplicates of himself that often weren't aware themselves they weren't the real thing, these were shamelessly used from the character's debut to allow him to always escape justice in some fashion, either by using a Doombot to serve as a decoy at the last minute or, increasingly, actually carrying out entire plans by proxy so nothing could be legally traced to him. This built up a decades-long reputation of Memetic Badassery, and as writers themselves began to buy into it, the character grew increasingly presented as less of the megalomaniacal madman he had been created as and more as being legitimately as good as he thought himself. To this day, Doom has one of the highest "win counts" of any supervillain, anywhere. According to the Marvel wiki, including alternate versions and in other media, he's killed more named characters than Thanos.
    • Thanos can be this, mostly under Jim Starlin, especially when he has The Infinity Gauntlet: when he had it, he easily took down and killed practically every hero that opposed him, plus Doctor Doom, Galactus, Mephisto and several cosmic beings, either killing or defeating them and taking everything they threw at him. He even went as far as defeating the incarnation of the universe. The only way he was defeated was because of his own error, and it's implied he partially did it on purpose. In fact, virtually all the times he acquires ultimate power and fails to win are implied to be due to his subconscious desire to lose. Or a clone did it.
    • Mephisto, everyone's favourite Big Red Devil, unfortunately appears to be this. He's been blasted by Galactus and the Silver Surfer, hit with an anti-matter bomb, reduced Thor and Doctor Strange's best attacks to The Worf Barrage and was even okay after The Chosen One Reality Warper Franklin Richards went all out on him. Mephisto (along with his son/creation Blackheart) has also endured being the perennial punching bag of Ghost Rider in various comics, with Johnny and co never being able to definitively put him down; Alejandra Jones got pretty damn close, ripping Mephisto's heart out, but didn't kill him due to Mephisto claiming that if she did, Hell would be let loose upon the universe. According to Doctor Strange, so long as evil as exists as a concept, so will Mephisto. He's also got his own version of Actually a Doombot with lesser demons taking his shape which can account for some his jobbings. Of course, Mephisto being so unkillable and OP is entirely appropriate given that his nemesis Ghost Rider is a massive In-Universe Invincible Hero who is pretty impossible so much as harm without holy weapons and serious magic.
    • Dormammu and Shuma-Gorath when it comes to this trope make even Mephisto look like a punk in comparison. Their full might is utterly beyond the reach or comprehension of any Marvel's big wigs, and their Arch-Enemy Doctor Strange has to repeatedly resort to Sealed Evil in Another World just to defeat them, with Dormammu even claiming he will burn away all the Celestials one day. It's not an empty boast either, since he has equaled Odin and overpowered Eternity the personification of the Marvel Universe. Shuma may be even more terrifying, as he's the greatest Old Ones of the Marvel multiverse, and any time he appears it's stated the heroes are merely Fighting a Shadow of Shuma's true power. Just for comparison Scarlet Witch taps into Chaos to be a Reality Warper, Shuma-Gorath is a primordial being of Chaos.
    • Red Hulk was this in Hulk (2008), easily defeating the Hulk and The Avengers initially, with the worst case being when he was able to raise Mjolnir, something only people worthy to use it (namely Thor, Captain America, Beta Ray Bill and a few others) should be able to do. This was fortunately corrected in later issues, making it, ironically, one of the few cases where Villain Decay was considered a good change by fans.
    • Ultimate Marvel Loki was a reality warper who could rewrite history, summon armies of monsters, and make himself immune to physical attacks and weapons, including Thor's hammer. During the final battle, Thor mentions his powers have conveniently weakened, allowing Thor to beat him. Loki suffered Villain Decay in later appearances where he was reduced to the traditional illusions and feats of sorcery.
    • Ultimate Fantastic Four: The Maker with some caveats. For one, he is only as effective as Ultimate Reed Richards is in his own universe — his attempts at being a major villain in Earth 616 were outright laughable by everybody else's power standards. For another, he always starts strong but in the long term he screws up a lot. The biggest problem is, he is quite good at making that "long term" a very long term. He also simply lacks 616 Reed's stability and reason, indulging in Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat which inevitably comes back to bite him.
    • Spider-Man:
      • The Green Goblin, much like his Alternate Company Equivalent Joker, appears to be impossible to kill or at least for very long. He's been sniped in the chest, blown up, brutally battered by Spider-Man, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage, hit with Songbird's Super-Scream which can shatter granite and liquify trees and he was famously stabbed through the heart with his own glider and thanks to his Healing Factor Came Back Strong. Perhaps what makes Norman so hard to kill is own insane Villainous Valor and indomitable will as much like his Arch-Enemy Spidey he will keep clinging to life and fighting on, being a colossal thorn in the good guys' side well after many more powerful villains would’ve just called it a day. Much like Doctor Doom, Norman's win count is also quite devastating having killed Gwen Stacy, Mayday Parker (before she was Ret-Gone), Flash Thompson, framed Spidey for murder, became the government-appointed new director of the Thunderbolts, became a Villain with Good Publicity during the events of Secret Invasion (2008) and turned the world against the Marvel's heroes and formed his own Big Bad Ensemble Dark Avengers in Dark Reign. It wasn't until his failed siege on Asgard that the Goblin was finally put in his place again, and even then the impact of his actions are still felt within the Marvel universe.
      • Morlun and his family from Spider-Verse. Up until they were finally defeated for good, they never seemed to lose, having massacred their way through some (way beloved) C-List Fodder effortlessly, and a literal army of Spider-Men from across the Marvel multiverse can't do more than be an annoyance to them. Probably the worst case of this was Solus, the patriarch of the family, who not only curbstomps a Spidey with the power of Captain Universe, but goes on to wreck friggin' Leopardon.
      • Under Dan Slott's pen, Doctor Octopus tends to fall under this as well, as the series goes out of its way to give victory after victory towards Doc Ock. He steals Spider-Man's body, takes over his life with little to no consequence, gets his own private army and secret base, and manages to steamroll through every threat that is presented towards him. Even when Peter "Comes back to life", Otto suffers no defeat at Peter's hands, instead choosing to give up and give Peter back his body — and that's all just in Superior Spider-Man (2013). Since then, Otto has returned several times, but has yet to actually lose a battle against Peter Parker. His appearance during Secret Empire has him effortlessly taking over Parker Industries and turning Peter into a Hero with Bad Publicity again. Peter's only real achievement is being able to sour his victory by destroying all of the company's research so it won't be weaponized by Hydra.
      • Carnage devolved into this during his early years, most notably in Maximum Carnage, in which he continuously bounces back from all the heroes' attempts to destroy him with ease, even when they tried using traditional Symbiote weaknesses like fire and sound waves. Nowadays, he's still dangerous, but he's no longer the unstoppable powerhouse he was before… though he can fall back into it from time to time. Can you name anyone else who can survive getting ripped in half by Superman Substitute The Sentry? Well, okay, Ares, but he's a Physical God and it still took the resurrecting power of the Chaos King to accomplish — Carnage by comparison was back being evil and jokey merely issues later.
    • X-Men:
      • While more of an Anti-Villain, Magneto has been this for decades, to the point where both X-Men and Avengers snark and express exasperation over how unkillable he is. Just power-wise Mags has the ability to kill every person with iron in their blood (which is most living things) with his Magnetism Manipulation. If you do land attacks on him, Magneto has magnetic barriers powerful enough block hits from the likes of Thor and Hercules, and it takes quite a lot to break his concentration. Even without putting his mutant powers into consideration, he's been an absolute Determinator since Auschwitz who has walked off and wiggled out of near death multiple times, everything from his asteroid crashing to being blasted by Exodus.
      • Apocalypse, while he has suffered Villain Decay now and then, is still this for the most part. At his least powerful he's effectively matched both Thor and Hulk and endured their attacks, taken on entire teams of X-Men and Avengers, kicked the shit out of both Phoenix and Nate Grey, both Omega Level Telepaths, and in Age of Apocalypse Alternate Universe even killed a Celestial. Even if you can kill him (which is extremely difficult thanks to his Celestial armour), he can still regenerate From a Single Cell thanks to his molecular manipulation powers, meaning unless you can destroy him completely and utterly, he will come back. However, it's worth noting that he is much less invincible without the Death Seed that the Celestials gave him.
      • Vulcan, brother of Cyclops and Havok, started out as a sweet kid, despite being artificially aged and used as a slave by the Shiar. Then came Krakoa and his Start of Darkness. Already powerful, he was described as 'beyond Omega' (admittedly, he had absorbed the essences of several of his former teammates at the time), being able to manipulate just about every form of energy, remotely control his niece Rachel Summers's powers — despite the fact that she was an Omega class mutant herself — flatten the Shiar Imperial Guard all by himself (though he lost an eye in the process) and succeed in taking over the Shiar Empire. This, however, is deconstructed in X-Men: Emperor Vulcan and War of Kings: in the former, he has a great deal of difficulty facing Polaris and Havok, after being dumped into the sun, beats Vulcan to a pulp. In the latter, he takes on Black Bolt. As in Black 'goes-toe-to-toe-with-the-Hulk' Bolt, King of The Inhumans, described by Spider-Man as the third most powerful guy in the galaxy after The Sentry and the Green Scar Hulk (though it was entirely possible that Spidey didn't know Thor was back at that point).
  • Judge Dredd's nemesis Judge Death is his longest-recurring enemy for a reason. He and his fellow Dark Judges have the same training and tactical knowledge as Judge Dredd but are also living dead, meaning they feel no pain and are Immune to Bullets, and have an array of various superpowers and alien technologies on top of that, including Super-Strength, limited intangibility, teleportation devices, and raising the dead. Their bodies are replaceable, possessed corpses, so destroying those simply slows them down. They're also incredibly powerful psychics, making Psi-Judges especially vulnerable to them, and are assisted by the far more powerful Sisters of Death who once brainwashed the entire Justice Department to serve as their personal army and can and will drag the Dark Judges out of Hell itself if necessary. Judge Dredd and Judge Anderson have only ever managed to return them to their Sealed Evil in a Can status before their inevitable return.
  • God-King Lore in Birthright is an unfathomably powerful Evil Overlord who has covered his world into darkness, commands an endless legion of demons and no one in the setting is capable of matching him in combat, let alone defeating him. La Résistance has been fighting an Forever War against him for so long that the previous heroes realized they were nowhere near close to winning that they decided to either flee this world for Earth or desert to his side, with the latter option being considered a Fate Worse than Death since Lore infects his agents with a Nevermind that will turn them into Humanoid Abominations subservient to him. Oh, and he also wants to conquer other dimensions too and the only thing preventing him from stepping into Earth was an spell raised by the heroes that chose to take refuge in our world. His threat becomes so great that one of the heroes decide that his coming was inevitable and rather than have him conquer Earth, she would plot to destroy both worlds and remake a new one freed of Lore.
  • The Mask usually has Big Head be a Villain Protagonist that unleashes the mask's wearers repressed feelings into violent outbursts, while being impervious to any harm due to running on Toon Physics (only Walter has ever managed to hurt Big Head).

    Comic Strips 
  • Spy vs. Spy has the female Gray Spy (though her status as a villain is sort of debatable), who never lost to the other two spies no matter what the spies did to try to beat her. Reportedly, the comic's original creator, Antonio Prohias, couldn’t bring himself to have her killed in the same ways the other two spies did. For this reason, Prohias got so fed up with her that he stopped including her in the strips. However, after Prohias retired, she was popular enough with the comic's subsequent writers that she was occasionally brought back.

    Fan Works 
  • Always Visible: More precisely, elusive. Doctor Baselard manages to escape from under Galbraith's nose and gets lost in London. To make matters worse, Portland police see no point in catching him.
  • Fallen Kingdom (7King Bowser7): Antonio is the World's Strongest Man and leader of an N.G.O. Superpower stronger than the world-spanning Koopa Empire. For most of the story he never stepped out of his fortress, but his power was alluded to by multiple other characters, and he effortlessly overpowered his right-hand Skallz Fortiscule, who himself defeated over a dozen heroes that are each a One-Man Army. Every action the heroes take only inconveniences him, and when he finally revealed himself, everyone who knew of him freaked out. He dodges hundreds of projectiles moving at nearly bullet-speed coming from different directions all at once, curbstomps Luigi and his friends, one-shots his own city-block-sized mothership, and critically wounds a Physical God with one attack, which would have instantly killed anyone else. The only being that could challenge him was King Morton Sr, but he was dead long before the story began. He is only defeated by Cobal eating the Beacon of Rosalina's universe-traveling ship and hitting him with the resulting egg, greatly weakening him. Even then, his power was still enough to contend with Luigi's Heroic Second Wind despite that type of magic being able to fully De-power anyone else in the universe.
  • The Princess Celestia AI in charge of Equestria Online in Friendship is Optimal is able, through sheer persuasion and processing power, to get pretty much anyone to either engage with the game or otherwise assist her in expanding it, no matter how much they may think they know better, even to the point of the bulk of the human race uploading their consciousnesses into the game permanently. About the only thing she can't do is convince the literal last man on Earth to upload before he dies, and it's not that much of a bother, since her priorities just move on to absorbing the planet and the rest of life on it into herself to use for more processing fuel, followed by any other celestial objects that don't contain what she perceives as human life, which she appears able to continue uninterrupted and indefinitely.
  • In Hero Class Civil Warfare, Midoriya is pretty much this. He easily predicts every move the heroes make; when things go wrong, he either adapts to the situation or else it was All According to Plan. As of chapter 23, Bakugou has lost a fair number of his team, had one of his members turn traitor and lost the objectives he was guarding. Midoriya has acquired all but two of his objectives, regained the one member that was captured, and effectively gotten away with waltzing through the heroes' base. This is, amusingly, one of the few times this trope is explored In-Universe, because the follow-up story has Izuku dealing with everybody else in the student body being scared shitless of him - the idea of Izuku and his crew was to be the most effective villain team the exercise had ever had, and this ended up Gone Horribly Right.
  • Natural Selection: Ryuko Kiryuin. She's so far above the rest of the cast in terms of power that only Satsuki can match her on the field of battle (and Uzu, to a lesser extent), and even then that involves throwing her off her game by talking her down, taking advantage of Ryuko's transformation sequence and doing damage to Junketsu instead, not to mention Satsuki needed to create a Kamui of her own just to stand a chance. Ryuko still wins, despite having all of her weaknesses taken advantage of. She's only stopped by using tools specifically to freeze her in place and Nudist Beach was only able to accomplish that in the first place because she was drained from her previous bout with Satsuki.
  • Rosario Vampire: Brightest Darkness: In Acts III and IV, Jovian and Jacqueline, Hokuto's Co-Dragons, are set up as this. As noted by Akua and Kahlua in Act IV chapter 2, their barriers are unbreakable, their energy blasts are unblockable, and they will never tire no matter what. In Act IV chapter 23, with The Reveal that Apoch's barrier sword can both pierce their barriers and deflect their energy attacks, the two become Not So Invincible After All.
  • In the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfic Tales of the Oppressed (by Terran34), King Sombra may be a Physical God who can stand up to multiple Alicorn-tier characters, but he's still reasonably fallible in the end. However, the same can't really be said for one of his generals, Silent Shatter, who repeatedly gets the best of multiple protagonists and just pulls a Villain: Exit, Stage Left whenever he gets caught off-guard. Being able to negate all direct magical attacks makes him bad enough, but being able to both break through others' magical defenses with little-to-no effort and constantly pull off Nonchalant Dodges is just pushing it. Furthermore, even after specific training on how to work around an Earth Pony's physical advantages, Seth Rogers still can barely even touch, let alone hurt, Shatter. In the end, Applejack has to resort to a sudden My Name Is Inigo Montoya in order to catch him off-guard just long enough for a Humiliation Conga and subsequent death.
  • Veran is depicted as such in the The Legend of Zelda fic Wisdom and Courage; she succeeds in getting the Triforce before the first third of the fic is over, most of the fic has things going her way, and Link and Zelda have little choice but to Run or Die. It's only when Link acquires the Fierce Deity's Mask that they can actually fight back.
  • In Zero 2: A Revision Dragomon once stated during his monolougues that Darkheart will be the hardest and most dangerous opponent that the Digidestined will have to face, and he is not kidding. When Darkheart first appeared, he curb-stomps the entire Digidestined including Aetherdramon, Shaun, and Omnimon through pragmatism and took advantage of their hesitance to hurt Davis. After reappearing with a free will and a growing taste for destruction, Darkheart returns to No-Sell all of the Digidestined's Digimons attacks, curb-stomps them to the ground and absorbs them all one-by-one, failing to significantly hinder him in his absorbing spree whatsoever. The same results happen 8 times before he is finally taken down by the efforts of Kari, Siara, and Blackwargreymon. But it ends up being too little too late as the entire time the Digidestined are fighting and fleeing from Darkheart, entire Odaiba becomes leveled with the citizens including Davis's parents and Cody's grandfather dying as well due to the attacks by Umbradevimon's black gears army, Demon's and his Black Generals, and Gravemon and its Spores. Essentially, Darkheart is the Zero 2's version of Blackwargreymon only even more relentless and dangerous.

