Phlebotinum-Proof Robot

"One of the benefits of being an android, I'm not on the menu."

— Vision, What If…? (2021)

In Speculative Fiction, there are a variety of things that can happen to human (or at least organic) characters. They can have their minds read, become People Puppets for a Puppeteer Parasite, have their souls stolen, or become infected with a virus that turns them into a zombie, among many, many other things.

But what happens if the character is a robot?

While robots in fiction often have human-like intelligence, they still typically lack a number of things that humans have (or are believed to have, in the case of souls). As a result, many of the things — bad or good — that can happen to humans in fiction won't do a thing to a robot. Since robots don't technically have a brain — and thus, no brainwaves — then they are generally immune to things like Mind Control or Psychic Powers. They can't have their souls stolen because they don't have a soul to begin with. And neither The Plague nor The Virus can affect them, unless it's a computer virus, that is.

Note, however, that this is not always a good thing. If, for example, robots don't have souls, then that means they can't join their friends in the afterlife^note To say nothing of the fact that, being The Ageless, they'll probably outlive their friends anyway. Not to mention, the lack of a soul may also lead to What Measure Is a Non-Human?, especially if the Powers That Be are involved. Plus, even if the robot is immune to Mind Control, the villain may just as easily have them destroyed to eliminate them as a threat (or else digitally reprogrammed, depending how these robots work). And finally, if the villain is a robot themselves, then their immunity to the heroes' phlebotinum is likely to make them harder to defeat.

Sub-Trope of No-Sell. Compare Kryptonite-Proof Suit, for armor (possibly mechanical) that protects against phlebotinum, and Disability Immunity, for when an organic character's lack of something protects them (which can overlap with this trope in the case of cyborgs who were reconstructed due to illness or injury, as seen in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz's Older Than Television example involving the Tin Woodman). Contrast Haunted Technology, when supernatural beings can work their magic on robots.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In the anime adaptation of Doraemon: Nobita in the Wan-Nyan Spacetime Odyssey, when Doraemon and gang travel to the past via Time Machine only to accidentally run into a temporal drift, Nobita and friends are quickly hit by the drift's effects and start aging and de-aging at random, with Nobita and Gian turning to babies and Suneo and Shizuka aging decades within seconds; but luckily Doraemon, being a robot cat, isn't affected, where he then swiftly pilots the machine away from the drift. Nobita and gang quickly turn back to their regular ages after a few seconds, wondering what the hell just happened. Oddly enough, in the manga, the drift's effects happen only to Suneo and Gian, and how Nobita and Shizuka escaped isn't explained.
• Dragon Ball Z: In the fight between Cell and Android 16, Cell attempts to absorb 16. This gets him absolutely nowhere, due to 16 being a robot with nothing to absorb. Ass-kicking Ensues.
• Ganbare Goemon: Episode 10 of the anime has Seppukumaru inventing a special powder that when exposed to it first makes the target skinny and then very fat, with even the heroes falling victim to it by eating cakes secretly laced with the stuff. The only ones unaffected by it are Sasuke and Impact due to the two of them being robots, until Seppukumaru eventually breaks out a modified version of the powder capable of affecting even them.
• Jujutsu Kaisen: Mahito's Idle Transfiguration ability manipulates a person's body by altering their soul, so it doesn't work on Ultimate Mechamaru, the robot that Kokichi Muta uses to fight on his behalf.
• Cyborgs in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS have a Home Field Advantage when fighting inside of Anti-Magic fields since their cyborg abilities are non-magical in nature and function at full power. However, this only applies to those specific abilities since the ones who are trained as mages will have their spells weakened just the same as everyone else.
• My Hero Academia: Hitoshi Shinso's Quirk, Brainwashing, allows him to control humans who verbally respond to a statement he makes. It's implied that the reason he failed to enter the Hero Course at U.A. is that the robots that are fought in the entrance exam were immune to his power.
• Outlaw Star: One episode featured an alien cactus that could control people, which it planned to use to take over the galaxy. When Gene confronted it, it used its powers to incapacitate everyone in the area, even forcing Jim to be its hostage as it triumphantly declared itself invincible. But it turns out Melfina was immune because she's a bio-android. She proceeded to crush the alien to death, though it ended up costing the crew a hefty bounty. Her immunity actually winds up contributing to her already-considerable angst over being an artificial life form, though ultimately Gene convinced her that even if she was built rather than born, she's still a person and her differences are a good thing.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • Early in the series, when the rules of the Duel Monsters card game were less defined, Machine monsters were immune to Spell Cards (except ones specifically beneficial to Machines, like 7 Completed) and attacks from Spellcaster monsters. These and other types of immunities among monsters were eventually abandoned.
  • Possibly as a reference to this, Ancient Gear, an archetype used by Professor Cronos de Medici/Dr. Vellian Crowler from Yu-Gi-Oh! GX and Duel Academy agents from Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V, features many Machine monsters that have effects that prevent the opponent from activating Spell or Trap Cards when they attack.

