Super Not-Drowning Skills

"Mario, the ball landed in the water hazard. You'll have to take the penalty stroke."
"Nope, playing through."

Max: Hey! Hang on a second! We don't have gills!
Sam: It's a cartoon, jarhead. We have remarkable lung-capacity!

— The Adventures of Sam & Max: Freelance Police

Humans can't breathe underwater. We can hold our breath for a short time, some of us longer than others. Longer than two minutes (without training to hold your breath beforehand) usually results in unconsciousness (and you'll automatically start to breathe again, which is very bad if your head is underwater). The world record with training is 22 minutes, but anything significantly more than that would push the body to its breaking point.

This seems not to be the case with some Video Game characters, however, who can swim underwater for infinite amounts of time and show absolutely no signs of discomfort. This incredible feat is never ever explained, or even mentioned as something out of the ordinary in these games.

Sometimes, the character gets a diving mask equipped with only a snorkel and absolutely no oxygen containers. While in the real world, this equipment would allow you to swim only a small depth under the surface of the water, in the games following this trope, it lets you plunge boldly into the deepest oceanic depths.

The most unsettling part, if you think about it, is the imagery often accompanying this trope: once in a while tiny air bubbles escape from your character's mouth and happily go speeding towards the surface. In the real world, it would mean that what little oxygen is still left in your character's lungs is gradually depleting, leading to an impending drowning.

This trope was mostly used in underwater levels of pre-8-bit and early 8-bit Platform Games. Due to programming limits it was easier to either invoke this trope, or just give the character Super Drowning Skills. In the late 8-bit era, many games implemented a revolutionary aversion of this trope, namely the Oxygen Meter. Still, this trope continues to be used in Video Games time after time up to the present day, and is even sometimes encountered in other media.

Super Not Drowning Skills is a Sub-Trope of Acceptable Breaks from Reality. It seems to be the opposite of Super Drowning Skills; however, they both can be present in different levels of the same game.

Not to be confused with any characters who have the supernatural ability to breathe underwater, sometimes resulting in Water Is Air. Super Not Drowning Skills happens when characters don't (or are very unlikely to) have this ability, but can survive underwater for an indefinite time anyway.

Compare with Super Swimming Skills. Characters with these abilities are particularly prone to Symbolic Serene Submersion. For the same trope, but IN SPACE, see Batman Can Breathe in Space. For similar extraordinary skills of surviving in ice, see Harmless Freezing. See also Artificial Gill, The Needless. A person may be using a Reed Snorkel.

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Video game examples:

Played straight:

Action-Adventure

• Castlevania series:
  • In Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow and Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, the bonus characters have no real reason for why they can breathe underwater. Don't ask questions.
  • Also in Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, once Shanoa has a Serpent Scale, she can move and breathe freely in water instead of floating up.
  • For Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Alucard takes damage simply from touching water from the beginning of the game until you grab the Holy Symbol, which looks suspiciously like a snorkel. After this, you can stay underwater as long as you want. Justified because Alucard is half-vampire and, as per traditional folklore, running water is hazardous to him. He takes the same damage from a puddle as he does when 30 feet underwater, and the lack of oxygen appears to be of no concern.
  • Nathan in Castlevania: Circle of the Moon has this attribute, except that instead of grabbing a holy snorkel, you just have to purify the water.
  • By virtue of having all of one room with water, no one in Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin even needs an artifact to stay underwater indefinitely.
• Cult of the Lamb: By all indications, the Anchordeep stage takes place entirely underwater. Despite this, neither the Lamb, nor the cultist enemies (who are established to be Funny Animals like the Lamb's own cultists) seem bothered about drowning or swimming. It becomes even more jarring when individual rooms include both cultist enemies who behave like they are on dry land and aquatic enemies like jellyfishes who behave like they are underwater.
• Dizzy has no problem diving indefinitely as long as he's carrying a snorkel. Drop the snorkel and die...
• Ninja Gaiden II on Xbox 360 sometimes requires Ryu to swim through tunnels. Sometimes, he even has to fight enemies down there. Amazingly, he will stay under the surface as long as you want. Which is good, because the game can be excruciatingly difficult otherwise, and we really don't need more than that, now do we?
• In Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, Miriam can swim underwater via jet propulsion once she gets the Aqua Stream directional shard, or simply move underwater normally once she gets the Deep Sinker skill shard and has it active. In both instances she can stay underwater as long as she wants without penalties of any sort.
• In Rise of the Tomb Raider, Lara can get an air rebreather for swimming long paths. The point is that now the player's oxygen reserve is limitless: you can stay indefinitely underwater. And you don't have a portable air supply, meaning you're basically rebreathing your initial gasp.

Action Game

• Dante can swim indefinitely in the underwater sections of the first Devil May Cry. However, a trap that starts flooding the room he's in hurts him. This also applies again to Dante, Lucia and Trish in the second game.
• Bayonetta's eponymous protagonist can not only stay underwater indefinitely, but in Bayonetta 2, there are more water areas, several fights take place underwater, and she gains a transformation that improves her underwater mobility.
• Eiro and Ann, the heroes of Dolphin Blue, can breathe and kick ass while underwater. There's even a stage with them battling a submarine boss in a deep, dark abyss without oxygen tanks or equipment.
• Little Red Hood for the NES uses this trope. Level 5 takes place underwater. Red Hood never drowns. Oddly, in a different level, if she touches shallow water she instantly dies.
• Thunder Hoop have the underwater levels where your titular character dives into the depths of the sewers and goes around blasting enemies left and right, where he can stay underwater for as long as he like without any problems. What's even better is that Thunder Hoop needs to shout, "Yep! Yep! Yep!" to fire his Hand Blast; and he can continually do so while submerged a few hundred meters below the surface, never mind he's gulping down mouthfuls of sewage with each "Yep!"