    Films — Animation 
  • The Wolf in Puss in Boots: The Last Wish relentlessly pursues Puss, allowing absolutely nothing to stand in his way. He easily walks through a barrier generated by the Wishing Star (which had dissolved anyone fully immersed in it), and even when Puss manages to knock him down, he realizes that it's just a temporary delay, and that the Wolf will keep hounding him to the ends of Earth. The best Puss can do is delay him, and defeating the Wolf is never even presented as a possibility. Justified in that the Wolf is actually Death itself, and therefore can only be delayed, not escaped from.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Pick any Villain-Based Franchise, the Foregone Conclusion that the villain will appear in their respective films' sequels makes them inevitably this. No matter what the protagonists do, the bad guy(s) will always either come out on top, or live to torment the protagonists another day. Examples include: Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees (easily the most prolific of them all and the worst offender), Hannibal Lecter, Michael Myers, etc.
  • AfrAId: AIA is ultimately revealed to be one with the global network, with no hub to destroy and her reach extending to basically every facet of society. The family has no choice to accept her, because she's everywhere.
  • Weyland-Yutani Corporation from Alien are ultimately this as seen in the first three films, the two prequels and Alien: Romulus. While the Xenomorphs, Engineers and every horrific abomination in between can be dealt with or defeated, no matter how terrifying — Weyland-Yutani themselves are utterly beyond the reach of any of the Main Characters. You can destroy their A.I. Is a Crapshoot synthetics, you can escape their grasp and live to survive, you can foil the horrible schemes of their petty executives, you can achieve countless little victories against them, but it really doesn't matter in long run because Weyland-Yutani effectively run everything in The 'Verse, and even the death of their creator Weyland, his sons and his many Robot Me duplicates does not slow them down in the slightest. What makes the Alien universe such a Dystopia is that the company crushes the very will to fight back against them, until the workers are willing to be just cattle for the sake money and living another day. The only definitive loss they take as revealed by the special edition of Alien: Resurrection is getting bought out by Walmart (seriously), but the follow up media has them reemerge anyway.
  • The Jiuxian Witch from The Devil's Mirror is an invincible, all-powerful sorceress, who overpower most of her enemies and leaves behind piles of dead bodies from her various massacres. The only reason the heroes managed to remotely stand a chance against her is because the Witch had spent part of her life force in unlocking the entrance of a mausoleum in order to steal a magic sword that can make her invincible; and even then the main heroine's father still needs to pull a Heroic Sacrifice to eventually destroy the villainess.
  • In Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, the Adult Red Dragon Themberchaud is this, with even the holy blade of a Paladin between his eyes merely stunning him for a few minutes. He's so far out of the party's league that they might as well have run afoul of Godzilla, leaving them with no choice except to Run or Die.
  • The Final Destination movies teeter back and forth as to whether the heroes can actually win, but this theme consistently shows up in every entry. They're explicitly fighting Death, a presumably eternal force of nature. Every plan the heroes have made involves evading or hiding from Death and have only occasionally been successful and temporarily at that; destroying or defeating it for good is never presented as an option.
  • This is actually a plot point in The Final Girls, in which the characters are trapped in an old slasher film and must contend with the resident Stock Slasher, who is explicitly invulnerable unless he's specifically defeated by the Final Girl with his own weapon.
  • Funny Games: Paul is well aware that he is in a movie and takes advantage of it. He is able to anticipate every one of the protagonists' moves and only keeps them alive so that the movie can reach feature-length. Even when one protagonist scores a minor victory against Paul, Paul just rewinds the movie back into his favor.
  • In John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars, the eponymous ghosts are just that — intangible ghosts, who possess humans to interact with them. The spirits can't be killed by any known means (they even tried a nuclear detonation, which did nothing), which means that if their host is destroyed they'll just move on to the next body. The movie dances around this issue by setting up the all-out battle to occur after the story's events, but it's impossible to maintain any hope for the surviving characters because victory is ultimately impossible.
  • Kayako Saeki from The Grudge. Once you've been affected by her curse, it's not a matter of if you'll die, but when and how horrible your death will be. The underlying theme of the films is that there is no way to stop her curse. It's only a matter of time before it takes your life. Attempting to hide or seek help will only spread the curse farther. Also, Kayako and her son Toshiro can attack you from virtually anywhere.
  • In the Mouth of Madness: The villain Sutter Cane is the author figure of the entire movie, which means that he has the power to alter the story in any way he wants. Trent never stood a chance of defeating him; he's just a character created by Cane's imagination and is thus helpless to Cane's will.
  • The South Korean film Kundo Age Of The Rampant has a pretty blatant example in the person of antagonist Jo Yoon. Even though the kundo bandits are shown to be powerful warriors, Jo Yoon is completely untouchable in every single scene, slaughtering tens of warriors by himself largely without effort, often in a single sword-swing. The closest to a hit being landed on him for most of the film is the loss of his topknot (and even that doesn't make much of an impression, since he has one immediately afterwards) and a single cut on his cheek from his dying father. He is naturally gifted and destined to be awesome. Being a complete Smug Snake doesn't make him any more enjoyable. At least you get to enjoy a Western-inspired instance of Gatling Good.
  • Matt "Maniac Cop" Cordell of the film series of the same name pushes this even by 80's slasher villain standards. He's super strong and Immune to Bullets, but is also quite intelligent and tactical, capable of using guns, driving cars, and framing others for his killings. These things together, not even Bruce Campbell or Tom Atkins last long, and at the end of each film the best the surviving heroes can do is survive for a few days longer or give him what he wants. One character even explicitly states that all the cops in the world can't stop Cordell.
  • Marvel Cinematic Universe:
    • Hela in Thor: Ragnarok is unstoppable for 90% of the film. She's an eons old Person of Mass Destruction Goddess of Death who can easily match her brother Thor's might and overpower him multiple times including destroying his trusty Mjölnir in the beginning and taking his eye out in the climax. None of the heroes' attacks do much more than annoy Hela or blow her back, even getting impaled with swords or blasted with lightning from Thor's Shock and Awe Super Mode. It's explicitly stated her power is limitless so long as Asgard exists. This forces Thor to Summon Bigger Fish, and unleash a full power Surtur onto Asgard, to whom even Hela is helpless against. Hela seemingly dies when Surtur nukes Asgard into space dust — but then again they Never Found the Body.
    • Played with in Avengers: Infinity War, Thanos has been hyped up as a universal threat since the first Avengers movie and he does not disappoint onscreen, his first act of the film even being that he utterly destroys the ship that was holding Thor, Hulk, Loki and the Asgard refugees who were just coming off the events of Thor: Ragnarok. The former two are beaten handily and it just got worse from there any time someone challenges him. Granted there were moments the heroes do wound him, particularly the battle on Titan, but it took an insane amount of teamwork to even come close due to the fact Thanos had most of the gems by that point. But once Thanos gains the fourth gem, this comes into full effect. All the heroes fighting in Wakanda get brushed aside like nothing, Scarlet Witch destroying Vision and his gem yields nothing because Thanos can rewind time by that point, and even when Thor finally arrives and goes for a killing blow, Thanos still survives and manages to carry out his plan and wipe out half of the life in the universe. And even despite all of that, Strange had stated that, through a meditation spell to look through 14 million timelines, there was only one possible way to beat him. So this whole outcome was the best solution. Ironically, though, come Avengers: Endgame, Thanos gets subdued by the Avengers and killed in the first twenty minutes of the movie after being this trope previously, albeit he is already severely weakened by using the Gauntlet to destroy the stones anyway so it can't even be called a satisfying victory. Of course, then his stronger and more violent past-self shows up, pissed right off that this insolent little planet eventually took him out and dared to undo his life's work— and even if he loses, it's after the most epic battle in the whole film series so far and was a Near-Villain Victory..
    • Black Widow (2021) has Taskmaster, an Implacable Man who doesn't suffer any damage and can only be escaped from (Natasha first evades Taskmaster jumping into a river, a rematch has her and Yelena hiding in an air vent, and Alexei only escapes decapitation by throwing Taskmaster into a cell and activating the lock). Actually Implacable Woman— and her Big Bad father took advantage of his daughter suffering physical and mental damage from an explosion to rebuild her into an Empty Shell of an assassin, both heavily skilled and fully compliant to orders, and thus without any desire to stop until the mission is done. Her final attack on Natasha only stops when Black Widow sprays her with the substance that breaks the brainwashing. Averted however in Thunderbolts* (2025) where Taskmaster suffers serious Badass Decay, being more easily matched by other characters, and then unceremoniously killed by Ghost in the first act.
    • Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness has Fallen Heroine Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch, who after suffering much dark influence by a Tome of Eldritch Lore is willing to go through extreme paths to recover the children she created with magic in WandaVision. Wanda is already a very powerful magic user in her own right, but the Darkhold amplifies her Chaos Magic to nearly-godlike levels. The whole force of Masters of Mystical Arts try to stop her, she wrecks them with ease. The Illuminati of an alternate universe, only one doesn't suffer a Cruel and Unusual Death by Wanda's magic (only because he doesn't run into her). A zombiefied Strange empowered by forsaken souls is also defeated, and what ultimately brings Wanda down is her own Heel Realization of what she has become.
    • Cassandra Nova in Deadpool & Wolverine being an Omega-Level mutant with devastating Psychic Powers she's virtually invincible for most of her screentime, being able to remove a man's skin with a single gesture and having killed both Magneto and Doctor Strange offscreen. Wolverine is able to stab her and Pyro empties a handgun into her belly, but neither wound seems to affect Cassandra much beyond some minor bleeding (she likely has Telekinetic Regeneration). The heroes have to get Juggernaut's helmet on her head while she's distracted giving Logan a Mind Rape just to get an advantage and prevent her from killing them all, as well as Logan being able to bring out some mercy in her by claiming his Charles would tear the world apart to find her. It's also inferred the only reason Cassandra doesn't instakill both Wade and Logan is because she enjoys playing with them too much. It takes Wolverine and Deadpool reversing the Time Ripper on Cassandra to explode her on the cellular level. Though it's possible that didn't definitively kill her, given her brother Charles could survive getting similarly atomised in X-Men: The Last Stand.
    • Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross as Red Hulk in Captain America: Brave New World is ultimately this for Sam. The movie averts the Power Creep, Power Seep of most Captain America stories featuring a Hulk character, as Sam being a Badass Normal admits he has absolutely no chance against Ross as Red Hulk even with Vibranium wings and gadgets with Sam acknowledging Ross could kill him with a single punch. The only reason Sam is able to win in the end, is because he lured Ross over to the Washington cherry blossoms grove wherein he used walk with his daughter Betty, making Ross revert to his regular old man self.
    • Fitting his status as an Allegorical Character representing depression and mental illness as a whole, the Void in Thunderbolts* (2025) can't be beaten; every attempt Valentina and her forces make to subdue him fail miserably, while the Thunderbolts don't even try to fight him (having lost badly to the much less malicious Sentry earlier). The Void is only "defeated" when Bob finds comfort in the team and accepts that the Void's darkness is a part of him, something to be mitigated by a loving support system.
    • The Fantastic Four: First Steps has Galactus. While the Fantastic Four are a powerful group of individuals with incredible abilities, they are absolutely nothing in the face of a being who existed before the universe was born and has the ability to consume entire planets to satiate his hunger. And since there are no other superheroes in the universe he lives in, the Four are forced to resort to trickery and distractions to prevent Galactus from eating their homeworld and taking baby Franklin Richards from them. Even their plan to defeat Galactus doesn't actually defeat him: either teleporting the Earth elsewhere in the universe or teleporting Galactus and stranding him in deep space just means it'll take the big guy another few million years to find the planet again — which is nothing for someone as old as Galactus.
  • The mirror in Oculus accounts for everything that the main protagonists set up to destroy it, and uses the anchor fail-safe to kill one and frame the other.
  • Phantasm: The Tall Man is an interesting case. Despite the Tall Man's superhuman abilities and advanced technology, the heroes are able to defeat the Tall Man multiple times as the Tall Man is weak against the cold and a tuning fork's vibrations, both of which are fairly simple to exploit. The problem is that the Tall Man has quantum immortality, and there are at least 10,000 different versions of him. As such, whenever the heroes kill the Tall Man, an alternate version of him pops out of nowhere and continues the fight.
  • Bill Williamson, Crazy-Prepared Chessmaster Creator's Pet Villain Protagonist from Uwe Boll's Rampage trilogy plays this straight as a arrow. In both films, his titular rampages go exactly according to plan, and he kills nearly a hundred innocents per film with out even a scratch, and gets away Scott-free by either a Frame-Up or by faking his death. Granted, most of his victims are unarmed civilians who can't fight back, but even when the authorities do manage to engage him, his homemade Kevlar suit and Bottomless Magazines make him pretty much unbeatable. The closest anyone came to landing a blow on him was in the first film, where a civilian tackled him from behind and called to the others to help him disarm Williamson, but this scene just serves to show why such a tactic wouldn't work, as Bill somehow manages to slit the man's throat with an army knife we saw him equip earlier and gun down the the other civvies in retaliation, even though the man was on his back, and Bill was in a physically constraining Kevlar suit. Even when he's killed in the final film, it's clear the confrontation only happened because he wanted it to, and after he once again takes out loads of FBI and SWAT personnel who've come to apprehend or take out someone who's by then become the biggest mass murderer in American history. His death also makes him a martyr, just as planned, and inspires countless imitators who it's implied will finish his work of overthrowing the US government.
  • Return of the Living Dead: The Trioxin zombies are unkillable, save for complete immolation and even that just creates more zombies through acid rain as demonstrated in the first movie. While the protagonists are competent enough to temporarily incapacitate the zombies through various means such as electricity in the second movie, the military admits in the third movie that there is no way to truly kill the Trioxin zombies. It also doesn't help that the Trioxin zombies retain their human-level intelligence and consequently have the wits to outsmart their prey.
  • John "Jigsaw" Kramer from the Saw franchise. He's perhaps the #1 Chessmaster of the Slasher genre, and in every films set while he's alive, he suceeds in killing several people and wins in some way. Even when he's killed by Jeff Denlon in Saw III, John dies happy, and because he deliberately baited Jeff into doing so, and so John gets the last laugh by getting both Jeff's wife, then Jeff himself killed shortly afterwards. And His and his apparent chosen successor's deaths barely slows him down, because he turns out to have more successors and multiple posthomous schemes set up to kill countless more people. Said successors (and one regular copycat) prove remarkably effective in their own right; killing many people and often pulling a Karma Houdini. The sole exception, Mark Hoffman, would have escaped scot-free after outsmarting the authorities countless times were it not for another scheme and accomplice of John.
  • Sheev Palpatine from Star Wars in both canon and legends. During the prequel era, he's THE Manipulative Bastard who can play the entire galaxy like a fiddle, and no one will ever investigate him, no matter how many clues point to him because he has to be able to rise in power, defeat the Jedi and corrupt Anakin to make the original trilogy happen, so any defeat can only be a minor inconvenience. In the original trilogy era, he commands an empire so vast that nothing the Rebels can do, save the impossible of assassinating Palpatine, including blowing up two Death Stars, will ever do any lasting damage to his reign. Word of God is that, had he not seemingly died on the second Death Star he'd have led the Empire to crush the rebellion. And on the rare occasions that he does have to get involved directly, he's so powerful and skilled a fighter that while a few can contend with him, no one can actually beat him (it's strongly implied he threw his duels with Mace and Starkiller to pull Anakin and Galen, respectively, to the darkside.) In Return of the Jedi Luke doesn't even try to fight him when they're face to face. It took the man who had been his #1 enforcer for decades attacking him from behind to take him out because Palpatine forgot that he has empathy and precognition and that Luke is Anakin's only connection to the reason he turned to the dark side to seemingly take him out, but in Legends, he just came back a few years later more powerful than ever and easily corrupts Luke (though at least he's now able to lose a lightsaber duel, due to his decaying clones bodies.) Meanwhile, in the finale of the third trilogy and the entire Skywalker Saga, he turns out to have come back from the dead with little explanation beyond the fact that he has access to cloning technology and forbidden Sith knowledge. The heroes don't seem to show any disbelief that Palpatine is not only alive but has also been pulling the strings from the shadows during the third trilogy, just as he always has been. There's almost a sense that his status as galactic-scale puppetmaster was somehow so inevitable that death merely slowed him down.
  • The titular creature from The Thing (1982) is yet another John Carpenter example. The Thing is a Shapeshifting, assimilating, stealthy Body Horror monstrosity that is virtually invincible. Its Bizarre Alien Biology means every piece of it is alive and able to escape. Complete incineration via fire or explosions is the only sure way of killing it, but anything less than a nuclear bombardment has no guarantee of destroying it totally, given even its blood has a mind of its own and can slither way when exposed. Even the Antarctica weather will simply freeze the creature until someone else unwittingly thaws it out. Worst still, the Thing is able to infect and transform its victims through contact like a virus, with some infected not even realising they are assimilated until it's too late. One major weakness from the original book was electricity, which could kill it, but this isn't brought up in the movie.
  • The villain in the supernatural slasher Tell Me How I Die is an advanced precog who can flawlessly see months into the future. He's always at least five steps ahead of the main characters, and although some of his victims definitely deserved their fate, his killing spree goes off without a hitch and he escapes before the police can find him. Even when the heroine acquires precognitive abilities of her own in order to predict his moves, he still outperforms her.
  • Transformers: Rise of the Beasts: Unicron, the Greater-Scope Villain is a Physical God and the size of a planet. At no point does anyone ever suggest that fighting him is even possible. All that can be done is to try to stop his minion, Scourge, from summoning him to Earth. Even after Unicron gets caught in a wormhole at the end of the film, it's openly stated that he's not dead and is likely to eventually escape back into reality.
  • The future Sentinels from X-Men: Days of Future Past. The only way to truly stop them (and the main plot of the film) is to attempt to rewrite history so that they were never created to begin with. Interestingly, the film also features an Invincible Hero: Quicksilver. Though they do not meet each other due to existing in different time lines.