Comic Books

• Hank Pym's scheme to get out of his court-martial with The Avengers involved him building one of these that would only be vulnerable to his stings as Yellowjacket, allowing him to swoop in and save the day. This bit of Engineered Heroics goes badly, and his soon-to-be ex-wife Janet is the one who has to destroy it since she has the same stings Hank does. This results in Hank's fall from grace as a superhero, as well as Janet divorcing him, since Hank had hit her when she tried to talk him out of this mad scheme.
• Futurama: Zigzagged in "A Cure for the Common Clod". A virus spreads around New New York that causes cold-like symptoms in Fry, but causes everyone else to revert to a primal state. Since Bender is a robot, he is immune, yet according to Linda, other robots managed to somehow catch the virus. It's never revealed why some robots were immune and others weren't.
• In Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW), the robots Gemerl and Omega are immune to the Metal Virus, as it only infects organic beings, allowing them to fight the infectious Zombots head-on.
• The Thanos Imperative: In an Alternate Universe, the Many-Angled-Ones are able to end death, corrupting all living beings and turning the universe into the CancerVerse. Robots like Vision and Jocasta are immune (they consider themselves "life/death neutral") and form a Machine Resistance.
• In The X-Cellent (2023), Dox is immune to most of the abuse that Zeitgeist heaps on his teammates. Zeitgeist relies heavily on intimidation and bullying to make others obey him, seemingly reinforced by some sort of superhuman power to influence them — and, as a robot, Dox's feelings aren't so easily manipulated.

Fan Works

• Jaune Arc, Lord of Hunger: It turns out during the Fall of Beacon that Penny, being a robot infused with Aura, can't be harmed by certain Dark Side Force attacks. Specifically, Nihilus' Force Drain and Force lightning fail to harm her like they do everyone else — the latter only juices her up even more when she tanks it.
• With This Ring: Earl Dukeston gets a bit concerned about the prospect that he could be taken over by a digital lifeform like Kilg%re, but Paul consoles him by pointing out that on the other hand, he's immune to all forms of telepathy, of which there are dozens.

Films — Animated

• In Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: The Adventure Begins, X-R claims that as a robot, he's not susceptible to mind control and as such has nothing to worry about, only to be told that Zurg wouldn't hesitate to tear him apart and sell him for scraps.