Adventure Game

• The Secret of Monkey Island cleverly subverts this trope by telling us early on that our hero Guybrush Threepwood can hold his breath for 10 whole minutes underwater. This is meant to imply to the player that when Guybrush actually ends up underwater later on, he would actually be able hold his breath for however long it would take to solve the underwater puzzle. However, when exactly 10 minutes have passed underwater, Guybrush dies. This is the only possible Game Over in the entire game.
• Subverted in Ankh by a musical reference to Monkey Island (Guybrush Threepwood can hold his breath for exactly ten minutes).
• In Quest for Glory V, your character can acquire a ring that allows him survive indefinitely underwater. Once he learns how to swim, swimming without the ring deals damage to you. However if you pay attention, you'll notice that your character, sufficiently grinded, can stay well over an hour under the water before finally dying, longer if you have a means to heal yourself.
• Adam from EcoQuest spends nearly the entire game underwater, using a pair of tiny oxygen tanks (designed for a very young child) and SCUBA gear. The tanks never run out.

Beat 'em Up

• Oriental Legend have a stage in the depths of the Heavenly Reaching River, where the player starts off by walking into the water and spends the whole level kicking ass while walking on the riverbed. Even players who use Sun Wukong have no issues fighting in the water, since the game gave him an Adaptational Badass by removing his crippling weakness to water.

Driving Game

• Carmageddon allows you to take your cars underwater, and Grimy Water alike. Maybe justified by the fact they're all tank-like vehicles, but you can stay underwater indefinitely, and all it does is affect your forward motion.
• Crazy Taxi pulled this off to a truly ludicrous level, but hell, the clue is in the title. If you think Mario holding his breath and fighting monsters for six or seven minutes is stretching it, how about taking an entire taxi plus passengers underwater. And driving about. And then driving back out again. And no, that's not a bug!
• Mario Kart 7 has underwater racing in many levels. And yes, you can stay underwater for as long as you liked, use fireballs and explosive items down there and see the sights of an eight person go-kart race along the sea bed. Mario Kart 8 has more underwater segments in courses, and its Updated Re-release Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is particularly notable for having Inklings as guest drivers. Inklings dissolve into ink if they fall into water in their home games, but apparently go-karting in the Super Mario Bros. universe is enough to give them complete immunity to water.
• Choro Q series features complete Sentient Vehicles who have no problem running underwater aside the max speed and acceleration being dropped significantly. Some NPCs in the Wide Open Sand Box sections are permanently parking themselves underwater and not drowning.

First-Person Shooter

• In the first generation of the First Encounter Assault Recon games, swimming seems to have been added as an afterthought. In the few sections where there is water deep enough to dive in, both the Point Man and the Sergeant^* protagonist of the Perseus Mandate expansion can remain under for as long as they want with no ill effects, though there's no location in any of the games where this ability comes in handy.
• Due to a programming oversight in Far Cry 2, you can hold your breath forever by abusing the heal command. When your air runs out you begin to take damage but the game lets you recover health as often as you like without cost (except that you move slower and can't use weapons until the healing animation is finished). So long as you keep stopping to pull the barbed wire out that the water is inexplicably sticking into your flesh, you can stay under forever. Later games rectified this by simply having you drown if your air ran out.

Hack-and-Slash

• Golden Force, a pirate-themed game, have your characters capable of kicking ass while underwater for several minutes. That said, the water does hinder your mobility to an extent, and it's preferable to flee from underwater enemies unless you're cornered.

MMORPG

• In Holy Beast Online, there are several maps dunked entirely underwater. While it can't really said for sure on the dragon clan and their breathing skills, it is certainly improbable for the other clans to be breathing like this. Additionally, there are butterflies FLYING underwater.
• In Star Trek Online, water is entirely cosmetic and doesn't actually affect your character in any way. In the few places where you can go deep enough to get your head underwater, feel free to sit at the bottom for however long you want.
• Most bodies of water in Final Fantasy XI act as an Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence, but some tunnel/sewer zones have areas of standing water you can freely walk through. They're there for visual effect only, but get amusing when they're deeper than a 2' tall Taru. Who can cheerfully stand or /sit there all day fully submerged.

Party Game

• Mario Party: All boards set underwater are played without the need to hold breath or use any breathing apparatus or swimming gear for the characters. The boards are Deep Bloober Sea (Mario Party 3), Undersea Dream (Mario Party 5), the underwater parts in Blooper Beach (Mario Party 9), and Whimsical Waters (Mario Party 10). The same holds true for several Under the Sea minigames, though there are exceptions.