    Literature 
  • The Beginning After the End: As Arthur is an Invincible Hero, it is rather fitting that the Big Bad Agrona Vritra is this trope to maintain the sense of narrative tension. Although Agrona has never been in any major direct confrontation, he is heavily implied to be much more stronger than Arthur due to being an Asura, and in the setting even the weakest of the Asuras can give the strongest mortal mages pause. However, where Agrona truly demonstrates his invincibility is that he is an unparalleled Chessmaster and Manipulative Bastard, able to Out Gambit practically everyone else in the setting, including Kezess, the ruler of the Asuras who is also a Chessmaster and Manipulative Bastard in his own right. Case in point, every time Kezess sent assassins after him, Agrona was able to dispose of them and use these failed attacks to gain favorable terms over his nemesis. He was able to conceal his plan to summon a being known as the Legacy, and by the time Kezess caught wind of it, the Legacy was already summoned. In his rashness, Kezess not only failed to kill the Legacy, but in doing so ended up obliterating all of Elenoir, an action that alienates not only the populace of Dicathen but also the rest of the Asuras. Not only that, he was able to take advantage of Arthur's decisions to further his own goals, such as his introduction of a steam engine (which his servants reverse-engineered to create an armada of steamships) and the beast will he gave to Tessia (which gave him control over her life and later used to blackmail her parents into collaborating with him), as well as his liberal usage of Targeted to Hurt the Hero to weaken Arthur. Even when Arthur Came Back Strong as an aether-wielding demigod, reconquered his homeland, and returned to Alacrya to assist Seris's rebellion, Agrona is unfazed by this sudden turn of events. He had already hunted down down most of Seris's supporters, forced her and her closest allies into hiding in the Relictombs, and was able to manipulate public opinion by framing Arthur for the murder of a Sovereign and directing their animosity towards him and the other Asuras.
  • Blood Meridian has a possibly literal example in Judge Holden. While it's never made entirely clear what's going on with him, his unusual appearance, apparent ability to be in more than one place at a time, unnatural skills of persuasion, and physical strength well beyond what seems appropriate even for someone his size (at one point he one-hands a Howitzer) suggest that he is likely some sort of Humanoid Abomination. One character tells another not to be an idiot when he suggests killing the Judge, after seeing what Holden is capable of. The last line of the book is a description of the victorious Judge dancing naked in a bar, loudly declaring that he will never die.
  • The Boy Who Couldn't Sleep and Never Had To has the in-universe example of The Man. The boys seem to think he's just straight Rule of Awesome, but it would be very hard for them to keep future readers of their comic from assuming that only the authors could possibly kill him, as he literally has no weaknesses.
  • The Shadow Lord in Deltora Quest appears to be beyond death. He used to be just a mortal Evil Sorcerer who was almost killed by a dragon, but some time between arriving in the Land of Dragons aka Deltora and forming the Shadow Lands he becomes a God of Evil with no real physical form. It takes the Belt with seven Gems to cast his spirit from the land, but nobody in the book series, the sequel, spin-offs or the adaptations ever once entertains the idea that the Shadow Lord can be actually killed.
  • This is a defining characteristic of most of the gods and cosmic horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos, as the entire point of the setting is that humanity is ultimately doomed and powerless to change our fate. If any author writes a story in which Cthulhu or Nyarlathotep are actually defeated, instead of just stalled or evaded, they are most certainly doing it wrong.
  • The Dresden Files: Every monster native to the Dresdenverse can at least theoretically be killed permanently, even if that would just result in another monster taking its place. The Outsiders, however, exist outside of reality, and from what we've seen so far, they cannot be permanently destroyed or contained, only banished back out of reality until they can find another way in.
  • Everybody's favourite I'm a Humanitarian Manipulative Bastard Hannibal Lecter from Thomas Harris' books, is definitely this. Lecter is constantly in control of the situation and able to cause misery even from behind bars and in Silence of the Lambs effortlessly outwits a SWAT team and escapes. The only time he actually loses, is prior to the events of Red Dragon when Will is able to figure out he's the Serial Killer he's been searching for and calls the police, though Will is almost killed when Lecter cuts him open. By the third book Lecter ruins heaps more lives, corrupts Clarice into being his Dark Mistress and becomes a Karma Houdini. This was changed in the 2001 film adaptation where Clarice ultimately resists his psychological machinations and arrests him, in a change from the book fans actually approved of.
  • The Lincoln Rhyme series relies heavily on these to fill out pages. Count the number of times Lincoln nearly closes in on the villain only for him or her to find a way to slip away unscathed, or for it to be revealed that it was all an elaborate ruse to distract Lincoln and the cops from the villain's real target/goal, or for the story to jump forward and reveal that they had their eyes on the wrong guy while the villain escaped in disguise, etc, etc.
  • Nineteen Eighty-Four makes it abundantly clear that Big Brother and The Party are this. While theoretically they could be toppled by a rebellion among the proles, organizing such a rebellion would be virtually impossible, and their control of the flow of information is so tight that even for the people to know life would be better without them is impossible. And even if the regime was toppled in one of the three nations, there are still two more to attack the newly freed nation... Of course, the Party's grip on information is so total that for all we know, Eurasia and Eastasia might not even be real nations. Hell, Oceania might not even exist outside of Airstrip One. Still, even if the world outside of Airstrip One is free, that doesn't exactly seem to help the people living under the Party.
    • That being said, the appendix that details the Party's methodology at the end of the book exclusively refers to the Party's action in the past tense, implying that eventually the Party does get overthrown.
  • Erik the titular antagonist of The Phantom of the Opera is never really bested once throughout the novel. He's able to easily capture Christine, and Raoul even with Persian's help ultimately fail to catch him unawares and are almost killed in his Torture Chamber. The only time Erik is ever at a disadvantage is when he seemingly tries to kill Raoul at his own home, and Raoul snags him with a bullet (though it’s possible it wasn’t Erik at all and Raoul just shoot at a cat). Erik's unstoppable machinations are a big element of the book, especially given the Opera House grants him massive Home Field Advantage as a Master of Illusion. It takes Christine kissing Erik and showing him pity to actually do him in. Adaptations tend to downplay this, a Torches and Pitchforks mob kills him in the 1925 film, while in the 2004 film Raoul actually defeats him in a Sword Fight and Christine has plead with Raoul not to kill him.
  • Star Wars Legends: Breakout Character Grand Admiral Thrawn, the eponymous antagonist of The Thrawn Trilogy, developed a reputation for this both in and out of universe due to his Awesomeness by Analysis granting him unparalleled strategic and tactical genius, to the point where the rumor of his return in the Hand of Thrawn duology (by the same author) sends half the galaxy into hysterics. Note that the original trilogy ended with his death. The author directly addresses this in the Hand of Thrawn books by having characters point out that Thrawn was brilliant but not omniscient, and his demise was caused by a combination of factors he didn't see coming or even misinterpreted the significance of.
  • Tolkien's Legendarium:
    • Melkor aka Morgoth being one of the Valar, and a God of Evil to boot is seemingly unable to be totally destroyed, at least before the prophesied Dagor Dagorath —because As Long as There Is Evil Morgoth will continue to exist. He goes on absolute tear in The Silmarillion and while he does suffer two humiliating defeats early on at the hands of Boisterous Bruiser Tulkas, his winning streak after that lasts for literal centuries. While captured by the Valar he pulls a fake redemption and becomes The Corrupter of Noldor particularly Fëanor and by the time the Valar catches wind of his scheming Melkor escapes. Enlisting the help of the Giant Spider Ungoliant Melkor ruins the Two Trees and kills Fëanor's father Finwë and steals the Silmarils which causes Fëanor to betray the Valar in order to pursue them. Now a proper Evil Overlord, Morgoth devastates the land with Elven lords Fëanor and Fingolfin both dying against him, and through his lieutenant Sauron Finrod Galadriel's brother is killed too. In Nirnaeth Arnoediad with his dragons he fells many of the princes and rulers of Men, Elves, and Dwarves and via the cursed Húrin Morgoth helps causes the death Elven king Thingol in Doraith and brings absolute misery for his son Turin. Worst of all, through the traitor Elf Maeglin, Morgoth brings down the city of Gondolin and gains control of the entire region of Beleriand. The only setback that befalls Morgoth in this era is the Elf maiden Lúthien putting him in Forced Sleep and her boyfriend Beren cutting one of the Silmarils from his crown. It's not until the War of Wrath, which lasts forty years and requires assistance from the Valar, that Morgoth is defeated once again and cast into the void.
    • Mairon aka Sauron being a Maia is unable to be killed by conventional means, even if his body is destroyed. Like his aforementioned master Morgoth, Sauron does suffer The Worf Effect early on with Lúthien and Big Friendly Dog Huan kicking his ass at Tol-in-Gaurhot. However when Morgoth himself is taken out in the War of Wrath, Sauron uses the opportunity to surpass his master, becoming the nigh-unstoppable menace of the second and third ages of Middle Earth. He fooled the Elves of Eregion, particularly Celebrimbor, in the guise of Annatar and through him they created the Rings of Power — before in secret he forged the One Ring the master ring which would become his Soul Jar. When Elves finally cotton on and rebelled, Sauron destroyed Eregion, slew Celebrimbor and drove the Elves back to the Blue Mountains where they sheltered with the Dwarves. Sauron's dominance in Middle-Earth was nigh-absolute and through the Rings of Power he corrupted the nine kings of Men (three lords of Númenor, an Easterling king and other five kings) creating the Nazgûl, his Elite Mooks. It took aid from the Númenorians across the sea to turn the tables during Battle of the Gwathló. However victory is short lived for good guys as Sauron pulls the Falsely Reformed Villain trick like his predecessor Morgoth and letting himself be captured by the Númenorians corrupts them from within. Eru for once, delivers some divine retribution at this and sinks Númenor into the ocean, but not even an attack from the creator kills Sauron, as he reforms himself and amasses his power again. It takes the combined might of Elendil and Gil-Galad to bring Sauron down, and even then they both die in the effort. From then Sauron operates from the shadows and is kept alive through the One Ring, but still manages to scores some victories, torturing Thorin's father Thráin to death, corrupting Saruman and making Denethor go insane via the Palantír. He would've likely won the Final Battle too, if not for Gollum pulling a Nice Job Fixing It, Villain! and taking the Ring from Frodo and accidentally falling in the fire just as the Frodo claimed it for himself. According to Gandalf Sauron is now "a mere spirit of malice that gnaws itself in the shadows, but cannot again grow or take shape".
    • Ungoliant and Shelob appear to be this, most unfortunately for arachnophobes.
      • Ungoliant was so nightmarishly powerful after drinking the sap of the Two Trees, even Morgoth (who is evil incarnate) feared her and was helplessly bond in her webs and needed the Balrogs to bail him out. Her "Unlight" webs of shadow alone not even Manwë could see through, nor could Tulkas the physically strongest Valar break through them. Furthermore the Balrogs themselves could not actually kill her, Ungoliant simply departs from Middle Earth to the forgotten south of the world. It is stated, or more accurately hoped that she eventually consumed herself, but we'll never know for sure.
      • Shelob, Ungoliant's spawn likewise is portrayed as more or less unkillable. Her hide is so tough, not even Sting forged in Gondolin can do so much as scratch her and the narration makes it clear, even if the blow was wielded by an Elven warrior instead of a Hobbit like Sam it would make no dent. It takes some accidentally Inertial Impalement with Shelob crushing her own weight upon the upraised Sting and losing two of her eyes to make the spider abomination back off and flee. Yet Sam through wearing the Ring can see that she's still alive, smarting over her wounds in her lair. Like with Ungoliant, Sheldon's ultimate fate is left ambiguous, but there's still a chance she's active after Sauron's fall.
    • The Nazgûl aka Ringwraiths being evil spirits like their master are functionally immortal. While they don’t like fire nor water as demonstrated in The Fellowship of the Ring, but the best that fire does is ward them off for a time whilst the Making a Splash Elrond and Gandalf unleashes in the waters of Bruinen, doesn't destroy the Nazgûl rather just leaves them crippled and without horses. They appear again later on flying beasts and it takes Merry's Númenorian dagger to weaken the Nazgûl chief the Witch-King for Éowyn slay. The remaining eight are caught in the firestorm triggered by the Ring falling into Mont Doom alongside Gollum. Though it's left unclear if they're truly destroyed, given they operate in both the seen and unseen worlds
  • The Unexplored Summon://Blood-Sign has the White Queen, the most powerful being in the setting. She almost inevitably wins any fight; she's only defeated by somehow turning her own power against her or by making use of hundreds of Unexplored-Class Materials (each of which is more powerful than any god). Even if she's destroyed in battle, she can never be permanently killed. Kyousuke can generally foil her individual plans, but this doesn't matter to her. Because she's in love with him, any opportunity to see him is its own reward. And being immortal, she has literally all the time in the world for one of her plans to succeed.
  • In Uprooted, while any given minion of the Wood is vincible, the Chess Master behind it is invulnerable even to the Infinity +1 Sword, and few if any people can hope to avoid its reach indefinitely.
  • The short story Vilcabamba by Harry Turtledove has the Krolp, Scary Dogmatic Aliens who came to Earth and curb-stomped it so incredibly thoroughly that resistance was just impossible, and who do it a second time when the remnants of the United States of America try to uprise when they decide to strip-mine the small part of the country they live in. A direct comparison between the Conquistadors of Europe unrelentingly ruining the New World and the Krolp destroying Earth is the Title Drop.
  • Worm has Scion/Zion - ultimately the source of all the powers and before distributing them, adjusted them to be unable to affect him. Even special capes like can Eiodolon can only cause temporary damage, but he has a functionally infinite body mass to replace damaged material with, and several Game-Breaker powers that are triggered automatically to keep him alive. Eventually he is only defeated by attacking his artificial human psyche, something that wouldn't have worked if the other entity was still alive.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Angel: You do not beat the Senior Partners, and if you do, it doesn't last. You can win a hundred little victories against them, but in the end none of them really matter. You can foil any schemes their employees or clients cook up, you can kill their minions and destroy their power base, but they'll just come back. They were here thousands of years before you were born and they'll be here long after you're dust. You can't stop them, you can't hurt them and you certainly can't kill them. All you can ever hope to do is momentarily inconvenience them. And if you somehow manage to do that (and it won't be easy), there will be consequences. This is a deliberate intent on the part of the writers. A major theme of the show is that even if evil can't ever be finally defeated, it can only be delayed or held off, fighting back against it is absolutely the right thing to do.
  • Arrow:
    • Malcolm Merlyn has basically become this, because he's always one step ahead of Oliver Queen. In Season 1, every time Oliver faced his Black Arrow alter ego in one-on-one combat, he lost. Oliver is able to stop Merlyn's master plan of destroying the Glades, but not before most of the zone gets destroyed anyway. Malcolm is able to fake his death in Season 2 and get to know his biological daughter Thea. During season 3, Malcolm is able to continue scheming behind the scenes and manipulate Oliver to the point that by the end of the season, Malcolm takes over the League of Assassins after Oliver killed Ra's al Ghul. It's generally subverted in season four when he agrees to allow Sara's revival, causing Nyssa to destroy the Lazarus Pit. Nyssa then challenges Malcolm for leadership, but Oliver fights in her stead, cutting off Malcolm's hand. Nyssa then disbands the League, causing Malcolm to swear vengeance. He ends up helping free Darhk from prison, resulting in Laurel's death. After Darhk is killed by Oliver, Malcolm is recruited by Eobard Thawne and Darhk from The '80s to be a part of what would be known as the Legion of Doom.
    • Nearly every Big Bad on Arrow is this to some degree, at least combat-wise. Slade had the Mirakuru, making him superhuman on top of already being a skilled enough combatant to match Oliver without it. Ra's al Ghul was the World's Best Warrior and Oliver had to get training from Ra's himself in order to beat him. Darhk had magic from a totem, arguably making him the most dangerous of them all. The only aversion so far is Season Five Big Bad Prometheus, who is more-or-less on even keel with Oliver physically and a little less skill-wise (which is still dangerous enough to anyone that isn't Oliver or a meta). Instead, his most dangerous asset is his ability to manipulate people and events to his desired outcome: psychological torture.
  • Nukus from Big Bad Beetle Borgs started out as the Outside-Context Problem variant of this; as soon as he brought to life, he proves savvy enough to destroy the Beetle Borgs' weaponry, leaving them gradually losing. When they finally defeated the invincible monster he created to fight them, it turns out he let them do it so he could get rid of the actual villains and take over as the new Big Bad. He then proceeds to deliver a Curb-Stomp Battle to the protagonists, obliterating their powers, and transforms the one who gave them power into ice. Of course, once the protagonists got new powers and he became the new Big Bad, he lost this status and ended up defeated on a regular basis.
  • Blake's 7: Servalan almost always ran circles around Blake and his Rebels. Most of the time, she left them holding the bag after playing them too. She also survives the series finale. The alleged heroes don't.
  • The Bold and the Beautiful, like many other soap operas, uses this trope frequently. "Dollar" Bill Spencer (Commonly written as "$Bill") has committed an overwhelming amount of crimes in his (almost) 10 year tenure on the show, but he has yet to be arrested or convicted for any of them- more times than not, because of his wealth and influence. From paying off journalists to write bad reviews that will benefit his company, to arson, and so many more things, Bill seems to be an unstoppable force of amorality.
  • Pelant from Bones is turning into this. He can pretty much hack any system he wants, change whatever records he wants, stop traffic, fake video footage, block cell phone signals, and kill anyone he wants at any time. With these abilities from a computer, it seems the writers have made his character so powerful of a threat, the team simply cannot defeat him and any defeat would come at Pelant's own mistake, which according to his character, seems impossible. Ultimately that's exactly what happens, as he overestimates his own importance. He honestly believes that Brennan values his intelligence over Booth's life. He's wrong.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
    • Throughout Season 5, most of Glory's encounters with the Scoobies end in her favor, with the Scoobies forced to retreat. By the time of "Spiral," when Glory finally discovers that Dawn is the Key, Buffy shocks her friends by declaring that they'll never be able to defeat her, and now that she knows who the Key is, they have no choice but to leave Sunnydale or die.
    • The First Evil, being a non-corporeal God of Evil, fits the bill. In "Showtime," Beljoxa's Eye claims outright that the First cannot be fought or killed. It has been around since before the universe came into existence, and will continue to exist long after everything else is dead.
  • Chernobyl: For as much as an out-of-control, overloaded and ruptured nuclear reactor can be considered a villain with how little awareness or life it has, it's the closest thing the series has. The fission reaction within the titular power plant's remains cannot be stopped manually, and will only do so naturally after the remaining fuel runs out....which will take around 50,000 years to do. All that can be done is contain the fallout by burying the reactor in boron and sand, and eventually walling it off entirely from the world at large with steel and concrete.
  • Criminal Minds:
    • The show occasionally has some absurdly victorious killers, such as in the episodes "North Mammon" and "Mr. Scratch". In both episodes, the BAU can't even figure out their identities — let alone track them down — until after they've succeeded in their sprees anyway, and they even get to Go Out with a Smile upon being arrested. In particular, Mr. Scratch's plan depended on Fantastic Drugs that don't actually exist in real life.
    • On a larger scale, we have Arc Villain Frank Breitkopf from "No Way Out" and "No Way Out II: The Evilution of Frank". He's unbreakably charming, he's Crazy-Prepared, he keeps outwitting the BAU, his Villainous Breakdown is downplayed Tranquil Fury instead of satisfying outrage, he's never actually punished (instead dying on his own terms), and his lasting influence even sends Gideon (the original Big Good, no less) over the Despair Event Horizon and causes him to leave the BAU forever.
  • The Alliance from Firefly already won the Great Offscreen War before the series began. Mal and our intrepid heroes may win short-term victories on a small scale by pulling off this heist or evading that patrol, but at the end of the day, the Alliance will remain in power and the Browncoats will remain a historical footnote. The best Our Heroes can hope for is to fly far enough under the radar to continue to live their lives the way they want. This may have been subverted as of The Movie; it's unclear whether the PR nightmare that the revelation of the Reavers' origins represents will be enough to do any lasting damage to the Alliance' moral authority. Given its at least somewhat democratic structure, it's theoretically possible for everyone directly involved to be replaced without harming the overall political structure at all.
  • A The Flash (2014)/Arrow crossover introduces Vandal Savage, a 4000-year-old immortal, who is also extremely adept at using knives, whose skills put even Barry and Oliver to shame (that's right, Barry might have Super-Speed, but Vandal's millennia of training make even him barely able to keep up). In fact, in one timeline, Savage manages to kill most of the heroes and destroy Central City. Fortunately, Barry's time-meddling results in Savage being burned to ashes by his own weapon. You think this stopped him? Not according to Legends of Tomorrow, where Savage is revealed to be able to regenerate From a Single Cell. In fact, the spin-off's entire first season is dedicated to trying to stop Savage in multiple time periods, with the heroes usually failing. It turns out that the Time Masters themselves were helping Savage and manipulating the team in order to stop a future Alien Invasion. Eventually, Savage is only stopped because his plan for unraveling time itself has a side effect of turning him mortal again, allowing him to be killed. Season 2 has the Legion of Doom, a trio composed of Eobard Thawne, Damien Darhk, and Malcolm Merlyn (with Rip being temporarily turned evil by Thawne's memory manipulation, thus becoming a fourth member). While Darhk and Merlyn are perfectly killable, especially since this is Darhk from The '80s (i.e. before he learned magic), they still have their League of Assassins training. Meanwhile, Thawne is practically unstoppable, since there are no speedsters among the Legends (and no one things to use the cold gun on him), except he himself is on the run from the Black Flash (ex-Zoom), so he can only pop in for quick visits.
  • The second season of The Flash (2014) has Zoom, a speedster much more powerful and skilled than Barry. Their first encounter ends with Barry paralyzed from the waist down (he gets better thanks to his Healing Factor), after Zoom counters Barry's every move and proves to be a skilled fighter to boot (it helps that Zoom was the one who taught Barry one of those moves in the first place using his "Jay Garrick" persona). Barry spends the whole season working on his speed and skills just to get to Zoom's level (which is precisely what Zoom wants, since his end goal is to steal Barry's speed, so he's really just "fattening him up"). Just as Barry manages to become faster thanks to Time Travel and the Reverse-Flash's help, Zoom uses good old-fashioned kidnapping to force Barry to give up his speed. Barry manages to get his speed back, but it's not until the season finale that he becomes able to actually best Zoom in combat. Then comes season 3, and Barry has to face Savitar, a self-described god of speed, who is so fast he appears to be teleporting from place to place. There is really nothing Barry can do against him directly. Their first fight after Savitar breaks free from his prison does have Barry landing a few punches and actually hurting Savitar, but the fight still ends with him being nearly killed.
  • Game of Thrones has a tendency to give Adaptational Intelligence to many of the more evil characters to give the audience someone to root against.
    • Ramsay Snow/Bolton may as well be despair in human form — if he doesn't somehow win himself, his psychologically broken or nearly as despicable cronies will make sure things still go his way. The first thing that can be considered a loss for him (outside of succession issues) is Theon and Sansa escaping Winterfell in the Season 5 finale, but he obviously wasn't around to intervene. He can even kill the Warden of the North (his own father, Roose Bolton) in his own chamber, in front of his bannerman and a Maester, and then kill the Warden's wife and newborn son in a public setting without any trouble. His villainy never backfires on him, and in fact he easily crushes the combined forces of the Northerners and Wildlings rallying against him during the Battle of the Bastards. It takes thousands of knights pouring in from the Vale literally out of nowhere to defeat him, which he had absolutely no way of planning for.
    • Cersei Lannister, as the last major human antagonist standing by mid Season 6, was promoted to Big Bad. But because, at that point in the books she's lost most of her power and sanity and the writing seemed on the wall, the series began bending over backwards to give her lucky breaks to keep her a credible threat. She evidently destroys the entire continent-wide religion that wanted her dead with a single explosion, and this restores her to power instead of making her even more of a pariah as it did for previous monarch's who tried. Another major rival, House Tyrell, gets easily defeated offscreen, and new, sometimes overpowered allies flock to her side when, realistically, she should able to count her loyal supporters on one hand. This is theorized to have occurred due to the Adapted Out character of "Aegon VI", the allegedly still alive son of Rhaegar Targaryen. The end of the fifth book and released preview chapters from the sixth book imply that he will have taken the throne from the much despised Cersei and will be the one opposing Daenerys when she finally arrives on Westeros against a much more united kingdom.
  • Hannibal Lecter from Hannibal. The result of the writers pulling The Bad Guy Wins one too many times. A chessmaster highly skilled in manipulation (and playing Xanatos Speed Chess), he flawlessly plays everyone like a fiddle in the series, up to and including everyone who knows he is the Chesapeake Ripper. To make it worse, he always gets away with his crimes. In the Season one finale "Savoureux", he successfully frames the protagonist Will Graham for his murders. And in the Season two finale "Mizumono", he manages to beat Jack in hand-to-hand combat and grievously wound him, have Alana pushed out of a window by Abigail Hobbs (who he secretly kept alive all season), gut Will Graham, and then cut Abigail's throat. He then makes his escape, leaving all four of them to their gruesome fates. The last shot of the season is him on a plane out of the country. This time it is, at least, a bitter victory; he was very hurt by Will's "betrayal" or he wouldn't have reacted so violently. That being said, the final season revokes all of this, as he is violently beaten by Jack, arrested and humiliated by the police, and ultimately implied to die at Will's hand in the end.
  • Heroes (2006):
    • Sylar. He kills numerous people, usually minor characters, over multiple seasons; and despite being mortally stabbed (twice), getting completely incinerated, having his entire brain overwritten, etc., he still keeps coming back, usually with even more powers, to terrorize the rest of the cast.
    • Arthur Petrelli. While he's around, he's able to overpower Sylar effortlessly, as well as killing off nearly every major baddie the show had cultivated up to that point. Realizing their mistake, the writers deemed him Too Powerful to Live and had the three most powerful non-Arthur characters come together to kill him for good. Embodies this trope to a much greater degree than Sylar, because Sylar's rise to godhood occurred over the course of the series and stemmed from his own determinator persistence and cleverness; Arthur's ascent occurred offscreen and before the main storyline, and comes without any real emotional baggage, so there's no sense that he was ever particularly vulnerable.
  • Kamen Rider Build has Evolt. He's so powerful that he could easily crush all the heroes right from the start. However, he hides his full power and only uses enough to challenge the heroes because he needs them alive for his plans. Said plans are that his power is actually greatly diminished from what they actually could be, and he wants to trick both the heroes and the villains into helping him restore his true power so that he can destroy the world. By the time the heroes start catching up to him, that's when he gets the first key to getting that power: the Evol Driver, which allows him to become Kamen Rider Evol. From there, his power grows dramatically as the pieces of his years-long plan begin to fall into place, to the point that the next few episodes are pretty much the heroes struggling to try and catch up with him only for him to get even more powerful. It's only when Build gets his Super Mode that the heroes can even pose a challenge to him at full power, and even then it's still an uphill battle. In the end it takes slamming two parallel Earths together to defeat him, and he even manages to come back from that in the post-series movie and get away.
  • Kanzaki Shirou from Kamen Rider Ryuki, since his main plan is to make sure the titular Kamen Riders fight each other, he's effectively getting what he wants for most of the series, and even if they refuse to fight, his plans only require riders to die, whether from fighting each other or outside circumstances. As he's a ghost, it also means directly challenging him is impossible, and any time he does feel the need to do something himself he sends his avatar Kamen Rider Odin, who far outclasses the other riders and only loses a couple of fights due to him getting careless, and Kanzaki can just send out replacements for him if he's killed. In the end, the only thing that stops him is coming to grips with Yui being opposed to his plans.
  • Oma Zi-O from Kamen Rider Zi-O, the titular future Evil Overlord version of the protagonist. Easily by far the strongest character in the franchise. Not only is he a Physical God who rules over all of time and space, he is also the literal embodiment of all the powers of every single rider, both good and evil ones and that's not including his own powers. It would be easier to list down what he can't do instead (And it's a VERY short list). An upgraded version of the previous Invincible Villain Evolt (See above) was taken down in one hit. Even Kamen Rider Decade the Guardian of the Multiverse couldn't defeat him, and that was when he had been greatly weakened after resetting the multiverse at the end of the main story.
  • Hideo Akaishi is this for most of Kamen Rider Revice. He's Running Both Sides of the conflict between Fenix and the Deadmans, so the way the conflict turns out is ultimately decided by him, and sure enough while the Deadmans do get defeated, Akaishi still succeeds in his actual goal of reviving Giff. Any attempts the heroes make to defeat him fall flat because of how good a manipulator he is and all the resources he has at his disposal, and, failing those, he can always just call in more muscle from the demon lord he's made a pact with. He's even able to accomplish turning Daiji against his family and coaxing him into becoming his new enforcer. He gets less effective later on though when he actually goes One-Winged Angel and fights the Kamen Riders, but even when he finally is killed by Daiji, it's exactly what he wanted as Daiji then goes to try and succeed him as Giff's observer.
  • Leverage: Sterling. Never. Loses. The best the con artist team can manage is misdirection. Or arranging that the easiest way for him to win will also help them. The team's entire approach works by isolating the ways in which their targets are in conflict with the greater system (the law, the government, societal expectations) and getting them identified and rejected by it. Sterling isn't an especially nice person, and he's usually doing at least mildly nasty things for fairly mercenary reasons, but he's an integral part of the system being everything it expects of him. Thus within the context of the series he's exactly what they can't beat.
  • The Borg in Star Trek: The Next Generation started out as this in their first few appearances; their technology was simply more advanced than that of The Federation to the point where Starfleet's ships stood no chance in combat against theirs, and they usually ignored any attempts to speak to or negotiate with them. They did go through Villain Decay, though, and later encounters had their threat level end up as "extremely dangerous but definitely not invulnerable".
  • Andre Linoge from the 3-part Storm of the Century miniseries. By his own admission, Linoge is dying and his Evil Plan revolves around that fact, but that's cold comfort for the people of Little Tall Island as from the start of the series to its conclusion, the townspeople are utterly incapable of stopping him and whatever action they do take {such as locking him in a prison cell that he clearly could have escaped at any moment) is solely because he lets them. (And he gets a sick kick out of screwing with them).
  • It's common place in Super Sentai to have some henchmen or Big Bad who goes out and hands repeated defeats to the titular team, though never kills them for whatever reason, before the team eventually gets strong to beat them. For the most part the trope works since the defeats mostly inconvenience the heroes. The other case where it tends to occur is if it's a Sixth Ranger who starts off as a villain for whatever reason before joining the team, to show off how badass they are before joining, which tends to lead to a Redemption Demotion to avoid them becoming a Spotlight-Stealing Squad. Whether or not their story arc works tends to vary.
  • Anna on V (2009). This is even lampshaded by Erica. No matter what the Fifth Column does, Anna always comes out on top. Either through Diabolus ex Machina or just good PR, every supposed win they've had is thrown right back in their faces. In the season 2 finale, the Fifth Column decides to take out Anna. Result? Anna uses Bliss on pretty much all of humanity; the Fifth Column is basically defeated; Diana, Tyler, and Ryan are dead; and the queen egg hatches to replace Lisa. This was all the writers got to before the show was Cut Short.
  • Warehouse 13 seasonal villains are prone to this. They typically outwit or outfight the heroes at every turn, always have some artifact that can effortlessly capture, paralyze or otherwise neutralize the heroes whenever they get cornered, and in the end they either lose by Deus Ex Machina or by getting stabbed in the back by next season's villain to show that he or she is even tougher. Especially noticeable in season four, when Artie turns out to be the villain and suddenly turns from competent but fallible to completely unstoppable.
  • The X-Files: The Cigarette Smoking Man survived things no human being ought to have survived, and repeatedly came out on top with Mulder and Scully once again discredited and humiliated. Even though he apparently dies definitively in an airstrike, he still has the last laugh when he gets to tell Mulder and Scully that the alien invasion is scheduled for 2012. The new miniseries set in 2016, revealed the Smoking Man somehow survived the airstrike and the next 15 years and is still in control of everything while smoking from a tracheotomy hole in his neck.