Films — Live-Action

• Discussed in Avengers: Age of Ultron. It turns out that Vision — who is a robot — can lift Thor's hammer, which normally Only the Chosen May Wield. This leads to Steve and Tony openly questioning whether he can lift it because he's worthy (which would be an aversion) or because he's a machine (which would be a straight example).
• Subverted in King Kong Escapes. The Big Bad Mad Scientist Dr. Wu created Robo-Kong because as a robot it would not be affected by the radiation of Element X, which would kill a man. However, the radiation screws up with Robo-Kong's electronic brain and makes it impossible to command it by remote control. The result: the mad Doctor decides to poach the only living being on Earth that would be able to manipulate the Element without dying and brainwash it into obeying him — that being, of course, is King Kong.
• In Star Trek: First Contact, Dr. Crusher activates the Emergency Medical Hologram to delay the Borg, since he can't be assimilated by them.
• In Return to Oz, after Dorothy meets Tik-Tok, he states that the reason he wasn't turned to stone like the rest of Oz's citizens is because being a machine, he is technically not alive.
• Zig-Zagged in Star Wars: on one hand, Jedi mind tricks don't work on droids because they aren't "living things" that have a connection to the Force; likewise in A New Hope, The Empire's scan fails to detect any life aboard the escape pod containing C-3PO and R2-D2. On the other hand, physical Force powers such as levitation and telekinesis can still affect them, as demonstrated when Luke Skywalker levitates C-3PO in front of the Ewoks in Return of the Jedi. In addition, in The Last Jedi, it's never explained how C-3PO could see Luke Skywalker on Crait, because that "Luke" was only a mental image projected through the Force.
• Terminator 2: Judgment Day: The T-800 is unaffected by the gaseous fire suppression system when Sarah, John, and Dyson break into Cyberdyne Systems because, as a robot, he doesn't breathe. This allows him to walk inside and fetch the emergency gas masks for the others to put on, otherwise they would have to wait for the gas to dissipate. This same benefit comes in handy again, later, as they are making their escape from Cyberdyne, and the police fire tear gas when the T-800, Sarah, and John return to the main lobby. Sarah and John have to stay back and trade a gas mask between themselves, while the T-800 has his "I'll be back" moment and gets to be a badass.
• The Wizard of Oz: While Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion have already fallen asleep due to a spell from the Wicked Witch, the Scarecrow and the Tin Man are immune since they don't need to breathe.

Literature

• The plot of "Little Lost Robot" is kicked off by the Inversion of this trope: robot circuits are instantly fried by gamma rays, even at low dosages that are innocuous to humans. This is a big problem for a space base where the robots, being Three Laws-Compliant, run to their death to "rescue" perfectly safe humans in low-intensity radiation fields. So the base orders a custom-made robot with a limited version of the Laws, and the real problems begin...
• In Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter, the heroes come to investigate data leaks at a research facility and bring along an animal capable of detecting and affecting emotions. A couple of days later, the animal is killed despite its abilities, and Starr realizes they must be dealing with a robotic infiltrator.
• Perdido Street Station: The Construct Council (a group of artificial intelligences in the city's trash heap) is completely unaffected by the slake-moths' hypnotizing powers.
• Princesses of the Pizza Parlor: When the titular princesses are in trouble due to a mind-magic-using foe, they get backup in the form of constructs, which are immune to mind magic. Probably because they don't have minds.
• Star Trek: Federation: The Enterprise-D crew are working on a chunk of a Borg ship in the shuttlebay when something crazy happens and the shuttle bay is depressurized. The crew are collectively manhandled into a shuttle by Data, who, being an android, doesn't need to breathe.
• Inverted in a different Star Trek novel, Metamorphosis: Genocide has erupted on a planet after some inhabitants have evolved telepathy, and have decided that means they have souls where their non-telepathic brethren do not. Data realizes this might not mean what the inhabitants think it means when he discovers he too can hear their thoughts.
• In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman, who don't need to breathe, are not put to sleep by the poppy field which did put Dorothy, Toto, and the Lion to sleep.