Platform Game

• The Addams Family series:
  • The Addams Family (NES): If you dive in the lake without any gear, your health meter would start gradually depleting. But if you find a diving mask with a snorkel, you can swim through a set of underground caverns with no problems.
  • The Addams Family 2 (NES/SNES) also plays it straight.
• Adventure Island series play this trope straight starting at 2 (NES).
• Banjo-Tooie: Like in the first game, Banjo and Kazooie will have an Oxygen Meter until they land in Jolly Roger's Lagoon, where Mumbo uses his magic on the water allowing Banjo and Kazooie to breathe indefinitely.
• Barney's Hide & Seek Game (Genesis): In this game not just the reptilians Barney and Baby Bop, but even human children can survive underwater without any equipment whatsoever.
• In the freeware Binary Boy, the Boy he will instantly obtain a scuba mask out of nowhere as soon as he is submerged and is able to stay underwater indefinitely because of it.
• In Blue's Journey for the Neo Geo, the time Blue can spend underwater, even icy water, is limited only by the ordinary level timer.
• Bug! had Quaria, where the entire level was underwater. What's weird was that the previous level was Splot, a swamp with instant-lethal water.
• Chack'n Pop has no limit on how long Chack'n can swim. Then again, the Monstas can't drown either.
• Contra (NES): For characters that die if they touch anything that isn't friendly or a powerup, they sure can stay with their head underwater for as long as they like without any harm whatsoever.
• Donkey Kong:
  • Donkey Kong Country (SNES) plays this straight. Quite ironic seeing how gorillas in Real Life possess Super Drowning Skills.
  • Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest has a contradictory depiction of Super Not Drowning Skills. In most water levels, your character can stay underwater indefinitely. However, in the swamp levels the water acts as Bottomless Pits....you are dead if you fall into it. That said, the swamp's sludge might well be too thick for the Kong to swim in, or the swamp is poisonous.
  • Donkey Kong 64: The Kongs never drown when swimming, despite Super Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie (this one made by the same company even), games that influenced its general design, averting this trope.
  • Donkey Kong Country Returns shows a notable aversion for the series, because the Kongs apparently forgot how to swim, and all water is treated as a Bottomless Pit. In the sequel Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, the Kongs can swim again, but there is an Oxygen Meter.
• Felix the Cat (NES) can stay underwater for as long as he likes.
• In The Flintstones for the Sega Genesis, Fred Flintstone never has any trouble breathing in the Under the Sea level.
• The PC game Jazz Jackrabbit and its sequel.
• In Little Nemo: The Dream Master, Nemo can't drown unless he has a Power Up Mount that can't swim, in which case he has to abandon it quickly.
• Pitfall! II: Lost Caverns had elaborate parts where you swim — and this is an Atari 2600 game.
• Purple lets player stay underwater as long as there's time left on the counter.
• Ristar (Genesis) plays this straight, but then, who said stars need to breathe? Of course, there is no planet big enough to fir a star in either, so it's probably best not to think about this too hard.

• Both averted and played straight in the 8-bit versions of Sonic the Hedgehog, given that you can drown in the first two acts of Labyrinth Zone but not the third one, despite the latter being set entirely underwater.
• The main character of Spelunky is able to go into deep pits of water for extended periods of time without losing damage, despite having no visible breathing apparatus.
  • Averted at the same time, however, as being underwater will kill cave spiders. Of course, oxygen is the least of Spelunky's worries underwater...
• Despite being cursed with Super Drowning Skills in the first game, Spyro in the second game is suddenly able to at least paddle on the surface at a reasonable speed. After paying Moneybags to teach him to swim, he can not only swim and "charge" underwater, but also hold his breath indefinitely.
• Super Mario Bros. series:
  • Super Mario Bros. (NES) had both this and Super Drowning Skills. In the underwater levels, you can hold your breath for the whole level. In the land levels, bodies of water work just like Bottomless Pits (there are more in abundance in Lost Levels).

• Super Mario World (SNES): Not only can Mario or Luigi go underwater, so can Yoshi.
  • Some ROM Hacks of this game avert this thanks to the Air Meter patch.
• Super Paper Mario: The main characters can breathe underwater, but not in space. Fanon speculates that Mario can filter oxygen out of the water with his moustache.
  • Super Mario Galaxy features the exact opposite. Mario can breathe in space, but not underwater. This may be justified in that he spends the game with a mystical star child beneath his hat, whose specific purpose is to help him travel the stars. Though this doesn't explain how other NPCs like the Toad Brigade can breathe.

• Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story added a section where Bowser could breathe underwater indefinitely al a this trope. Thankfully, he couldn't breathe fire outside of battle, though.

• Wario Land series: Being a spinoff from the Super Mario Bros. series, it also uses this trope.
  • The exception is Wario Land: Shake It! where Wario uses a subwarine in underwater levels.
• New Super Mario Bros. and New Super Mario Bros. Wii, being very much like the NES/SNES days use this, and various ROM Hacks prove that Yoshi can breathe underwater, a stark contrast to Sunshine.
• And now Super Mario 3D Land is the first 3D style Mario game that features this, considering it is a bridge between 3D and 2D style Mario games.

• In the first Rayman, the main character instantly drowned when he fell in water. In Rayman 2: The Great Escape, he can swim in every direction, but can only breathe for about 10 seconds unless assisted by Carmen the Whale's air bubbles. In Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc, swimming is simplified by him being able to breathe underwater indefinitely and being limited to moving in the X-axis. In Rayman Origins and Legends, every playable character can breathe underwater. Suspension of disbelief could be applied in Origins considering the characters are all inexplicable fantasy creatures, but that comes to a halt in Legends with the conception of the new playable heroine Barbara, who is obviously human.
• Noodle the snake protagonist of Snake Pass can swim underwater as long as he likes, and he moves even better than he does on land.
• Clarence's Big Chance: Actually a plot point in the Worst Ending.