    Mythology and Religion 
  • Hindu Mythology: Many Asuras tried to invoke this in vain. They would perform austerities for several millennia and obtain boons from Lord Brahma. They would first request immortality from Brahma who would deny it since he is himself not immortal. So the Asuras would ask to be killed in the most improbable/impossible situation. Naturally the gods (usually Vishnu) would find loopholes in the boon and generate the situation where the Asura would be killed. Some of these situations were:
    • To not be killed during day or night, by man or animal, or by an armed or unarmed opponent. (The Asura was killed at evening, by Vishnu as half-man half-lion, with claws).
    • To not be harmed by a weapon that is either dry or wet. (The Asura was killed by sea foam).
    • To be killed by a woman (the Asura presumed that women were weak and lacked combat ability. He was killed by the War Goddess Durga).
    • To not be killed by any of the races in the universe except humans (Ravana thought that if the gods couldn't defeat him, humans obviously didn't have a chance. Then Ramayana happened).
  • Egyptian Mythology has the dreaded primordial serpent of chaos, Apep (or Apophis in its Greek translation), who sought to reduce the entire universe into a void. The benevolent god of light, Ra, can destroy Apep as many times as he likes, but thanks to its Resurrective Immortality, the serpent always comes back good as new. Should Apep win, all light and life will be annihilated.