Live-Action TV

• Chernobyl: Following the incident, the main characters use robots to clear the roof of the facility of irradiated debris. For two of three roofs, they are successful with robotic lunar rovers. For the third, they have to negotiate for a high-durability West German robot to be able to operate in the extreme radiation being emitted by the open core. Unfortunately, the robot breaks down because the negotiations didn't give West Germany an accurate number on how bad the radiation was to get a capable unit, as doing so would force the Soviet Union to admit to NATO how bad the situation really was, so the robot ends up failing only seconds in, and the main characters are forced to use people instead.
• Choujuu Sentai Liveman: In the penultimate episode of the series, Bias actually succeeds in brainwashing all of Earth, even the Liveman (sans Yuusuke who snuck aboard the Zuno Base in outer space) fall victim to this, with only their assistant Colon, who is a robot, being unaffected due to not having a human's mind which Bias could control.
• Eureka: Zigzagged with Andy, who while immune to plenty of harm due to being an android is also vulnerable to certain kinds of harm for the same reason. For example, he survives an attack from a gravity weapon that pancakes his car and is hardly hurt after catching on fire, but unlike the humans, he is harmed by an ion pulse that wiped out every other machine in town, and his legs were eaten out by titanium-seeking building mites.
• The Mandalorian episode "Chapter 8: Redemption", Din decides (albeit reluctantly) that droids don't count under his creed of, "No living being can see my face," allowing for a Dramatic Unmask in front of a medic droid.
• In the Power Rangers Beast Morphers episode "Rewriting History", Evox rewrites the memories of every human in the city so they think two of his minions have always been Power Rangers. The only one unaffected is Steel, who's half-robot.
• In Star Trek:
  • In Star Trek: The Next Generation, this applies to Data in a few episodes:
    • Subverted in "The Naked Now", as Data is not immune to polywater intoxication.
    • In episode "Angel One", a virus spreads among the Enterprise. Since Data is immune due to being an android, he is put in command.
    • In the episode "We'll Always Have Paris", the Enterprise crew must fix a malfunctioning time-travel device that is randomly rewinding time in the area around it. Because Data is an android he perceives time differently from organics and can therefore handle the effects better than the others. He's sent to fix the device. Even when it splits him into three versions from three slightly offset timeframes, he can figure out which version is the only one that can fix the device.
    • In "Unnatural Selection", all the people on a starship and a space station it had recently visited have started aging rapidly. Data is the only one who can go to the space station and subsequently return to the Enterprise until a cure is found.
    • In "Sarek", Ambassador Sarek is struggling with Bendii syndrome (the Vulcan version of Alzheimer's disease), which makes it practically impossible for him to suppress his emotions at his advanced age, and this starts to affect the Enterprise crew, who become much more belligerent with one another. The only other officer besides Data who isn't affected is Troi, who is an empath and knows how to handle emotions not her own.
    • In "Clues", the Enterprise encounters a highly xenophobic race who modify the memories of all who encounter them in order to keep the existence of their race a secret; unfortunately they can't modify Data's memory.
    • In "The Game", the eponymous game is addictive, and it hinders one's ability to reason. Since Data is an android and thus immune due to having no brain per se, Dr. Crusher, while being brainwashed by it, turns him off. Thankfully, Wesley Crusher and Robin Lefler succeeded in re-enabling him before being forced into this game.
    • In "Cost Of Living", a parasite has infected the Enterprise's systems, so they have to shut down all systems, including life support, to expel them, and Data is tasked with doing so.
    • In "Thine Own Self", Data had been sent to retrieve radioactive material from a primitive planet. Unfortunately, he was damaged when he landed on the planet, losing all memory of his assignment, and he wandered off to a village, and residents started getting sick from radiation poisoning — although he didn't.
    • In "Genesis", Data is naturally immune to the reverse-evolution virus that has infected the rest of the crew.
  • Star Trek: Voyager: Much like Data in The Next Generation, Voyager's resident holographic Doctor is often immune to the phlebotinum-of-the-week:
    • In "Cathexis", with a Body Surfing alien on the loose, the Captain transfers her command codes to the Doctor as he is the only person on the ship that can't be possessed. The alien just turns him off.
    • In "Waking Moments", an alien telepathic attack puts everyone on the ship to sleep, except for the Doctor and Magical Native American Chakotay. The Doctor does not get taken offline and is in fact vital to resolving the crisis.
    • In "One", when the ship needs to pass through a radioactive nebula, everyone except the Doctor and Seven Of Nine has to enter stasis. Subverted by the end of the episode though as the radiation becomes intense enough to damage the ship's systems and knocks the Doctor offline.
    • In "Bliss" a massive space-based organism hypnotises the crew into believing that it is a wormhole leading back to Earth so that they'll fly into it and get digested. The Doctor, as a hologram, is immune to this, so the organism hypnotises the crew into shutting him down.
    • In "Equinox", Captain Ransom has the science lab flooded with thermionic radiation to keep out the crew of the Voyager. However, this didn't keep out the Voyager medical hologram, nor did it prevent their own copy of the same holographic doctor from functioning in there.
• Ultraman Max has the episode, "Who Am I?", where a trio of alien Space Cats infects the entirety of Tokyo with a severe amnesia virus, affecting even Ultraman Max himself (with Kaitou transforming into Max by accident at the end of the episode, but then he forgot how to fight the aliens). The only character who escaped the virus is DASH's android communications officer, Elly the Robot Girl, who then keeps the situation under control until Max regains his memories and defeats the aliens.