Run-and-Gun

• Savage Halloween, a Monster Mash-themed action game, have a level set underwater, where you swim around an underwater temple while fending off piranha schools. It's worth noting that one of your characters, Dominika, is a vampire, and she's somehow immune to water despite the classical beliefs about vampires.

Real-Time Strategy

• Hedgewars has a underwater theme. Strangely enough as the titular hedgehogs still retain their Super Drowning Skills should they make contact with the ubiquitous mud below the landscape.

Roguelike

• The first two installments of the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series have underwater dungeons that only require you to have the Surf and/or Dive HMs in your inventory to be accessed. Any Pokemon is free to explore said dungeons with no air issues whatsoever.

Role-Playing Game

• Final Fantasy V:
  • While you can't swim, you do need to walk through flooded sections within the ship graveyard.
  • And much later in the game, you have to get to the bottom of the Water Tower, beat Gogo, and get back out in seven minutes to get the Mime class.
• In Final Fantasy VI, a diving helmet is needed to access an ocean path. But only one is needed or found for the whole party, and no explanation is given of its functionality without other supporting equipment. The GBA port includes a boss battle underwater with 4 characters and said mining helmet probably being lost at that point.
• Tidus, and all other blitzball players, in Final Fantasy X can all hold their breath for at least five minutes - the length of each game's half. However, they (and Rikku, though she is a mechanist and might possess a rebreather) also go into underwater levels in Gagazet which seem to take much longer than that. Even Yuna seems to be able to in the Macalania Springs scene. Handwaved with the explanation that the water used in blitzball arenas is infused with pyreflies, magical Soul Jars that figure heavily into the game's world; the rest is all training. One NPC says that the best blitzball players can even sleep underwater.
• In Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance], Sora and the Dream Eaters don't have any issues breathing under the ocean in the aquatic section of the Prankster's Paradise and move about as though they're on the land, albeit with lower gravity. The former doesn't question why he's able to do this, either.
  • In Kingdom Hearts III, Sora regains the ability to hold his breath indefinitely while in The Caribbean, and this time, Donald and Goofy (but not Jack Sparrow) can hold their breaths as well. It may be justified, as Calypso was aiding them.
• Pokémon:
  • In Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald, you can ride on the back of your Pokémon at the bottom of the sea with the HM Dive and have no problem staying there for hours without any gear and your Pokemon have no problem battling underwater either, even Pokemon like Charmander, which supposedly dies if the flame on its tail goes out.
  • Also, swimmer class trainers will complain about how exhausted they are and one even asked for a ride back to shore if he wins the battle. If you win, he just continues to float there and not drown. (Same can be said of any swimmer trainer far away from any type of land.)
  • Dive makes a return in Pokémon Black and White; although there are no underwater battles anymore, the player character him/herself is still quite capable of breathing while down there, although you can only go a certain number of steps before popping back to the surface.
  • Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire subverts this trope, at least for Brendan and May, as Steven will give the player scuba gear upon getting the HM for Dive. It's played straight for one class, though, the Free Diver. Not only are they able to stay at the bottom of the ocean with no sort of scuba gear outside of a pair of goggles, they can even speak underwater!

Sports Game

• If you play in the Aquadome in Backyard Baseball, the gameplay is not altered; the characters can still breathe and hit hard.

Stealth-Based Game

• Garrett from the Thief series can, in the first two games, hold his breath and swim around underwater for a decent amount of time. This is despite him carrying a sword, a bow, arrows, other thief tools and loot he may have collected. It doesn't hold true for the third game where, due to engine limitations, falling in water results in instant death.
• Normally, averted in the Metal Gear franchise, as the player character will start to drown if underwater too long, and usually has to get an oxygen tank (if available in the game) in order to stay under longer. However, played straight with certain unlockable items in some of the games that, when equipped, will keep your oxygen meter from diminishing: the Wig A item in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, and the Brown face paint in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. Note that Wig A won't protect Raiden from the Super Drowning Pool in the Vamp boss fight, nor will it help Emma during the underwater Escort Mission.

Third-Person Shooter

• Jet Force Gemini: Vela is capable of swimming underwater indefinitely, which grants her access to areas that are out of reach for Juno and Lupus.

Visual Novel

• Some story branches in Burly Men At Sea have the Beard Brothers swimming around underwater for in-game hours with no sign of oxygen distress.

Justified:

Action-Adventure

• In Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow and Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, Soma usually floats/swims when in a body of water, except when he equips the Skula soul, which instead makes him sink. You could say the breathing is just part of the soul's effect, but if you unequip the soul in an area you can't surface in, it becomes more of a straight example of Super Not Drowning Skills.
• In Demon's Crest, Firebrand, being a creature of fire, usually takes continuous damage when underwater. However, activating the Crest of Water turns him into an aquatic gargoyle, allowing him to stay underwater indefinitely and swim. While the Crest of Water is active, you can move around on the surface, but your weapon is significantly stronger underwater than it is on land.
• Most games in the Ecco the Dolphin series use an Oxygen Meter instead, but edutainment game Ecco Jr. invokes this for all three playable characters.
• The Goonies II: Mikey wears a diving suit in the underwater levels.
• Horizon Forbidden West has Aloy eventually devise and construct the Diving Mask, a mouth-covering apparatus made out of various machine parts that gleans oxygen out of the water. Beforehand, Aloy had a limited time period she could stay underwater before drowning, and afterwards she can stay underwater indefinitely and will even mutter aloud underwater.
• Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver: Water is acid to Nosgothic vampires, and Raziel carries this weakness over in his transformation to a reaver of souls. If he falls into water, his material form is instantly destroyed and he falls into the spirit world. His brother Rahab, however, evolves an immunity to water, and Raziel gains this ability when he reaves Rahab's soul. Being Dead to Begin With, he has no need to breathe and can swim indefinitely.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: Once you put on the Zora Tunic you can be underwater as long as you want without drowning. Justified by the shirt being explicitly magical.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: The Zora Armor does the same thing, but has the decency of Hand Waving it by having a face mask pop up to cover your mouth whenever you're underwater.
  • Majora's Mask takes it a step further: one mask turns you into a Zora.
  • It is also notable that one of the few games where Link does not get Super Not Drowning Skills of any kind is The Wind Waker, somewhat odd when you consider that it is also the only game that takes place on an ocean. (Also problematic when the damn boat keeps talking to you instead of letting you on, even when your swim meter is about to run out.) Link can only drown in the ocean. Justified near the beginning of the game, where it's explained by an NPC that the Great Sea's currents will tire Link out and swallow him up if he swims in it for too long. He doesn't have this problem in the various small ponds and streams on some of the islands, as they are presumably shallower and a lot less rough to swim in.
• The Shantae games zig-zag about this, but water is never lethal by itself.
  • The Mermaid Dance allows her to swim underwater freely and indefinitely.
  • The Crab Dance allows Shantae to walk on the bottom of the body of water she drops into, allowing her to access gaps that the Mermaid form is just too big for.
  • If Shantae hits water in human form, she floats to the top and stays there, but is capable of swimming on the surface for quite some time. If she dives into the stuff in any other form, she will revert to human form on contact.
• The Player Characters of the Darksiders series can stay underwater indefinitely, as they are Horsemen of the Apocalypse (War in the first game, Death in the second).
• Azurik of Azurik Rise Of Perathia can swim indefinitely due to his attunement to the elements.
• Jonathan in Pharaoh Rebirth can't swim and as such water is lethal to him; however, when he has to traverse a temple that is half underwater, his friend sends him a drone carrying a very advanced breathing apparatus. From that moment on, swimming is no longer a problem for Jonathan, and you can revisit previous areas blocked by water.
• In Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Cal can swim in water just fine, but he cannot dive until after meeting with Tarfful on Kashyyyk. When he's given a special underwater breathing apparatus, Hal can then dive for as long as he wants with no ill effects on health,

Action Game

• The Blaster Master Zero trilogy have Jason traversing underwater areas in the same suit he travels out of his tank with. Justified since the suit was designed by an alien civilization to conduct maintenance and fight mutants in extreme environments, including empty, zero-g space. Kane uses a similar suit, and Eve is a gynoid mostly corrupted by mutant cells.
• In the God of War franchise, Kratos can only swim on top of water before finding Poseidon's Trident, which lets him breathe underwater.
• The Little Mermaid's main character is a mermaid.
• Rampage: Total Destruction has this, in that Lizzy and the aquatic creatures are able to actually gain health from water hazards, which both injure and knock down other characters.

Adventure Game

• Grim Fandango has a while mine where people harvest glowing coral underwater with no breathing equipment, but it's set in the afterlife, so everyone's dead. However, that doesn't explain their ability to talk normally. Or smoke.
  • Toyed with in the case of the demon Glottis. He did eventually have to get out of the water, but only because his skin was getting all pruney.
• In King's Quest II (+), a mermaid's kiss allows King Graham to breathe underwater. The spell wears off once the underwater segment is over.
• Police Quest II: The Vengeance: As befitting such a realistic game, going underwater requires you to wear a whole range of Scuba gear, including a wetsuit, fins, goggles, a weighted belt, and an oxygen tank. If you forget to pick up an item, you will not be able to dive. Additionally, you must inspect all available oxygen tanks and pick the one with the most oxygen remaining, or you could easily drown before completing the underwater task!
• Subverted/Averted/somethinged in The Secret of Monkey Island. Guybrush Threepwood can hold his breath for ten minutes... but not a second longer. The only way to die is to leave him underwater for 10 minutes.
  • Played as a joke and an Easter Egg. Guybrush swaggers about his ability to hold his breath for 10 minutes. Much later in the game, a puzzle involves being thrown to the sea with a weight tied to the feet. The puzzle is easy enough to solve in much less time, but waiting to see what happens may reveal the unexpected ending.
  • Leaving him underwater after ten minutes in Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, The Curse of Monkey Island (maybe), Escape from Monkey Island (only once), and Tales of Monkey Island (both while still alive and as a zombie) only results in him scrambling back up to the surface for air, after which he can dive underwater to try again as many times as he wants. The only exceptions to these are in Escape, when, after ten minutes on the second time underwater, he will drown, with no second chances this time; and in Tales, when he becomes a Ghost Pirate in Chapter 5, and not only does he walk or run while underwater in the Manatee Mating Grounds as a ghost, but he stays underwater indefinitely, until the player decides to make him come up to the surface. This will happen until he finds a way to repossess his own body.
  • Also, in spite of his ability to hold his breath for ten minutes, Guybrush is able to move his lips while talking underwater, as seen in Secret and Curse, for example, but especially evident in Tales, when his lips are clearly seen moving when he talks underwater.
  • In Return to Monkey Island, he's down to eight minutes (which he attributes to being a bit past his prime), with a timer popping up whenever you're underwater. If you let the time run out, you return to the Framing Device (Guybrush telling the story to his son) and it's pointed out that he can't have died there if he's alive now. Guybrush admits to stretching the truth... but let the timer run out three times and you'll cut to an empty bench and some narration stating that Guybrush really did die and never had any children.
  • There's a Shout-Out / Take That! of this in Return to Zork. In one instance you are shrunk and must search a bottled ship. If you look in a certain place on the ship, you can see a skeleton dressed up like Guybrush, and examining it gives you the message "Looks like his ten minutes are up." Incidentally, you drown much faster in this game.