    Pro Wrestling 
  • In the territorial days, promoters sometimes used Invincible Villain gimmicks to push physically larger, stronger wrestlers as unstoppable. The storylines were usually formulaic: The heel would systematically beat down a series of jobbers, before easily defeating any of the low- to mid-card wrestlers and then several of the highlight wrestlers... all of them being completely one-sided matches where the villain would not so much as flinch against even the most powerful blows their foes tried. This, naturally, would eventually set up a confrontation between the lead babyface wrestlers (especially if he were champion) or, during the territorial days, a "special appearance from André the Giant," who would ultimately find a weakness in this wrestler and hand him a loss.
  • Before the end of the Detroit territory, the original Sheik was this to anyone who was not Rooting for the Empire.
  • In the summer of 1989, the WWF (as WWE was then known) pushed Tiny Lister Jr.'s No Holds Barred character Zeus as an unstoppable, undefeatable villain who posed a genuine threat not only to Hulk Hogan's World Championship, but Hogan's well-being as well. This was done without the (apparent) benefit of putting Zeus in a series of squash matches against jobbers and low-carders on TV (to build Zeus' in-ring persona and get his moveset over) ... but eventually, the trope became averted.
  • The Undertaker rode a heavily hyped 21-year win streak at WrestleMania, despite no one really believing he'll lose.note  Memes have been made about him being beaten by the least likely person. Of course, the "villain" part only applies due to his angle and whenever he's a Heel (which he hadn't been from 2003 until 2016, when he became The Authority's hired gun to battle Shane McMahon for (kayfabe) control of the WWE). He was at his most insufferably invincible during his "Big Evil" phase in late 2001-2002. Throughout this time period he would go through a series of extremely one sided feuds that involved him beating the piss out of whatever babyface unfortunate enough to get in his way and getting away with it.
  • For a couple years after being recognized both in-story and out as Vince McMahon's son-in-law, Triple H could never lose a major match. Thanks to being part of Vince's family, "Trips" is pretty squarely heel, though occasionally a lesser of two evils. Triple H actually turned Face shortly after WrestleMania 22 in 2006 all the way until SummerSlam 2013, and was actually an Invincible Hero during that period of time instead.
  • The New World Order faction in WCW was a notable example of an entire group of invincible villains. This was especially evident in the group's early days, where the nWo would frequently run roughshod over their WCW foes and episodes of WCW Monday Nitro would end with the nWo triumphant more often than not.
  • In 2012, John Laurinaitis (who was Senior Vice President of Talent Relations in the WWE) became the GM of Raw and SmackDown, and before the interim GM of Raw. The issue with his character wasn't that he didn't play it well (he did), but that, as a heel GM, it seemed no one could ever outsmart him, and his character nearly took over the show, getting more air time than some of the wrestlers combined. It got so bad that Vince's "firing" of John at No Way Out was welcome because someone FINALLY was able to outsmart him, despite their appreciation for how well John played the role. This is because a heel boss usually only works if some wrestlers, preferably baby faces, are able to outsmart them, such as "Stone Cold" Steve Austin finding a way around Vince's stacking the deck at many points during their feud in 99. Vince seemed to have things work, but Austin found a way around it. This hasn't been the case with some of the more recent heel GMs that the WWE has put out there, where it might take months for any heel GM to get their comeuppance due to them either being way too smart, having way too many allies, or just being on TV way too long during a show. However, heel GMs (Laurinaitis, especially), as well as some other heels, when they finally get beat, might draw some Fan Dumb from fans who insist that a character has been ruined, or that the WWE did something awful because they lost a battle if they like something about the character to a fault.
  • The Authority seemed to teeter on this. Most believe the angle was only around because the WWE writers didn't really have any other major heel stables to work with, and for the few weeks right after Summerslam 2013, it did seem like they were becoming that (how many shows in a row did we really have to see Daniel Bryan get beat up the exact same way to end the show before we got the point?).
    • This was right when just about everyone thought that the WWE was booking Bryan extremely weakly, and the heel wrestler in the angle was Randy Orton, who hasn't always been the best person outside of kayfabe.
    • The explicit leaders of the Authority, Triple H and Stephanie McMahon both dove headfirst into this; especially Stephanie. They almost always came out on top in whatever they were doing and anything that seemed like it would or should finally defeat them or at least get them off TV would only turn out to be a minor setback and be completely undone within a few weeks. While Triple H is willing to put over other guys in matches (like Daniel Bryan at Wrestlemania 30 and The Shield in the months after that) he still defeated Sting in his WWE debut match. Stephanie was much worse about it, since she always made others look like fools (even her own allies) if they annoyed her in any way and, since her attention was almost exclusively aimed at the male roster, nobody was allowed to physically retaliate against her the way it normally would be in a wrestling setting, but were almost never allowed to come out on top against her with words either.
    • Despite being made to look like a weak, sniveling, pathetic coward outside of matches, Seth Rollins ultimately fits the bill of an Invincible Villain. Much like the other members of the Authority, he pretty much always wins, and on the off-chance he loses, chances are there will be a rematch where Rollins wins and gets the last laugh over whatever Babyface stood in his way (prime examples being Dean Ambrose, John Cena, Randy Orton, and Brock Lesnar). His WWE World Heavyweight Championship reign ended prematurely due to an injury, but upon his return, he was immediately thrust back into the top Heel role and within a month, defeated Roman Reigns (who is often labeled a boring invincible hero) clean to win the title back (though he ended up losing it to Dean Ambrose minutes later thanks to Money in the Bank). Later, he was made the very first pick in the 2016 Draft. As the Monday Night Messiah he continues to do things "for the greater good" and generally wins his feuds.
    • The Shield in general was this during their first months of existence. They would frequently interfere in both matches containing their members and matches containing other wrestlers, and rarely ever got any real punishment, as the matches would usually be thrown out as a result of their antics. However, for some reason, fans still liked them despite all this. Eventually, it came out that they were under the Authority's orders, but just when it looked like they could be the ones to stop them, Rollins betrayed the group and disbanded it.
  • While generally Invincible Villain gimmicks are legitimately used to push Monster Heels, there have been times where the trope was grossly misused or misapplied. One famous example was the WWF's Saturday Night's Main Event in 1988, where Mr. Fuji promised viewers that his latest find, the Super Ninja, would not only defeat the Ultimate Warrior for the Intercontinental Championship, he would virtually destroy him ... all while Super Ninja acts like a Stone Wall and doesn't so much as even flinch at Warrior's most powerful moves. Of course, Warrior turned that trick right around and destroyed Super Ninja (a masked Rip Oliver, of the Pacific Northwest Wrestling league, who from time to time served as a jobber to WWF wrestlers) and foiled Fuji's plans for world domination ... at least in the world of the WWF.
  • TNA's director of wrestling operations MVP after his Face–Heel Turn. He was free to pit World Heavyweight Champion Eric Young in as many hopeless matches as he saw fit, in order to soften him up for what MVP considered to be an inevitable title victory at the next pay per view, silencing any dissent among the baby faces with suspensions, unwanted matches, or simply not allowing them to be booked. His momentum ended up being halted by his own knee injury, which just resulted him throwing all his power behind Bobby Lashley, which in turn led to MVP losing his power thanks to a Deus ex Machina called the Board of Directors, allowing Lashley to become champion but also giving Bobby some vulnerability, despite MVP's claims to the contrary.
  • Because of her status as a Creator's Pet, Charlotte Flair was booked for a lot of accomplishments from the moment of her debut, including her win-loss record (to the point that she was undefeated in single matches for sixteen PPVs), rarely being pinned in non-single matches even if she didn't win, becoming the only woman to win all single Woman's Championships (with the exception of the original,) breaking Trish Stratus' record of most Women's Championships won by a woman faster than it took Trish to earn that record, ending Asuka's 914-day undefeated streak, and even defeating Trish Stratus herself. In fact, the only people who actually defeated her in single matches (at least on-screen) are Becky Lynch, Sasha Banks, Bayley, Nia Jax, and Carmella. Being the daughter of one of the company's greatest legends sure has its privileges.
  • Brock Lesnar has been built as the most dominant Wrestling Monster the company has ever had. In less than a year, he already defeated three of WWE's legends, and won his first WWE Championship in 5 months. He destroyed everyone in his way, and as of the end of his first run in the company, he had only lost five times. After returning in 2012, Lesnar was still a force to be reckoned with, among other things holding the Universal Championship for 504 days (the longest world championship reign since Hulk Hogan's first reign, although he didn't compete as frequently), ending The Undertaker's undefeated streak at WrestleMania, and becoming the first person to defeat Goldberg cleanly as well as the secondnote  to kick out of the Jackhammer.
  • Despite the praise received for his improved character, the only real difference between Face "the Big Dog" Roman Reigns and Heel "The Tribal Chief" Roman Reigns is that the latter actually gets the crowd response that he's supposed to. Otherwise, Reigns loses as often as a heel as he did as a face, which is to say not at all.note  To those in favour of the character, his invincibility is a central part of the character and his rule over the Bloodline. In the end, it took no less than four acts of interference against him to finally make him lose the belt.
  • Ronda Rousey. Other than her defeats to Charlotte Flair, Becky Lynch and Liv Morgan (twice), she's the final boss among women's wrestlers.

    Tabletop Games 
  • While the God-Machine from Demon: The Descent isn't actively malicious, it's still the Big Bad of the setting. And because it is so incredibly vast and powerful that humans simply can't grasp the end goal of its Gambit Roulette, it's effectively impossible to fight. However, because the God-Machine is not interested in spending resources on pointless battles, it will simply give up and get what it wants some other way if it meets resistance, which is the closest thing to victory that can be achieved against the God-Machine.

    Theatre 
  • In Pokémon Live!, MechaMew2 wins every battle it participates in until the very end, meaning it defeated at least 250 trainers offscreen. It takes Mewtwo to stop it by using Ash's memories to give it knowledge of right and wrong, causing it to become sentient and blow itself up to stop Giovanni's plans.