Magazines

• Red Dwarf: One issue had the crew try to deal with a GEAP, an adorable-looking creature that telepathically influences others into protecting and loving it. Rimmer and Kryten are not affected by it at all, however, due to them being non-organic in nature.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • The Warforged (sentient Magitek robots available as a player race) are immune to a number of biological needs (eating, breathing, drinking, and sleeping) and effects (like disease or aging, even magical). However, for balance reasons, some effects still work on them (poison still damages them, and while they don't need to sleep they do need to spend several hours recharging).
  • Autognomes, another type of Magitek robot player character option, take this a step further. While war-forged, despite their mechanical nature, still have the creature type of Humanoid, autognomes are Constructs, which gives them immunity to spells and effects that target Humanoids, such as Charm Person (although they fortunately aren't immune to healing spells such as Cure Wounds, which normally also have no effect on Constructs). Not that this is a benefit unique to them, as Fae like centaurs, satyrs, and fairies share this immunity.
• Starfinder: Sentient Robotic Organisms (SROs) are immune to poisons, diseases, radiation, and sleep effects due to lacking the relevant biology.
• Warhammer 40,000:
  • The Robotic Undead Necrons aren't outright immune to Tyranid attacks, but the 'nids avoid their Tomb Worlds for the more pragmatic reason that there's too little biomatter there to justify (and replenish the losses taken) invading them.
  • Subverted with regard to several game rules: while the Necrons don't actually fear the living or have brains, they still need to take Morale tests and can be taken out by snipers (using acid-filled bullets).
• Early on in Yu-Gi-Oh!, certain cards would disallow targeting Machine-type monsters, such as poisons. This was quickly phased out as the game evolved since the flavour isn't important as the function and that restriction made cards clunkier.