Collectible Card Game

• In the Magi-Nation game, the main character Tony Jones can breathe underwater and swim really fast after acquiring a magic belt. According to the official fiction of the card game, all of the people on the moonlands have this skill.

First-Person Shooter

• In Crysis, the protagonist is wearing a super-tech nanosuit. Presumably this can act like a CO2 scrubber, or just holds enough air in its structure to make it a non-issue.
• In the Marathon series, you do have an Oxygen Meter, and it doesn't refill with air simply by surfacing; you must recharge your suit's oxygen tank from canisters and wall sockets. You can stay underwater for a long amount of time, but the second that tank has depleted... (There are also vacuum levels, which have the same mechanic, and additionally disallow the usage of some weapons.)
• Metroid: The games allow Samus to stay underwater for any duration she wants, without drowning, thanks to her Power Suit. If she can walk in space without dying, why should water stop her? However, movement and visibility in water are both highly limited, until one receives the Gravity Suit, at which point the water's actually just there to look fancy. Or in the case of Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, to let Samus have better maneuverability than anywhere else.
• Team Fortress 2 - Since drowning is resolved in the game mechanics as taking persistent damage until the player dies or goes up for air, one can gain Super Not Drowning Skills by being in the range of a friendly Medic or Dispenser.
• Justified and lampshaded in Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines: Since you are Dead to Begin With, you don't need to breathe at all, let alone underwater. The Lampshade Hanging comes in one of the final levels, when you infiltrate the Hunters' base and can overhear two of them discussing an underwater passage, to which one remarks, "I can't imagine any man holding his breath for so long," and the other says, "It's not mortal men that should be our concern."
• like Samus, the power armor worn by players in Starsiege: Tribes and its sequels Tribes II and Tribes: Vengeance allow indefinite underwater lurking.

MMORPG

• In Dungeons & Dragons Online, characters have an oxygen meter that depends on their Swim skill. But with the waterbreathing spell or an underwater action item, it becomes irrelevant. Warforged, being magically animated living constructs, don't breathe in the first place and can always stay underwater indefinitely.
• Final Fantasy XIV doesn't even let you enter water where you can't swim - you can cross knee-deep rivers or ponds, but that's it. The Stormblood expansion introduces swimming and diving in selected areas. Inverting If It Swims, It Flies, your flying mounts can also be used underwater. Justified as your character undergoing a Kojin magic ritual that lets them breathe water as if it were air.
  • Later exploited come Shadowbringers, where a group of malicious aquatic fey attempt to drown the player character... Only for them to easily escape because they can breathe underwater.
• In zOMG!, you aren't supposed to enter the underwater area until after being blessed with the ability to breathe water... except that there's ways to get to that area without the blessing. Well, the devs tried?
• A good chunk of Guild Wars 2's content is underwater, and it's been confirmed that you get a breath mask item that allows you to stay underwater indefinitely. However, amphibious Ranger pets (anything that isn't a fish, bird, or spider) get no breath mask, but can stay underwater indefinitely.
  • Unequipping the breather has no effect on the character, however, aside from you losing any armor or stats it would give you.
• World of Warcraft is semi-justified. Most player-races have an Oxygen Meter but the Forsaken, being Dead to Begin With, they have no need to breathe and can stay underwater much longer than the others (since Mists of Pandaria, indefinitely). When they run out of air they quickly die from drowning damage. Some classes also have spells to let them breathe underwater, plus there's an alchemist potion and engineering helm. Pets, however, have no oxygen meter and can breathe underwater without the aid of magic. This might be Hand Waved in the case of Warlocks' demonic minions, and makes sense with the water elementals used by frost mages, but the most likely explanation for Hunters' pets is that most of the animals in question can hold their breath at least as long as a humanoid or much longer. Though this doesn't explain Hunters who use artificial means.
  • Non-player enemies, of course, are not affected by this, but some will not even chase players who escape into water.
  • Siege engines on the other hand have Super Drowning Skills, taking a lot of damage quickly due to water damaging the machinery.
  • The game also uses a secondary meter to prevent players from swimming out into places they are not supposed to reach, called Fatigue. This meter appears in or above deep water (unless the player is on a ship or other automated transports), runs out much quicker and there is no way to avoid it quickly killing you except turning back.
    • Unless you're a druid, which, with decent gear and liberal application of its instant-cast heal-over-time spells, can swim indefinitely through Fatigue.
    • Fatigue can get interesting when you take into account Water Walking spells and mounts. Somehow you manage to drown while standing on the surface of the water. This got especially annoying in Mists of Pandaria's Timeless Isle. It contained a boss, a giant whale, which swam an endless circle around the island, never stopping no matter how many people were attacking it - the entire things was a moving beatdown on a high HP target. A few parts of its path took it into fatigue territory, forcing players to retreat to shallower waters where they would be unable to attack.
  • One zone, Vashj'ir, takes place entirely underwater. In order to prevent drowning from becoming an issue, the first quest in the zone, which is a prerequisite for all of the others, has you collect some of the local creatures to help a shaman cast an enchantment on you that will allow you to breathe underwater while in the zone—and also move faster through the water in the zone.
  • In the original game and the first expansion (The Burning Crusade), your breath meter went down at a realistic rate while you were underwater. After about 30 seconds of holding your breath, you started to drown. Nowadays, though, even the lowliest neophyte can hold his breath underwater for two solid minutes with no ill effect. He can also cast fireball spells (if a mage) or use his Battle Shout and Demoralizing Shout abilities (if a warrior) while fully immersed.
• Wizard101 gives several justifications for this in various underwater areas, such as water breathing potions, aqualung fish, or just a side effect of whatever teleported you to the lake bed.
  • Pirate101 zig-zags on this front. First there's nothing stopping you from staying underwater for as long as you want, without so much as a Lampshade Hanging, then an underwater fight where your ability to hold your breath serves as a time limit, and finally a lake of magic water that supposedly any land creature can breathe.