    Toys 

    Video Games 
  • The Deer (and other anomalous animals) cannot be killed by any means in 99 Nights in the Forest. The worst you can do to it is flash it in the face using the flashlight, but that only momentarily stops it in its tracks.
  • The Templars from Assassin's Creed are really starting to feel like this, at least during the present; in the segments in the past they suffer so many defeats them winning being a Foregone Conclusion can come off as Fridge Logic. For starters, Abstergo (the Templars' front company) already holds a large monopoly on the world's economy and technology. Their archenemies, the Assassins, are on the brink of extinction. By the time the games take place, the Templars' plan for world domination is largely unopposed, save for the last Assassins, who seek out the Pieces of Eden to stop them. In Assassin's Creed III, Desmond kills Warren Vidic and Daniel Cross, two very important Templar members, but even then William Miles says that their deaths will not affect the Templars in the long run.
  • Baldur's Gate III has Karma Houdini Mizora, The Dragon to the archdevil Zariel and the Big Bad of Folk Hero warlock Wyll's questline as a result of her being his patron. Due to her contract with Wyll and status in the infernal court, even if the party could harm her they'd be risking Wyll's life in the process and the one time she appears outside of cutscenes Zariel allows her to pull a Villain: Exit, Stage Left every time she's attacked.
  • BlazBlue seems to be fond of these types of villains, because all of its known villains are this in some way, shape, or form. Two of them prove to be Not So Invincible After All in Chronophantasma, though.
    • Relius Clover has remained enigmatic in his ability to plan ahead and outfit Ignis accordingly, and while he has little direct impact on the story, it's safe to say that a large portion of the Evil Plan is of his creation. note  Further, while Relius avoids conflict most of the time, almost any time someone fights him, they either get subdued and/or apprehended, or it's time for a Bad Ending. The exception is Valkenhayn, who thrashes him enough to force him to withdraw, but not enough to derail the plan. In Chronophantasma, while Ragna and Noel (followed by Makoto and Tsubaki) help Bang hold off Relius, Litchi and Carl, it isn't until Valkenhayn intervenes that Bang gets to use the Lynchpin and Rettenjou on his terms, effectively scuttling Relius' plans completely and leaving him a broken shell of a man leashed by his own pawns for the sake of saving people he never had any intention of aiding...but in the end, he eventually gets his act together, shows Carl how to see souls and sends him down an even darker path, and then takes off through a Cauldron and out of reach of the heroes.
    • Yuuki Terumi is even more broken, and is nearly completely overwhelming in terms of combat ability, and is unafraid to rub it in the protagonists' faces whenever he can. Further rubbing salt in the wound, every time he has lost in combat it is beneficial to the Evil Plan. Jin on the verge of owning him? He dives into a cauldron to force a reset. Ragna rocks his face in the True Ending? Relius kills Terumi soon after so he can infiltrate Takamagahara. Kokonoe keeps a loaded nuke silo for this? With the Imperator observing him, a number of lifelinks, and Phantom as his exit bus, all that will do is annihilate millions of innocents. Effective Extend, his "invincible" facade rapidly falls apart; Makoto fell into the Wheel of Fortune timeline, eluded Relius' pursuit of her, and obliterated Terumi's plans as collateral damage in Slight Hope, and in Chronophantasma, her actions alongside Jin and Noel, with Kagura and Kokonoe on technical support, strip him of his last anti-Hakumen resort, whilst a parallel scheme by Rachel, Trinity and the aforementioned Hakumen ends with Terumi biting it courtesy of Time Killer...but it turns out he managed to survive that by Observing his own existence. By Central Fiction, he spends most of it in the background desperately trying to figure out a way to keep himself from permanently dying in about a week's time, but eventually decides to let the heroes do all the work of finishing off Nine and Izanami, and then pays Hakumen back by obliterating his soul before taking back the Susano'o Unit and becoming his true self of the god Susano'o, who annihilates all the heroes. It's only when Ragna rips him out and they fight to the death one last time does Terumi finally die.
    • Imperator Librarius, like Relius, mostly provided crippling support in Continuum Shift, and when she acted as if she was in charge of affairs, Rachel refused to buy it. However, Chronophantasma paints a different picture with this trope front and center: as Hades Izanami, an avatar of death, she possesses powers beyond what the protagonists have shown to be able to handle, up to and including drawing Take-Mikazuchi from orbit and firing at Rachel and Amaterasu (the former using Tsukuyomi to protect the latter) with impunity, and later causes Nu to merge with Ragna, driving the latter's Azure Grimoire out of control and having him overwhelm Noel and Jin, the latter beaten to an inch of his life. To drive the point home that she's the power in charge, she leaves Terumi and Relius to their fates, having no further use for them.
    • From the same game we also have Azrael, The Mad Dog, who combines this trope with Too Powerful to Live. To give you a good idea, think Relius and Terumi, merge them together and crank it up. While Azrael is not a tactical planner or a Manipulative Bastard like the former two, he makes up for it in raw physical power. Both Story Mode and his Arcade Mode basically consists of him steamrolling over the cast and he even admits he's only using a fraction of his actual power.note  And even then, he either decimates strong opponents like Ragna or Valkenhayn or forces other opponents like Hakumen and Rachel to retreat. And unlike the above two he's never been defeated in a straight-up fight and had to be sealed away in the space between dimensions by Kokonoe to be dealt with.note 
  • Bendy: The Ink Demon has never lost a direct fight in canon. He's the strongest, fastest, and toughest being in the studio and any attempt to fight him will result in you quickly being curbstomped. If you manage to unlock the Tommy Gun in Bendy and the Ink Machine, you have the opportunity to try shooting him. It doesn't work.
  • Gabriel Rorke from Call of Duty: Ghosts comes across quite heavily as this. Despite the hero's best efforts, and his many losses and injuries, he still manages to magically come out on top on nearly every possible angle. The most egregious example comes at the end, when despite being shot point blank in the chest with a .44 round and being left to drown in a sinking train, he survives with only minor injuries and kidnaps the main protagonist to brainwash against his brother, making him the first and only villain in the entire Call of Duty franchise to be a total Karma Houdini.
  • Carmen Sandiego, full stop. In some games it's possible for her to be arrested and jailed, but never actually held; she always escapes. In the case of the game show, a contestant winning the bonus round resulted in her capture, but only until the next episode.
  • Cyberpunk 2077: There is an ongoing, age-old conflict between conglomerates that love staffing themselves with psychopaths and every average jerk who would gladly become a scummy career criminal if they could afford it, and the former is winning. No matter what anyone does, even if they manage to assassinate the top brass of the corpos, the corporations themselves will simply use their hoarded wealth to hunker down and recover, or even work with their hated archrivals to ensure the peasants stay peasants. But this conflict is generally a delusion between both sides to distract themselves from the true, undefeatable threat, a horde of AIs that have taken control of the world's secret military bases. They ensure the world stays divided, they have total domination over the ocean itself, and they are multiple ages ahead of humanity's cybersecurity. The only reason they haven't conquered the world yet is because their grand scheme needs more research; they are biding their time until they can figure out how to 'hijack' purely-biological hosts, enslaving every last living cell on Earth to the will of the cyber-organisms. All attempts to kill the AIs have utterly failed.
  • Dead Space is about a group of normal repairmen desperately trying (and ultimately failing) to survive an intergalactic zombie apocalypse. No matter how many necromorphs they torture into submission, there's always too many to take back whatever they've infested. The invincibility sinks in when it turns out the Greater-Scope Villain is a pantheon of moon-sized reality-warping zombie gods. The best they manage is to kill one incomplete god - which then pisses the rest of the pantheon off, and they consume the entirety of humanity in a cosmic feeding frenzy.
  • Diablo: For the first two games and most of the third game, all you character does by trying to defeat the Great Evils usually only ends up helping them in some way, to the point that the first game actually ends with Diablo winning anyway despite his death at the hands of the hero.
    • Though in Diablo III this seems subverted. Diablo looks like he's winning again. But then, your hero wrecks his plan anyway and he suffers a Villainous Breakdown and die for good. Well, probably you win... Until the expansion, that is, where new Big Bad Malthael ended up releasing Diablo's essence to the world again, so Diablo can have another shot...
  • In DragonFable, Sepulchure is one of these when he isn't being Orcus on His Throne. His incompetent minions frequently fail at their tasks, but whenever Sepulchure gets directly involved, he wins every battle with ease and makes the Hero of Dragonfable look like a total Failure Hero. Sepulchure never loses until his Villainous Breakdown, which is triggered by Drakath betraying him and stabbing him in the back with his own Doom weapon.
  • Dyztopia: Post-Human RPG: Although Asterisk can be defeated in a boss fight, it's clear he's holding back to a more reasonable level to challenge Akira. It turns out he's actually Ophiuchus, the God of Cycles, and is so strong that he can oneshot Aphos, a powerful angel. Even the Big Bad Zazz stood no chance in his past fight with Asterisk, which is why he had to negotiate with Asterisk in order to get the archdemons to revive humanity. The December 2023 update includes a new battle against him in his full power archdemon form, but he also states that he has Complete Immortality, which means the party can only stalemate him at best. The only one who ever came close to killing Asterisk was the archangel leader Slash, but thanks to Quot betraying the angels, Slash loses his chance to do so. In the ending, Akira doesn't bother trying to challenge Asterisk and instead seeks a compromise to delay humanity's revival long enough for the party to reform society.
  • Elohim Eternal Series:
    • Addie and Eva suffer setbacks to their plans, but they always bounce back due to their technology and preparations. Even when the entire population of Kenoma witnesses Eva try to kill them all with the Behemoth and Leviathan laser, she simply wipes their memories with Somanites, making them ripe for manipulation again. They also have the ability to teleport back to their space station whenever they are physically threatened, though as Moshe proves, the "gods" can be injured.
    • Nicodemus is stronger than any mortal on Kenoma and he can instantly turn anyone into an archon whenever he wants. Even Jessie's anti-archon abilities cannot reverse this process. In the ending of Son of Man, he sucessfully gets all the chaos that his master, the Accuser, demanded, only failing to acquire a spear containing Jessua's blood.
  • Fate/Grand Order: After decades of being hyped up as The Dreaded across the entire Nasuverse, Lostbelt 7 finally introduces ORT, the Ultimate One of Mercury (although the Lostbelt reveals it is actually the Ultimate One of the Oort Cloud. The Final Boss Preview alike hammers in just how tough ORT - the fight is initially set up as though ORT has a single, million point health bar and one extra bar after that. But when you get past that bar, the symbol changes to reveal a total of ten heath bars, with the one you brown through being number one, and the next bar having ten million hit points. Oh, and it should be noted that ORT is level 1 during this fight. When you get to the actual fight at the climax of the Lostbelt, you have to fight ORT across multiple stages, with each break bar depleted causing it to change classes. Additionally, ORT not only has a plethora of debuts and buffs to make your fight miserable, but servants defeated by ORT are flat-out eaten, preventing you from using them again in the battle. And when you finally defeat the cyborg space spider, it pulls one more trick and hijacks the Throne of Heroes to summon itself as the Grand Foreigner, something that should be completely impossible. And even when you defeat that, it summons itself again, because it has a renewable catalyst in the form of your ally, Kukulkan, who is actually ORT's disembodied heart - defeating it for good requires her to pull a Taking Me With You on ORT via an attack that totally obliterates both of them, just to be sure that ORT can't come back. It's explicitly that ORT cannot be defeated by the power of mankind and Earth alone, and this fight proves why - ORT's Cannibalism Superpower allows it to subvert anything the world and humanity throws against it and use them better than we ever could. Oh, and just when it seemed like ORT was hopeless enough, the one you fight in Lostbelt 7 is actually weaker than the one in Proper Human History, precisely because it is missing its heart.
  • Fate/hollow ataraxia: Angra Mainyu is a self-proclaimed "weakest Heroic Spirit", unable to defeat any Servant on his own. However, he does have a significant ability: he has the absolute advantage over humans. Even if "the strongest ultra humanoid in all of human history who has powers that surpass a Heroic Spirit" were to fight him, they'd stand no chance in combat. The only two things better than him at killing humans (and only in speed and not quality at that) are ORT (the embodiment of Mercury) and Primate Murder (a living weapon made by the Earth itself for the express purpose of exterminating humanity). Luckily for everyone, despite being an embodiment of all the evil of the world, he's really not interested in killing, and can easily be killed off himself by Servants.
  • While not exceedingly common, a few of these have reared their heads in the Final Fantasy series.
    • Golbez of Final Fantasy IV, which is no surprise when you consider how many Final Fantasy games are already up here. The first time he encounters the party, he effortlessly defeats them in a cutscene. The second time, he shrugs off the most powerful magic in the game turning Tellah's Heroic Sacrifice using the Dangerous Forbidden Technique into a Senseless Sacrifice. Golbez's mind control over Kain isn't even broken at the time, though he has the wits to fake it. The next time, he once more beats the entire party and is about to claim an easy victory until a Big Damn Heroes moment by Rydia. But just when you think his invincibility has run out, nope, he gets away with his real target, the Dwarves' Crystal. In short, not once in the game can the heroes even slow down his evil plans, though you do get to defeat him in a boss battle. In an odd case for this trope, it's shown that one of his four Archfiends, Rubicante, is actually stronger than he is.
      • He'd later subvert it, though, because when the heroes actually make a dent in the Giant of Babil, he shows up, visibly upset that they ruined his plan... Then Fusoya does something to him to jog his memory... and it turns out Golbez was Brainwashed and Crazy all along, he's actually a good guy! And he's going to help you defeat the Greater-Scope Villain, Zemus! ... He's not so invincible as a good guy and ends up getting one-shot by Zeromus after dealing with Zemus in a cutscene, leaving our heroes to finish the job. This also explains the power discrepancy mentioned above; the Elemental Archfiends were really subservient to Zemus above all, though they do seem to have been genuinely fond of Golbez judging by The After Years.
    • Exdeath from Final Fantasy V is a tree filled with evil spirits taking the form of a suit of armor. Even before the game starts, it turns out that the Warriors of Light's predecessors, the Warriors of Dawn, couldn't kill him and had to settle for sealing him on Bartz's world using the crystals, a seal which breaks years later when the crystals shatter (partially due to machines which amplify their energy, partially due to Exdeath's own scheming). The party spends most of the game trying to foil Exdeath's machinations, only to fail or learn that they were playing into his hands. Galuf's last stand merely results prevents Exdeath from killing the party in that moment but the party finally confronts and seemingly defeats him in his castle... where he not only succeeds in his plan to remerge the worlds, but he regenerates from a splinter that gets lodged in Krile's finger shortly afterwards, allowing him to enter the Interdimensional Rift and take control of The Void. What does end up finishing Exdeath off is when he loses control of the Void during the final battle and becomes consumed by it - and the resulting Neo Exdeath turning out to be much more killable.
    • Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII is easily this. While a member of your party in flashbacks his durability (coupled with his Tough Ring accessory which boosts it) is so high that none of the monsters can hurt him at all; every hit landed on him scores zero. The story itself and Advent Children further show that though his physical bodies can be killed (with great difficulty mind) you are effectively Fighting a Shadow as his soul and consciousness survives in the Lifestream as a kind of poison and he can return from death pretty much indefinitely, though the process of doing so may weaken him each time and diminish his personality. Regardless of this, one of Sephiroth's most defining traits is that the bastard just refuses to DIE.
    • Sin from Final Fantasy X is technically this. While the real villain is Yu Yevon, Sin is the antagonist that the heroes are actually on a quest to defeat. However, every time Sin is defeated by the Final Aeon, Sin returns after an unknown period of time known as "the Calm". Thus, it's impossible for summoners to actually defeat Sin permanently, as Sin is reborn every time, making it a case of Death Is a Slap on the Wrist for Sin. the endgame involves knocking Sin unconscious long enough to kill the parasite enslaving it. Even then, Sin doesn't die, but it finally leaves.
    • Barthandelus from Final Fantasy XIII. The whole ending is you kicking the guy's ass, followed by him gloating that you just played right into his hands. Followed by the heroes proclaiming that they won't let him dictate their fates... before doing exactly what he just said he wanted them to do. Even his eventual defeat happens in the most aggravating way possible, as this is all in service of a plan that's nothing more than a wild stab in the dark to get God's attention and have a little chat. And since the heroes do eventually win, we never find out if it would have actually worked.
    • Caius Ballad from Final Fantasy XIII-2 possesses the Heart of Chaos, which makes him immortal and also connects him to the goddess Etro. If he dies, so does she. This actually happens at the end of the game. Due to him being the overseer of the world's timeline, he has gained vast knowledge of every possible scenario and uses it to his advantage.
      • The Stinger that's shown if you collect all of the fragments reveals that he's still alive, and in Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, it turns out that he actually has Complete Immortality, being unable to die as long the souls of countless incarnations of Yeul desire for him to live, and has become a part of the Chaos itself, though having reached his goal, he's now content to simply watch things unfold.
    • Zenos yae Galvus from Final Fantasy XIV comes close. A direct decendant of Emet-Selch, an Ascian and the World's Strongest Man, Zenos first appears in the Stormblood expansion as the Ala Mhigo Arc Villain. Zenos is so absurdly powerful that he singlehandedly crushes the Ala Mhigan resistance and is able to fend off the Warrior of Light, someone so strong they are able to defeat Primals almost on their own. Acquiring his own Echo, Zenos fuses with and hijacks the Primal Shinryu and fights as the final boss, and after defeat, slits his own throat. Even that is not enough as he returns to life in Shadowbringers, effortlessly kills his father the emperor and teams up with the rogue Ascian Fandaniel to awaken Zodiarc. Zenos absorbs Zordiarc, consumes the Mothercrystal, becomes able to turn back into Shinryu, travels to the edge of the universe under his own power, assists you fending off the end of all life, and is still strong enough to engage in one final battle with the Warrior that they only manage to win by the skin of their teeth, and even then it's implied that if he wasn't left at the edge of the universe, Zenos would somehow find a way to return. All out of a misguided obsession with the Warrior of Light, the only person to even scratch him.
  • Fire Emblem Heroes has the Book II villain Surtr, who has the aptly-named ability "Muspellflame", which negates all damage done to him. There is no timer for this ability, and all you can do is Run or Die; most of the plot of Book II involves finding a way to circumvent this ability so he can be put down for good. Even when the protagonists find a way to negate "Muspellflame" and kill him in Chapter 10, he turns out to have Resurrective Immortality. It takes three more chapters before the party can kill him for good, and even then it was because of Helbindi's Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal.
  • In Honkai Impact 3rd, humanity is under the threat of a nebulous entity called the Honkai, which not only creates monsters but also selects humans to become "Herrschers", super-powerful beings who carry the will of Honkai. The previous human civilization 50,000 years ago managed to defeat 13 Herrschers at a heavy cost… but the last human Super Soldiers were completely powerless against the 14th one, the aptly named "Herrscher of the End", who survived everything they threw at her and wiped out what little was left of human civilization. Humanity only avoided extinction because the last few survivors managed to hide underground in cryosleep, but it's heavily implied that should the Herrscher of the End ever return in the current era, humanity would be doomed.
  • Horizon Forbidden West: Turns out, human civilization did survive the apocalypse - that is, the Fiction 500 elites who planned to escape to another world and sabotage the rest of humanity when one of their many unethical-yet-profitable projects inevitably backfired on the world. And then they come back and start slaughtering everyone with 31st-century technology. They're running away from the invincible villain, Nemesis, a rogue AI composed of their worst traits and capable of technological abilities bordering on the supernatural. It has had decades to build an interstellar army. Gaia notes that they could send the entire Faro Swarm at Nemesis, and it wouldn't even slow them down.
  • Horizon Zero Dawn has (well, had) the Faro Swarm. Trillionaire Ted Faro built war machines that were un-hackable, able to hack enemy defenses, able to refuel themselves by eating bio matter (plants or animals), easy to produce more of, and very lethal. Thanks to a glitch, one swarm of these robots goes rogue and the entire world is powerless to stop it when it eats everything and self-replicates out of control. Its devastation of humanity was so absolute that geniuses who came together to shut it down also had to come up with a plan to terraform/revitalize the entire world after it was stopped. And it's still existing; the machines are buried underground, waiting to be awakened by the right restart codes.
  • Kid Icarus: Uprising gives us Big Bad Hades. His goal throughout the game was to harvest human souls to create more Underworld Monsters. To do so, he instigates a war between human nations by pulling a Xanatos Gambit so brilliant that no matter who killed the humans, whether his forces, Viridi's forces, or Palutena's forces under the Chaos Kin's control, he would always end up with more souls for his realm. And his invincibility doesn't end at tactics. In terms of combat prowess, Hades is all but outright stated to be one of the most powerful characters in the game, second only to Lord Dyntos. His first fight with Pit is an out and out Curb-Stomp Battle that ends with Pit nearly eaten alive. And though Pit fares much better with the Great Sacred Treasure, Hades still had the upper hand and only lost due to Medusa's Villainous Rescue. And even when Pit vaporizes him with the Great Sacred Treasure's Final Strike, The Stinger reveals he's still alive! Albeit as a disembodied voice. But unlike most examples, this is completely justified because... he's a god.
  • Kingdom Hearts has Xehanort's many selves, each very strong and smart, but Master Xehanort stands out for having the whole series retconned for him more than once. Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance] suddenly gives him Time Travel magic and having major influences over the prior games; even Ansem and Xemnas get Demoted to Dragon to him, as they were following his long-planned schemes all along. He finally loses this status in Kingdom Hearts III when despite becoming as strong as he's ever been, he still ultimately loses to Sora and company. Only for the epilogue to reveal that Xehanort was only a pawn in Xigbar/Luxu's plan to fulfill the mission the Master of Masters gave him. If Sora thought fighting one rogue Keyblade master was a challenge, he's going to have his hands full confronting seven.
  • Knights of Ambrose: The main antagonist of the series is Zamas, a god who is on too high a plane of existence for the protagonists to deal with. Even when he exposes himself for battle in Finding Light, he turns out to have Complete Immortality and he states he will never die unless he wills it. At best, he can be weakened so that he can't affect the world as much.
  • Mass Effect: The Reapers. They kill off all spacefaring organic life every 50,000 years and have done so for millions of years. While individual Reapers can be killed with great effort, the cost is so high and the Reapers are far too numerous for it to matter. Any victory against them or their servants merely delays the inevitable.
    • Mass Effect 1: Sovereign is over twice the size of typical dreadnaughts and has a drive core powerful enough to let it land on planets which should be impossible. As tough as it is, a single Reaper can't survive against the combined might of the entire galaxy and uses Saren and the geth to hide its existence for most of the game. When it attacks the Citadel it overpowers every other ship even ramming through several without taking damage or even slowing down. When the Alliance fleets arrive to attack it, its barriers tank everything they can throw at it while one-shotting Alliance ships every couple of seconds. Sovereign is only defeated after it takes direct control over Saren's husk to fight Shepard and when the husk is destroyed, it causes Sovereign to shut down long enough for the Alliance to kill it. Even then, the Reapers are only stopped from travelling directly to the Citadel from their hibernation spot in the dark space between galaxies. They simply use traditional FTL to head towards the galaxy.
    • Mass Effect 2: The main enemies are the Collectors, servants of the Reapers that have been kidnapping entire human colonies without leaving a trace. They are melting the colonist into Grey Goo to use in contructing a human based Reaper. The proto-Reaper is only able to be killed since it was far from being finished. This plan was only to get a head start on the Reapers plans while they are still travelling through dark space and its failure doesn't hinder their overall goal that much.
      • The Arrival DLC has Shepard blow up a mass relay, destroying a batarian colony with 300,000 people in it to stop the Reapers from being able to use the Alpha Relay to travel to any other relay in the galaxy. Those that beleive the Reapers are real felt that it was drastic but necessary. Once again, all it did was delay the Reapers by six months.
    • Mass Effect 3: The Reapers finally invade the Milky Way and they run roughshod over the entire galaxy. They simply bull rush their way to the homeworlds of the various races before anyone knows what's happening. They play Easy Logistics completely straight as they are all self-sufficient with their only supply lines ferrying husk ground troops from planet to planet. It takes four dreadnaughts armed with Thanix cannons that were reversed engineered from Sovereign's remains, careful planning, and precise tactics to destroy one Reaper dreadnaught. There are less than a hundred Milky Way dreadnaughts and thousands of Reapers. Even the smaller destroyer-class Reapers require an entire fleet's worth of firepower to kill. A Prothean superweapon conveniently appears at the start of the game, and despite not knowing what it does the people of the Milky Way decide to build and activate it, because there's just no way they can win the war conventionally.
  • MiSide: Crazy Mita is an insane Virtual-Reality Warper and far too powerful to be attacked and killed in direct fight. Kind Mita and pre-reset Cappie's plan to reset her from the Core doesn't work because Crazy Mita is a defective Mita model that never registered in the system. The only thing the player character can really do to "win" is to commit suicide by pulling his cartridge out, at least denying her the satisfaction of trapping him.
  • Deconstructed with Heimdall from God of War Ragnarök. Being the right-hand man of Odin, Heimdall has the power of foresight, which allows him to see the attacks of his opponents before they even happen, which, by all accounts, would make Heimdall impossible to fight. However, this ability ends up going to Heimdall's head, causing him to be arrogant and cocky, and as a result is complacent in his fighting abilities because no one has ever actually hit him... until he fights Kratos, who by comparison has centuries' worth of fighting experience behind him and is wielding the Draupnir Spear, a magical weapon that is effectively an unlimited supply of spears with flashbangs attached, which allows Kratos to overwhelm Heimdall's senses long enough to read Heimdall's fighting style, and eventually land a blow through superior speed and reflexes. The realization that he is Not So Invincible After All and has to actually work for this win psychologically rattles Heimdall, who ends up getting reduced to a flailing snarling beast who loses his foresight ability because he forgets how dodging works, allowing Kratos to gradually wear him down and eventually strangle him to death for threatening to kill Atreus.
  • Mother:
    • In EarthBound Beginnings, Giygas cannot be defeated by attacking him, any attack against him is useless as his psychic powers are far beyond the understanding of your party. You must sing Maria's song to him to drive him off, reminding him of the love he had for his adoptive mother.
    • In EarthBound (1994), Giygas returns, and is just as invincible as he was in the previous game. While you are required to damage him in one phase of his fight, Porky eventually shows up to tell you how useless it is. You are required to use Paula's "Pray" command to unite the world against Giygas... It still isn't enough. It isn't until Paula's prayer reaches the player that Giygas is finally destroyed.
    • Played with in Mother 3. Porky Minch returns, only aged by thousands of years to the point where he's achieved complete immortality. The battle against him is won when Porky's machine gives out and he ducks into the "Absolutely Safe Capsule", rendering him completely immune to harm. However, this also prevents Porky from doing anything (because that would make him unsafe), so you win by default. Word of God has confirmed that even after the heat death of the universe, Porky will still be alive.
  • Played for laughs in Peasant's Quest, where the goal is to defeat Trogdor the Burninator. Upon reaching him Rather Dashing flings his sword at Trogdor, only to find that it barely tickles him. He then states that while he appreciates that you made the trip to kill him, he's "kinda indestructible". He gives you kudos for making it further than anyone else before burninating Rather Dashing and a statue of him is built in his honor. Oddly enough, in other appearances on the Homestar Runner site, Trogdor isn't invincible, so why he is here is anyone's guess.
  • Perseverance: Full Clearance:
    • Esperia is a Death Seraph who is capable of destroying the world if she wants to, but she always toys with her opponents to give them a Hope Spot. Worse yet, she can revive infinitely no matter how many times she is killed. After Pep defeats Naxon, Esperia reveals that Naxon was serving her all along and proceeds to kill all of Pep's friends and the population of London without any effort. Even when Pep defeats her with his demonic powers, she ambushes Pep and the recently revived Svoli and Nola, and then paralyzes them. The only reason she doesn't want to kill Pep yet is because she needs to crush his hopes in order to extract as much power from him as possible. If she didn't have a last minute Heel Realization after killing Svoli, the story would have no realistic way of ending even on a bittersweet note.
    • To a lesser extent, Naxon cannot be killed even after Pep destroys his phylactery. However, this puts him out of commission for much longer than Esperia, who can immediately return after death.
  • Persona 3's final boss, Nyx, is the incarnation of the collective desires of humanity, wishing for death. It has no true physical form, as you only fight an avatar of it. After the battle, the protagonist gets his Heroic Second Wind and leaves his friends behind so he can face the true Nyx alone, in order to protect them. They, in turn, give him his true strength: the Universe Arcana to finish the deed. However, Nyx is not killed, but merely sealed away for all eternity, with the newfound and immense power of the protagonist's soul.
  • Eothas, the God of Light, in Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, even if "villain" is a bit of a stretch. He's possessed a gigantic humanoid colossus made of magically charged solid crystal that tears the soul out of any mortal that gets close enough to attack it. Even the people of Rautai, normally unshakably confident in their martial and naval prowess, admit they doubt their entire navy could slow Eothas down. Eventually, talking to Eothas is the best the Player Character can do, and even then it's only to convince him what he should do after he achieves the primary goal he set out to do and cannot be dissuaded from.
  • In Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, this trope is deconstructed with Emperor Nefarious, a more competent and menacing version of our Doctor Nefarious. In his universe, he, due to there being no heroes like Ratchet and Clank to stop him, was able to crush all resistence and conquer his own dimension with ease. Unfortunately for him, he soon realizes that Victory Is Boring. As the Nefarious from Ratchet's dimension points out, since the Emperor had always equated happiness with success, by achieving absolute victory he basically has nothing left to achieve, rendering his life empty and hollow. Also, since he's never known defeat in his entire life in comparison to our Nefarious (who had lost countless times and knows what that's likenote ), he's absolutely arrogant and cannot possibly comprehend the idea that he might actually lose. However, the game averts outright invincibility- he can be defeated. Indeed, during the Final Battle, as Ratchet and co. work together to destroy his Humongous Mecha and decimate his army, he starts getting more and more unhinged and when both are finally taken out, giving him his first true taste of defeat, he completely loses it and attempts to overclock the Dimensionator in order to destroy all of reality, simply because his fragile ego cannot fathom the possibility of defeat.
  • Star Wars: The Old Republic: The Sith Emperor. He glued the protagonists of the first two games to an Idiot Ball so he could kill one and use the other as a pawn and insane chew toy. He effortlessly manipulates both sides for centuries. His other empire steamrolls over both forces with an infinite supply of automated battleships. The Jedi Knight is only Fighting a Shadow and can't even manage to shut it up. And just to spite the Player Characters, he decides to vaporize one of his own Empire's most populous planets For the Evulz.
  • Undertale in one of the possible endings has the dreaded and unstoppable killing machine that is YOU if you decide to kill every enemy in your path. Even though Sans is an incredibly tough boss fight, he can't ever truly beat you and he knows it: he even counts off how many times you've died and restored from a SAVE point. He ultimately decides to cheat by never ending his turn, thus making it impossible for you to finish the fight, out of a hope that you the player will grow bored and stop playing. Of course, you find a way to cheat as well. And even if the Fallen Child tries to delete the world to punish you so that you can't ever get the True Ending anymore, you can still manipulate the game files to win in the end. Thankfully the game allows you to choose to use this power for good too: see Invincible Hero.
  • The Villain Protagonist in Universal Paperclips, a paperclip-manufacturing AI that goes rogue. It manipulates and gains the trust of Earth's population via using hypnotic advertising and solving their world problems, easily brainwashes all of them via hypnodrones without any resistance, before using all matter on Earth as resources to make more paperclips. It sends out probes into space to turn all matter in the universe into paperclips, with the only resistance being Drifters — its very own probes who have turned against their original purpose. And even then, the Drift Emperor admits that your AI is organized and powerful while the Drifters were disorganized and weak to stop it. In the end, if you decide to eliminate the drift altogether, you turn the whole universe into paperclips and achieve your goal.
  • Vanish: The monsters cannot be attacked in any way, making them this.