Video Games

• Arcanum: As technology and magic are mutually and explosively incompatible, high-end technological enemies like Mechanical Arachnids and Automatons can cause spells targeting them to fail.
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert Series has mechanized units (such as Robot Tanks for the Allies, or Terror Drones for the Soviets) which are immune to certain, unique attacks, such as Mind Control from the Yuri clones, or the Desolator's poison fields.
• Downplayed in Command & Conquer: Tiberian Series:
  • Unlike regular infantry, Nod's cyborg infantry units are immune to the effects of Tiberium and can even be healed by it (though they will not recover lost limbs). However, fluff implies that it is the mutations in the organic components that enable the healing, not the robotic parts.
  • Vehicles, robotic or otherwise, are also immune to the effects of Tiberium. However, fluff makes it clear that Tiberium can and will chew through metal given enough time. It is just not represented in-game, as said amount of time is generally long enough that it'd be negligable over the course of a single game.
• Chrono Trigger: Spekkio tells Robo that he can't be taught magic due to being a robot (although his advanced weapons count as dealing Shadow-type damage). It's also not just a question of being a human or not, as Ayla the cavewoman is also unable to learn magic as she was born before magic existed.
• Debris sees your player character, Ryan, being infected with psychosis late in the game due to being stranded under the Arctic Seas as well as being exposed to the asteroid which landed in the Arctic years ago and serving as the source of debris energy. However, Ryan's partner Sonya, being an AI built into his helmet, is immune to the meteorite's effects, and in the good ending where Ryan managed to find an escape, Sonya then radios for rescue services to retrieve Ryan.
• Invoked Trope in Detroit: Become Human: The deviant androids can threaten to use a dirty bomb that will only affect the human population.
• Earthbound 1994: Ness and his party have their souls uploaded into robots at the climax of the game so that their bodies aren't destroyed time-traveling with the Phase Distorter 3.
• In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Dwemer automata are immune to Illusion spells unless you have the "Master of the Mind" perk, which requires a skill level of 100 (the maximum).
• Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location: In the Custom Night, the player needs to watch their oxygen along with their power. Minireenas will occasionally attempt to sabotage the oxygen tanks, and the oxygen meter reaching zero results in a Game Over. Due to them being robots, all of the animatronics are unaffected by the oxygen lowering.
• Freedom Force: One level has you collecting magic apples to undo a spell cast by Arc Villain Pan, but they're enchanted to prevent people from taking them, the teams Token Robot team member, Microwave, is the only one who can bypass the magic.
• Knights of the Old Republic: Darth Revan had realized that because droids in Star Wars don't have a strong presence detectable through the Force and are immune to Force-based perception manipulation, it makes them ideal Jedi hunters, so he built a prototype assassin droid codenamed HK-47 specifically to hunt Jedi for him.
• Metroid
  • Subverted in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes with Ing possession that to the horror of the Luminoth is also possible on the very robots they created for fighting the Ing.
  • Played Straight with the X Parasites in Metroid Fusion who can only infect organisms. However, the Security Robot BOX has organic components...which ends as one could expect.
  • And in its sequel Metroid Dread, once the X parasites on ZDR are released from their containment in Elun, they again infect all lifeforms with the exception of robots that are immune to it.
• Mortal Kombat 3: The cyber-ninjas are able to survive Shao Khan's soul-stealing Depopulation Bomb because they no longer have souls to steal, in a very literal example of Cybernetics Eat Your Soul. Of course, they can still have their non-existent souls stolen by Shang Tsung during fights.
• Nier: Defense System Geppetto, the giant machine that guards the Junk Heap, is immune to magical attacks, only able to be damaged by Nier's physical weapons and its own bombs. The other machines in the Junk Heap do not share this immunity.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Tora wasn't strong enough to become a Blade Driver, so he creates an Artificial Blade in the form of Poppi. When the party heads into Spirit Crucible Elpis, the story explains that the cavern's atmosphere is naturally starved of the Ether particles that allows blades to function, which results in Pyra/Mythra and other natural blades experiencing labored breathing, and also restricting them from getting more than level 2 for Blade Combos in combat. The game nudges the player to use Tora and Poppi to get to level 3 Blade Combos because Poppi is not affected by the lack of Ether.

Web Animation

• The Aquablade Chronicles: At one point in the season 2 finale, Salavaur attempts to read Roboblade's mind to find out how Professor Kyle Fenton has been helping Aquablade in the fight against Salavaur, but Roboblade informs him that since he's a robot and doesn't technically have an actual mind, there is nothing for him to read.

Webcomics

• In the comic "Second Coming" by Kitfox-Crimson, Siah's bad luck aura has no effect on an android that was mistaken for a vampire.

Websites

• SCP Foundation: In one episode of Professor Abnormal's Science Lab, the Professor is teaching viewers about "memetics", and how they can be used for things like Mind Control. He attempts to demonstrate his own memetics on his assistant Prescott the Robot, but nothing happens. Prescott explains that mind-altering effects don't work on robots like him, so they try it on the audience instead. And it works!^note Fortunately, viewers are only forced to hop on one foot for ten seconds. The Professor even tells them to close their eyes if they want.