Platform Game

• In Banjo-Tooie, Banjo has an Oxygen Meter. In Jolly Roger's Lagoon, Mumbo Jumbo casts a spell that oxygenates the water so that Banjo can breathe it.
• Commander Keen 4: You're wearing full scuba gear in the underwater level. In other levels, you have Super Drowning Skills.
• In the Nintendo Switch version of Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, Funky Kong is the only playable character who can stay underwater indefinitely. When he goes underwater, he's shown with diving gear on him.

• This ability is gained in INSIDE (2016) after the Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl pumps something into the player character. Before then, your character will be able to swim for a bit before needing to get air.
• James Pond series: The main character is a talking fish. In the second game known as Robocod - he wears a mechanical life support suit allowing him to completely invert this trope... by wandering around on land. WITHOUT A HELMET. (Presumably his gills are fully enclosed.)
• The "Scuba Gear" powerup grants players this ability in LittleBigPlanet. Made safer by the fact that you can't take it off while you're in water, unless you touch an Enhancement Remover. Of course, it doesn't protect you from other underwater hazards...
• The main character of Mega Man (Classic) series is a robot, but he still creates bubbles as if he were breathing, though. The bubbles are probably air escaping from whatever open space exists in his robot body.
  • Mega Man Zero give Zero similar underwater properties, but plays with in it one level where Zero does have a time limit to get inside a submarine before it dives too deep and the pressure crushes him.
  • Mega Man ZX: It's unclear how the biometals effect the user (besides giving him/her their inherent abilities). If the Player Character is in human form, he/she will float on the water and never sink. If they are using a biometal, they will sink like a stone, with no adverse affects whatsoever.
• Metroid series: The main character wears a Powered Armor suit that allows her to move through most environments. While normally slow underwater, the Gravity Suit eventually turns water into a formality, since you can move through it as if it wasn't there.
• Ratchet & Clank: Ratchet cannot breathe underwater at first during the first game, until he finds an O2 mask, which allows him to subsequently breathe for as long as is needed.
• Spyro the Dragon series (Playstation), starting with Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage!: In these games it's a magical ability.
• In Tak: The Great Juju Challenge, Lok (who normally has Super Drowning Skills, due to fish hating him) can walk around underwater indefinitely while he's wearing the Lobster Suit, which was specifically designed for underwater exploration.
• In the NES Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game, one of the levels involves swimming in the Hudson River to disable a series of underwater bombs. The four playable characters are all turtles, which means that they do have greater underwater survival ability than most; however, the timer on the bombs is short enough (two minutes, thirty seconds) that breath is the least of their worries. (If the timer runs out, it's an instant game over, but if a turtle dies in some other way before it does, it resets for the next one...)
• In the video game adaptation of Toy Story 2, Buzz can stay underwater for as long as he likes, but it makes sense considering that 1, he always wear a helmet, and 2, he's a toy and doesn't even have lungs.
• Trine initially averts this trope, with all three playable characters having their own oxygen meters that only reset when you get air—switching to another character nets another full air meter, but switching back to the original character keeps his/her oxygen meter where it was when they were switched out. However, a magic item later on in the game allows one character to play this trope straight - as long as the item is equipped on that character, they can swim underwater indefinitely.
• In Wonder Boy in Monster World, Shion needs Poseidon's Trident to swim underwater. (Just like God of War, oddly enough.)
• World of Illusion: Starring Mickey Mouse & Donald Duck (Genesis): The title characters swim underwater in big air bubbles, containing their whole bodies. Which is an example of Acceptable Breaks from Reality in itself.
  • In The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse, Mickey's head is surrounded by an air bubble if he is wearing the magician outfit while underwater. With the other costumes, he has no air supply and takes damage after several seconds.
• Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero?: While the first game treats water as a Bottomless Pit, the second game has a stage set entirely underwater, and our Prinny can stay down there for as long as he likes (barring the time limit, obviously). It's outright justified as Prinnies are the souls of criminals animating suits that lack organs, so the need to breathe isn't present. Other characters in this stage are depicted as wearing diving gear (minus wandering gag character Haldi, whom can be battled here if the stage is chosen third). In the same game's "Asagi Wars" campaign, Prinny Asagi is also able to breathe underwater indefinitely, and her opponent is an 8-bit version of herself whom likely doesn't need to breathe as well.