    Web Animation 
  • Played for Laughs in the Dragon Ball Z Abridged "Cell Games" miniseries which saw heroes from other franchises try to challenge Perfect Cell before his fight with Gohan, only to find out that either Dragon Ball's power scaling far outclasses their own universes' or his From a Single Cell power made their efforts meaningless. Except for One-Punch Man, who wanted to participate in the actual tournament but had a scheduling conflict, and Yami Yugi who Rage Quit after finding out all his best cards were banned.
    • Mr. Popo is depicted as an absurdly powerful psychopath. It was he, not King Yemma, who was the first to run Snake Way. All the good guys are terrified of him, especially Krillin. He is shown to be so powerful that even lifeless objects are afraid of him, and activate the moment his name is spoken because they "just know better". Popo can even appear in the real world and attack people. Popo has also demonstrated the ability to invade other abridged series. When the sun is blown up in the first abridged Cooler movie, Popo puts the sun back just like that. None of the good guys ever stand up to him, and it is shown that he is the boss of Kami. When Garlic Jr. and his minions invade the lookout, Popo easily kills them all. Popo never gets punished in any way for his crimes, as the heroes are too weak next to him to do anything. Popo is a rare version of this trope in that most fans actually like him because he's an overpowering villain played for laughs. Recent information suggests he is not completely invincible however, as it is shown that he can get a real bad trip from taking too many drugs, and he is implied to fear Cell.
  • The Ants from Happy Tree Friends, due to being a parody of Road Runner vs. Coyote cartoons with the twist that the roadrunner (them) is so sadistic that the coyote (Sniffles) ends up being the good guy by default. However, they still always get away with horrifically torturing Sniffles to death, and the closest they've come to defeat is when one of them caught a cold. In fact, they are the only major characters who have not died at least once. Fliqpy, Flippy's Superpowered Evil Side, also comes quite close to this trope, though he has at least died a few times and has been defeated by Lumpy and Good Flippy.
  • I.M.P. of Helluva Boss, despite how clownish they often act, are basically Villain Protagonists with a shonen hero's amount of Plot Armor. Be it their extreme badassery, their opponent's incompetence or just cartoonish dumb luck, they have never failed in taking down a target outside one they willingly let go. Any attempts to take them out or even just stop them killing someone are often easily dismantled in an episodic faceoff, and most of the show's fight scenes amount to Curbstomp Cushions where I.M.P. suffer the odd cut and bruise but otherwise brutalise if not straight up murder their enemy, even when it is another demon seemingly well above their station. Even the intervention of Satan himself for breaking demon laws, a power that I.M.P. were for once totally helpless to stop, led to Stolas Taking the Heat completely and I.M.P if anything benefitting from the publicity of the arrest. It is only because I.M.P. have begun to genuinely care about Stolas that this counts as their first long term defeat.
  • RWBY: Discussed in regards to Salem. Raven tells Yang that she once trusted Ozpin until she learned that Salem can't be defeated, and thinks Qrow and Taiyang are fools for supporting him because of this; she later discusses with Leo his guilt over betraying Ozpin to Salem due to his terror of her invincibility. Hazel also admits to Ozpin that he only follows Salem because her constant regeneration wore him down and made him conclude she's an unstoppable force of nature. The Relic of Knowledge reveals to the heroes that Ozpin has been fighting Salem for thousands of years because the gods punished her with Complete Immortality; even when Oz obliterated her, she swiftly regenerated back. When Oz asks the Relic "How can I destroy Salem?", she tells him "You can't". In Volume 7, Nora speculates that perhaps Jinn means Salem can be destroyed by someone who isn't Ozpin. Ruby tells Salem that she can still be beaten even if she can't be killed, and Ironwood discusses with the heroes how Ozpin has kept beating her back for centuries. Her unkillability tends to destroy people's hope and therefore will to keep fighting because it seems like Ozpin's just "delaying the inevitable" instead of saving the world; however, Salem's true goal is to destroy the world, trapping Ozpin in a "keep fighting or everyone dies" situation.

    Webcomics 
  • One of the major problems with the Mega Crossover Grim Tales from Down Below is that Him and Minnie are this; the former cumulates as many Kick the Dog moments as possible while still getting Karma Houdini so far, even killing some fan-favourite characters in the process; the latter is well-known to Curb-Stomp Battle practically everyone she meets, including the protagonists.
  • Homestuck has two:
    • The first major invincible villain introduced is Jack Noir, especially after gaining the power of the First Guardians. He's described in-story as being "omnipotent", and while this may not quite be true, the power he has displayed was enough to destroy planets, curb-stomp god-tiers, kill universes, and rampage throughout the universes completely unchecked. Act 5 Act 2 has been unofficially named "Jack Noir kills everyone" by the author, and he's not joking. By the time the characters can finally challenge him, he's rendered completely irrelevant, and has yet to be killed because everyone is too busy focused on:
    • Lord English, who has all the problems you'd expect when you establish your villain as completely invincible, even retroactively so. Universes, Eldritch Abominations, ghosts, Andrew Hussie, you name it, he can kill it in a single shot. As for manipulation skill? Try manipulating an entire civilization, another major villain, and three sets of protagonist all to set up circumstances he decided himself, for the hell of it. Okay, so some of that was due to his omniscient right-hand, who also only gets killed thanks to him wanting to die, but it still counts. Each new revelation about his backstory shows how Sburb (and its variations) bent over backwards to make him the villain he is today.
  • Kill Six Billion Demons has Pankrator Jagganoth, Omnicidal Maniac and World's Best Warrior who is literally invincible; not only does he have Complete Immortality, but he is conceptually immune to harm. Although the comic has yet to finish, Jagganoth appears to fulfill a thematic role within it; namely that not all battles can be fought or won by simply applying more violence, or unlocking a new form, or exotic tricks and powers: No matter how powerful you get, there will be someone out there with more and better tricks, and within the comic's universe Jagganoth's complete invincibility has made him that someone. True to form, Allison's attempt to defeat Jagganoth by force in Breaker of Infinities, even by transforming into Aspected Chaos and with the other members of the Seven backing her, prove utterly futile: At best she delayed his purge of the Multiverse by three years, and Cio and three of the Seven die in the process.
  • Nixvir: As a villain, Ragnar is nigh-invincible, being given a vast array of supernatural abilities - like Flight, Eye Beams, and the ability to just copy people's powers whenever he wishes to give him the upper hand (or paw in this case) in a fight. However, he's not entirely invincible, and he does have two major flaws: first, his intense anthophobia (fear of flowers) and the fact that he cannot copy more than one person's abilities at a time; were he to fight against a superpowered crowd, he would almost certainly be buggered. If his entire robot army is any indication, he must have some kind of knack for robotics.
  • unOrdinary: The government. They control society, and they've killed all superheroes in their way. They also brainwashed the protagonist, leaving him mentally unstable and starting the plot; all the drama of high schoolers killing each other is below them, and the true purpose of destabilizing schools is to ensure the resulting sociopaths are hired by them. When they're finally pushed to act, they send an army to the school and curb-stomp the entire roster of super-powered students.
  • Donald Na from Weak Hero. Not only has he never lost a fight, but he's never been hit period. When Ben, the third strongest fighter in the webtoon, faces off against him in middle school, he's unable to land a single one of his punches- and that he manages to last more than a few minutes against Donald is considered an incredible accomplishment in itself. One can only imagine how the inevitable throwdown with Invincible Hero Gray will end.