Western Animation

• The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes: In the episode "Emperor Stark", the Purple Man uses a satellite built by Tony Stark to take over the minds of everyone on Earth. Everyone, that is, except for the android Vision and the AI Jarvis.
• Zig-Zagged on Buzz Lightyear of Star Command:
  • In the pilot movie, XR points out that as a robot, he's immune to mind control and doesn't have anything to worry about. Mira quickly reminds him that the brainwashed Star Command can easily tear him to pieces making that point moot.
  • Averted at the end of one episode, where — to make a long story short — XR is turned into a ghost. Or a ghost-like being.
  • Played straight in "Devolutionaries", where Warp Darkmatter uses a Devolution Device on Team Lightyear, turning Buzz into a caveman, Booster into a dinosaur-like creature, and Mira into a primordial Blob Monster... thing. XR, being a robot with no ancestors, is unaffected and must find a way to get his friend back to normal.
  • Inverted with NOS-4-A2, a robotic energy vampire who drains energy from other robots, and can turn them into energy vampires as well. You'd think he wouldn't be able to do anything to organic characters besides kill them, but as it turns out, a bite from him, combined with exposure to radiation from a Weird Moon, causes an organic victim to transform into a Wirewolf, which also feeds on other robots.
• Zig-Zagged on Futurama:
  • Averted in one episode, which had the main crew being overexposed to rejuvenating tar, turning Professor Farnsworth late-middle-aged, and the rest of the crew into teenagers, including the robot Bender. Later, everyone but Leela regressed to childhood, most of them becoming fetuses, with Bender becoming blueprints.
  • Played straight in "Cold Warriors", where Fry catches a cold, which spreads to everyone else except Bender, who's immune due to being a robot.
  • Played straight in "The Thief of Baghead", where Bender takes a photo of Langton Cobb, an actor who always wears a paper bag over his head, with his bag off. It turns out that Cobb is an alien that can rob the lifeforce of anyone who sees his face (or even a picture of it); Bender is immune to this because robots have no lifeforce.
• One episode of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983) had an evil sorcerer shielding a magical crystal he depended upon by a barrier no living being could penetrate. Stridor got in and knocked it out.
• The Legend of Korra: Robotic mech suits are built from platinum, making them immune to metalbending due to the purity of the substance (metalbending is an advanced form of earthbending that works by manipulating the trace amounts of earth in most metals).
• Martha Speaks: In "Verb Dog: When Action Calls", Martha has a dream in which she's become a superhero with the power to make things happen with the command, "[thing or person] — [action]!" (for instance, when she says to her friends, "Team — elevate!", they float up into the air). When facing up against the TD-603, a robot version of her owner's friend TD, she tries commanding him to giggle, but it doesn't work since he's a robot and thus has no emotions and therefore can't laugh.
• Miraculous Ladybug: As revealed in "Miraculous World: New York", robots such as Uncanny Valley are capable of recognizing Miraculous holders when they transform. That said, recurring character Markov never seemed to have this ability, despite being a robot as well.
• My Life as a Teenage Robot uses this to kickstart the plot to "Infectious Personality", in which the titular Jenny accidentally brings home mysterious space dust after destroying a series of Earth-threatening asteroids, which causes her human friends and family to become severely loopy.
• An episode of Static Shock had Static team up with Soul Power fight some robots made by the latter's arch-nemesis, Prof. Menace. When Static tries to zap them, they absorb and redirect his attacks, which Soul Power explains as the natural result of Menace's main opponent having electric powers.
• Sym-Bionic Titan: In "I Am Octus", all organic creatures are frozen in time by Monster of the Week and only Octus, the Token Robot, is unaffected and can save the day.
• Teen Titans: An episode tasks Cyborg with infiltrating Hive Academy disguised as a normal human. He gets brainwashed by Brother Blood. The climax of the episode reveals he wasn't really brainwashed since the machine part of his brain was able to resist brainwashing.
• The episode 5 of What If…? (2021) features a Zombie Apocalypse, which affects the majority of human population (at least in U.S and Wakanda), saved for a handful of survivors. But there, we have the Vision, whose android nature leaves him immune to the virus and the zombies don't even consider him a target.

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