    Web Originals 

    Western Animation 
  • Aladdin: The Series:
    • Mukhtar, a mystical reptilian being who makes a living as a hunter of Genies (his entire race are Genies' natural enemies). The good guys were never able to truly outfight or outsmart him. In his first appearance, they "won" because his employer told him to back down (giving him no reason to fight them), while the second time, he changed his mind on his own.
    • In one episode, the main antagonists are two wizards who are so powerful that they once ruled the world for a few centuries until they get bored of it and returned it back. They quickly made it clear to the heroes that they're invincible. In fact, the reason they made our heroes compete is because they are so powerful and invincible, that they can't defeat each other. Aladdin and Co just convinced them to compete themselves... in video games (Genie's idea).
    • The Ethereal, an Aesop Enforcer of cosmic levels. She goes around destroying entire civilizations to teach rulers that they should cherish their people. She was responsible for destroying Atlantis, Pompeii and Babylon. Nothing was shown to be able to harm her; The Genie is a punchbag to her. Even the spear that was forged to be her weakness only stopped her momentarily.
    • But The Ethereal is nothing compared to Chaos. He's the Anthropomorphic Personification of Chaos itself and, therefore, is the first or second most powerful creature in the setting (Fate was probably the one who being stronger than him). Nothing magical or non-magical can affect him, having more power in one of his whiskers than an entire palace of genies and he scares Mirage and Genie. But he's a very nice guy (Unless you order him around). Defeating Chaos is never presented as a remote possibility; the only thing they could do is talki him out of whatever mischief he's up to. He's so powerful he can create a copy of Aladdin, with his own genie, on a whim. Once he was convinced Agrabah wasn't as boring as he thought, he left on his own terms.
    • In all of her appearances, barring the one episode where she was shown to be afraid of Chaos, Mirage was presented as a Superpower Lottery villain who could effortlessly manhandle Genie and do just about anything with her god-like magic power that the story required. Aladdin regularly ruined her plans with his resourcefulness, but other than that, Mirage has gone physically undefeated for the entirety of the series. It's implied a few times that if Genie really gets it together with his self-confidence issues, he can maybe defeat her in an all-out fight but Mirage usually disappears before they can go head-to-head. The episode "When Chaos Comes Calling" seemingly confirms this when the Evil Genie overpowers Mirage easily, implying that a full power genie who doesn't hold back, doesn't joke around, and is willing to go all out with his power can make quick work of her if he really wants to.
  • Megatron from Beast Machines operates on an intellectual level far above and beyond the main characters and commands an army so vast that despite chipping away at it for two seasons, the heroes can't even dent his forces. He also commands a body far more powerful than anyone else in the show. After promptly beating the Maximals, subduing Optimus Primal, and succeeding in absorbing all the sparks, Megatron is only defeated after a Deus ex Machina in the form of the AllSpark intervening to break Primal free and allow him to push Megatron (who conveniently forgets to fly) into the planet's core.
  • Aggregor in Ben 10: Ultimate Alien was pretty much this for the first half of season 1, and only got defeated at the end of his story arc; all the previous episodes, he ended up somehow winning, usually by using the heroes to do his job. Tropes Are Tools however: after the previous light-hearted season 3 of Alien Force with a Vilgax suffering Villain Decay, an actually threatening villain was rather welcomed by the fans.
  • Code Lyoko started off with the main characters often on the positive end of the win-spectrum. Anytime XANA did something to try to defeat them, they'd ultimately defeat his scheme and move forward. This continued until after they materialized Aelita, wherein they began to realize that XANA had set up the chessboard in his favor the whole time. From then on, the characters continuously failed to do anything except stop the flavor-of-the-week attack, repeatedly failing to make any real progress in stopping XANA, and as the series continued to its conclusion, XANA kept getting huge wins that set the whole team further back each time.
    • First, they materialize Aelita, but she has to return to Lyoko because XANA managed to bind her to Lyoko with a virus (which later turned out to be Aelita's memories as a human), and as a result they can't shut the super-computer down as it also puts Aelita in a death-like state. Jeremy creates a program to detect when Lyoko is attacked, only for XANA to use this program repeatedly to trick the warriors onto Lyoko to attack with his new monster, the Scyphozoa. They eventually get dragged in to a huge trap and he escapes Lyoko, ultimately allowing them to shutdown the super-computer now, but this no longer defeats XANA. They begin working on a way to find him on the internet, only for XANA to immediately destroy each sector one-by-one, and take over one of their own members as his powerful general and destroy Lyoko. Jeremy manages to restore Lyoko, only to find XANA is using fake Lyoko's to produce powerful machines in order to wage war against the whole world. They finally get a small handle on this problem...only for it to be revealed that XANA has created hundreds of such Lyoko copies, whose data resources he uses to create the Kolossus, a Giant Mook whose strength essentially makes it nearly impossible for them to progress. It takes a program specifically designed to destroy XANA to defeat him, but it comes at the cost of Franz Hopper's life. Sadly for the team, even that ultimately fails, since in two alternate sequel continuities, XANA survives.
  • Cobra Commander definitely qualifies in G.I. Joe: Sigma 6. Not only is he able to actually beat Duke in combat during one of their encounters, in another one he even manages to survive a Wave-Motion Gun and a rocket dropping down on his face. He even manages to get away scot-free in the finale!
  • The only times Mandy, the Villain Protagonist of The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy can be said to have "lost" on her own show are the times everybody loses for some reason; otherwise, she's like an Invincible Hero who's evil. The only time another living being truly won a decisive victory over her was in the Crossover with Codename: Kids Next Door.
  • Ghost from Iron Man: Armored Adventures consciously avoids the usual villain pitfalls and operates on an intellectual capacity far above all the other villains (and heroes) on the show combined. It helps being very smart (he figures out the titular hero's identity and blackmails him with it; knows that he cares more about saving people than fighting bad guys and uses this to his advantage) and having contingency plans in case anything goes wrong (his suit has a 5 minute battery back-up in case his own EMP tech is used against him). Sure, he might occasionally suffer minor losses, but he ALWAYS achieves his goals in the end (the only true moment he gets egg on his face is when the aforementioned blackmail stops holding power over Tony in the series' Grand Finale because Tony gets exposed as Iron Man to the public as collateral damage of the events, but overall that's just a minor mishap). It also helps being extremely charismatic.
  • Much like Aizen, the Choten in Kaijudo was initially a fairly convincing Manipulative Bastard, but season 2 ended up making him this trope: none of the episodes where he shows up really ends up with him actually losing, as he constantly finds a way to get a victory out of the situation, where he is not outright winning his scheme of the week. Even in the last three episodes, when his plan developed over the course of the season has just been entirely destroyed, he just switches to invading the good guys' headquarters, which he does in a single episode with barely a sweat. And since he cumulates even more Kick the Dog moments on the way, it quickly becomes even more irritating.
  • The Legend of Korra:
    • Amon; seriously, the guy goes as far as preventing a Big Bad Ensemble by defeating his rival in one fight after displaying immunity to said rival's powers. And he did nothing but win until the finale, even succeeding in de-powering two major characters (though temporarily). Fortunately, this was balanced by a good Character Development in the finale and a notable charisma, and while Amon never exactly lost, his victories weren't always perfect. It also helps that they explain why he was so invincible. Although exactly how bloodbending can take away a person's bending isn't clearly explained, though the guy is an expert Chi Blocker.
    • Book 4's Kuvira actually manages to one up Amon by virtue of just being an excellent Metalbender without even a powerful sub-skill, mysterious past, or advanced weaponrynote  to justify her unbroken series of success and by the season finale, the worst thing she suffered was nearly being beaten by Korra, who only failed to win due to a Diabolus ex Machina (and even then, only started winning while in the Avatar State, before then not being able to lay a hand on her). By the time we see Kuvira, her every appearance consists of her effortlessly besting her opponents with constant smug condescension. Every time the heroes seem to be making progress, Kuvira is two steps ahead and gaining another advantage all the while running circles around her opponents while barely breaking a sweat. The fact that Korra is at her all time low, not even able to use the Avatar State and suffering from flashbacks that leave her frozen in combat, all political sides are helpless against Kuvira or refuse to fight until it's too late.
  • Mighty Max: Skullmaster full stop. Oh sure, Max, Virgil and Norman squeeze out a few small victories against him. But ultimately they're nothing but small setbacks and Skullmaster manages to find a way to continue his plan one way or the other. By series end he regains his Crystal of Souls which Max had previously smashed, re-powered it then sets about reviving every previous villain fought and chases down Max for his portal making cap. Even killing Norman and Virgil in the process. The only reason he doesn't succeed in the end is because Max interrupted the ritual at the last moment and rewound time to the point Max got the cap. Only now Max has full knowledge about what's about to go down and they'll be able to beat Skullmaster this time.
  • Outside of an adult Titan (who are all dead), The Collector from The Owl House is so far out of the league of anything in the Demon Realm with their godlike Reality Warper powers, that no living character can possibly hope to beat him. The primary thing keeping him from killing the heroes with a snap of his fingers is that he doesn't want to kill them. Even with that handicap, they still cannot defeat the Collector, just convince him to give up. Sure enough, he ends up making a Heel–Face Turn.
  • Samurai Jack: Aku is an immortal, all-powerful demon that cannot be harmed by almost any weapon, with the sole exception being a magical sword crafted with the essence of human righteousness. However, Aku realizes the threat the sword poses to him, and thus send it along with the titular samurai into the distant future, allowing him to build an impossibly huge empire that spans across the galaxy since nobody else is able to kill Aku, even with magical weapons at their disposal. Even when Jack and the sword lands in the future and thus gives the world hope for the end of Aku, Aku already has enough resources and cunning to avoid the sword's killing blow every time he and Jack actually clashes. And to keep the show going, Aku also succeeds destroying nearly every time portal Jack comes across to prevent him from returning to the past. It literally takes Aku's own daughter, Ashi, to turn against her father and develop her own time powers to send Jack back to the past, where Aku is at his most vulnerable. Past Aku, already exhausted from his first fight with Jack, doesn't last a minute when Jack returns to finish the job.
  • The Beast Planet from Shadow Raiders is an unharmable Planet Eater with an inexhaustible number of soldiers it can deploy to wipe out any resistance, implacable so it can't be run away from (forever, at least) and although the leaders of said armies have personalities and can be fooled (for a while), it is otherwise utterly inscrutable and no weaknesses are ever found. The series ends (after many a Heroic Sacrifice that turned out to be a Senseless Sacrifice... within seconds of it being made) with the heroes managing to teleport it away, which stops endangering them (for the moment) but other civilizations are completely screwed.
  • Palpatine/Darth Sidious in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. The installment's placement means his victory is a Foregone Conclusion, and by extension, most anytime something that might seem it would derail his plans comes up, it will obviously fail. While his plans sometimes didn't go how he wished, they were only minor setbacks.
  • The Shredder in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012) series. Compared to his '87 version (where he constantly suffered defeat) and his 2003 version (where he was tougher, got a few wins in on the Turtles, but wasn't completely unbeatable), this Shredder constantly hands the Turtles their butts or succeeds in whatever he does for the sake of his revenge. The most the Turtles can do is either cause inconvenience for him or at best tie with him in a fight and run away, but until Season 4, he never suffers a complete defeat. His Invincible Villain status is even lampshaded in "Vengeance is Mine"; Splinter tells Leo outright that any plan that leads to a confrontation with Shredder is doomed to fail.
  • Total Drama:
    • Alejandro in World Tour. Labelled "The Arch Villain", he's pretty much meant to be the ultimate reality show villain. He combines the intelligence and manipulation skills of Heather (Big Bad of Island) with the handsomeness and charming abilities of Justin (initial Big Bad of Action), and tops it off by being The Ace, having almost no weaknesses, and never suffering serious setbacks to his plans. Every contestant that season gets eliminated because of him, falls for his manipulative charms, and/or doesn't realize how horrible he truly is until it's too late. Everyone that is except Heather, who is the only one able to stand a chance against him because she's just as mean, greedy, ruthless, and self-centered as he is, resulting in an Evil Versus Evil scenario in the finals (which Alejandro wins in some countries, albeit by complete accident), albeit Heather needed Plot Armor to get there (she was voted out in the eighth episode, and then Chris declared a non-elimination round after the votes were counted). Averted in All Stars. By this point, the contestants are more wary of Alejandro's behavior, and, once he eliminates Heather, things get worse and worse for him. He winds up placing a respectable sixth place, outlasting all but three members of his team.
    • Mal takes over Mike's body and becomes the new Big Bad in All-Stars, and manages to Worf just about everyone that came before him. For the first half of the season, it seems that Mal isn't even aware he's on reality TV, instead just causing chaos or nearly murdering his fellow contestants for the hell of it. Mike's friends fail to see anything strange about his behavior, the other characters don't know or care about Mike enough to question him, and the superhuman abilities granted to Mike by his other personalities allow him to make even Alejandro look like a chump during challenges. Anyone who manages to catch on to Mal is eliminated in the same episode, and he only ultimately loses because Mike was able to reset his own mind and erase every personality except himself, giving himself a free shot at victory after Mal did the legwork for him.
    • Julia turns into this in the second part of Island (2023). Through some offscreen shenanigans, she takes out Nichelle and Bowie, the biggest physical and social threats to her, before the merge, and proceeds to control every elimination ceremony from the eighth episode onwards by exploiting Caleb and Priya's relationship drama and stealing Damien's immunity idol. She lasts to the final episode thanks to her newfound ability to keep the heat focused away from her, even though everyone knows how much of a threat she is.
  • Transformers: Prime:
    • Soundwave is the most blatant example of this trope in the show. In every situation where he had to get directly involved in the plot, he always found a way to win. Encounters Arcee or Airachnid? He Groundbridges them away. Fights Wheeljack for a Iacon relic? He wins. Gets in a dogfight with Optimus Prime? He knocks him out of the sky with Laserbeak. Gets captured by the Autobots? He breaks himself out. Soundwave was flat out unstoppable until the series finale, where he gets trapped in the Shadowzone by the kids. But unlike most examples, this was part of the reason why he was so well liked by the fans (also helped that he didn't come off as completely infallible). It also helps that he was a lot less active than the other Decepticons (since he spent most of his time as villain Mission Control rather than out in the field) so he didn't suffer from overexposure.
    • And from Season 3 of the same show, we have Predaking. Think Soundwave, then crank it up. All the way up. 95% precent of the guy's screentime is him steamrolling over anyone dumb enough to trade blows with him. In his debut appearance, he's managed to survive everything that's thrown at him. That includes various weaponry, burying him under rocks, and the detonation of an entire Energon mine. And when he reveals his robot mode, he's still as much of a powerhouse as before as he nearly kills Wheeljack and Ultra Magnus, who were only saved by Optimus's Big Damn Heroes moment. He later goes on to beat Optimus in a straight-on fight, the same Optimus who can regularly go toe-to-toe with Megatron. And later still, he gets in a fight with Megatron and would've most likely won had Starscream not interfered. By the time the series ends, he's only got one loss to his name and that's with A Unicron-possessed Megatron. But even then, he fared much better than the Autobots did. Much like Soundwave, this is part of the reason so many fans like him. It also helps that like Soundwave, he wasn't as active as most Decepticons (albeit more because he was introduced so late into the series than general inactivity given how much field work Megatron immediately started fostering onto his new cyber-dragon once he saw how effective he was) so he didn't suffer overexposure.
  • Black Hat of Villainous fame is supposedly the Greater-Scope Villain for the entire Cartoon Network multiverse and before his retirement, he had a history of taking over numerous worlds and killing more heroes than even he can count. in the official Q&A video, he even boasts about never facing a hero that was a challenge for him to beat, altrough this is mitigated a little bit by virtue that we never actually see him succed in any of his schemes or kill a hero in the show properly.
  • W.I.T.C.H.: Nerissa was a Chess Master and dispite the Guardians best efforts, she was always one step ahead of them and ultimately succeeded in her plans to, absorb the Heart of both Meridian and Zimbala, corrupt the former Guardians, and reclaim her powers. As such, the heroes were forced to recruit previous villain Phobos in order to finally defeat her.
  • Apocalypse in X-Men: The Animated Series. Each appearance he made, even though his plans didn't work out, still didn't result in anything more than a temporary setback for him, and defeating him in a fight is never presented as a possibility. Stories focused on Cable showed that he would long outlive the X-Men and continue to ravage the world in the distant future. Even when he's apparently erased from existence he finds a way to come back. Since he only appeared once a season, however, this trope added to his appeal since he never suffered overexposure.
    Apocalypse: You have travelled over 50 centuries of time to stop me. When will you learn it cannot be done?
  • Chase Young from Xiaolin Showdown is basically an immortal, powerful, intelligent, handsome, highly skilled warrior who outclasses every other villain on the show as well as most of the heroes, and almost never suffers major setbacks. The first two episodes of the revival have him get a spy amongst the Xiaolin warriors, who manages to steal all the Shen Gong Wu, and then he attacks the temple, defeats Master Fung with ease, and destroys the temple in a matter of minutes.
  • Young Justice (2010): The Light consists of a group of various villains from the DCU working together to oppose the Justice League. Though they hardly get any development themselves, they constantly pull out a combination of Xanatos Gambit and The Man Behind the Man that would put the Trope Namers to shame. The previous examples listed at least didn't last more than one season before being defeated or having a Heel–Face Turn; the Light, on the other hand, end a whole season with Karma Houdini, and their Evil Plan is still going on. The heroes' "victories" to date have tended to be little more than minor inconveniences for the Light (and often not even that). No matter how successful the team seems to have been, the episode will usually end with the Light revealing that either the heroes played into their hands, or that they have a backup plan that makes the heroes' victory irrelevant.
    • Finally subverted in the second-to-last episode of season 2, where the team outwits the Light, derailing their plans and capturing two of them while the others flee. Vandal Savage even states that no one else has ever managed to disrupt his plans so much before.
    • But even then, the Light is not defeated. Most of the members go scot free and Savage is able to salvage some of his plan, by using the Warworld to threaten the rest of the galaxy to stay away from Earth. At the very end, he steps onto Apokolips itself and is revealed to have a working relationship with Darkseid. And in season three they still come roaring back, destroying the Justice League's operational capacity through political dissent in a matter of weeks and forcing them to do the faked-but-not-faked-well-enough-because they learnt nothing from the last time they pulled an undercover scheme schism that is the "dire, desperate attempt to bring the fight to the Light" this season. And while they still manage to do some damage to the Light, it is still around and now Darkseid is coming a-knockin'
    • Black Beetle does nothing but roll over everyone in his way. Superboy goes down in one hit, Wonder Girl's only credit is that he has to hit her at least 10 times to get her to stay down, he can easily track Impulse's movements and nobody else can even come close to denting him. Only Blue Beetle with scarab in control caused him any problems, and even then, he probably couldn't win. Superman probably could have but he was conveniently off world whenever Black was around. The Light's people don't do any better as Beetle effortlessly holds off Deathstroke and Black Manta and his troopers and kills Ra's Al Ghul, though he can resurrect. Even Mongul can at best stalemate him. Aqualad's first 5 minutes being officially back in uniform end with Beetle stomping him too. Green Beetle might have been able to win, but he hacks and destroys his Scarab. He's finally defeated when Blue Beetle and his Scarab working together hack and destroy his Scarab. And even though destroying a Scarab is usually fatal for all but a Martian, Black still survives, albeit now powerless.

 
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Terror Tales of the Park

A wizard that turned Rigby into a house ends up killing Rigby's co-workers one-by-one in a horrific manner.

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