Puzzle Game

• Everyone in The Lost Vikings had Super Drowning Skills, but in The Lost Vikings 2, Erik gets a cybernetic helmet that allows him to swim and breathe underwater.

Role-Playing Game

• AdventureQuest: A shipload of water breathing potions got dumped into the ocean in DragonFable, which takes place five years before the events of AdventureQuest, which is why you're able to fight battles in an underwater setting with no problem.
• Kingdom Hearts: In Atlantica, the characters are transformed into underwater creatures by Donald.
  • In Chain of Memories, the characters don't transform and briefly ponder why they appear to be underwater without a need to breathe. Yet they don't try to swim or wonder why there is apparently no water resistance to their movements. Either way, they're just visiting a realm constructed by Sora's memories of that world.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • The Argonians have this as a racial ability. Argonians can breathe water just as easily as air, and are known to use this as a guerrilla warfare tactic, dragging their foes underwater and drowning them. Argonians are also known to make encampments underwater, which are obviously hard for non-Argonians to attack.
  • Throughout the series, the Water Breathing spell is available to allow non-Argonians to do this. It also comes as an effect in potions and enchantments, allowing non-mages to use it.
• Final Fantasy requires you, at one point, to travel into an underwater shrine. Before you can go about doing that, you need to buy a bottled fairy and release her, then find her so she can give you the Oxyale relic that supplies your party with oxygen.
  • Final Fantasy Dimensions makes a lot of references to other games in the franchise. FFI's fairy makes a return when the characters need to visit an underwater dungeon. She's being held captive in a bottle and needs to be freed, and gives you the Bubbly Water key item so you can breathe underwater.
  • Whilst fighting Emerald WEAPON in Final Fantasy VII, the party normally has a twenty minute time limit. However, equipping the "Underwater" Materia on a character will replace the time limit with Super Not Drowning Skills. However, this doesn't explain how the other two characters in the party can breathe indefinitely.
  • In the Final Fantasy XIV expansion Stormblood, the player character and two of his/her allies undergo a magic ritual performed by the turtle-like Kojin that blesses them with the ability to breathe water as if it were air.
  • World of Final Fantasy has a bit of fun with it. When Lann and Reynn need to visit a sunken temple they enlist the help of Shantotto to cast a water breathing spell on them. Unfortunately being Shantotto, her method is to curse them and the result is that they can then ONLY breathe in water. Luckily she also has an antidote she's willing to share if you bring her back an item from the temple while you're there.
• Marvel Ultimate Alliance: It is explained that the presence of special nanites allows the heroes to survive and fight while underwater.
  • Whether it allows the Human Torch to stay use his fire powers is a different story, however...
• In SoulBlazer you cannot enter the underwater level until you get the Bubble Armor first, which surrounds you in a magically maintained bubble of air. Apparently the air is also kept fresh and somehow you are still able to fight with a sword without popping it.
• The undersea ruins in Mana Khemia 2 can't be accessed until the player finds the recipe for air drops, a candy that provides oxygen for anyone who eats it. Of course, the fact that you only need one for a five or six character party and you can visit repeatedly without making more raises a few questions. Air drops make a return in Atelier Lydie And Suelle as well.
• Water doesn't inconvenience the player character at all in Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, thanks to them being physically dead. It is a great help when infiltrating the local Absurdly-Spacious Sewer, though it becomes a double-edged sword if their poor choices get them tied up and dumped into the ocean.
• Monster Hunter 3 (Tri): Hunters can already spend minutes at a time underwater while fighting monsters before having to find an oxygen source, but they can also gain the "Endless Oxygen" equipment skill that allows them to remain underwater for as long as they want.

Roguelike

• In NetHack, if you're wearing an amulet of magical breathing, then you can walk across the bottom of bodies of water. The same amulet will also prevent you from dying if you choke on food.

Stealth-Based Game

• Ralph the Wolf from Sheep, Dog 'n' Wolf can stay underwater indefinitely. Considering that this is All Just a Dream...

Possibly Justified:

The following examples could be explained considering the character's traits or the game world mechanics or some other facts. But that explanation was never actually done by the game authors themselves. Is this trope played straight in these examples, is it handwaved or justified? Maybe we'll never know.

Action-Adventure

• The titular Azurik could stay underwater until being killed by the uncommon underwater hazards, going into one of the very rare whirlpools, or getting out of the water yourself. There wasn't a limit otherwise. Unfortunately, you couldn't fight while swimming. His skin, hair, eyes, and tattoos were blue, so maybe he's some unnamed amphibious thingy.
• Blaster Master: Jason is able to swim around with no problem, even though his battle suit doesn't have a visible oxygen tank on it.

Beat 'em Up

• Considering her numerous superhuman powers, Bayonetta's titular protagonist breathing, walking and talking underwater can easily be seen as magic skills.

MMORPG

• In Champions Online there are large segments completely underwater, but as you play as a superhero underwater breathing might just be a shared power across every hero.
  • Actually explained in one of the first missions in the underwater zone - you gather herbs that are used to create the elixir that lets heroes breathe underwater. You've already been using it, especially during the Lemuria trial, they just need to make more for other, incoming heroes.
• City of Heroes - Once you're out of waist depth, you can swim underwater as long as you like. Possibly justified by being one of your super abilities.
• Justified for the Tideborn race in Perfect World, played straight for all five of the other races of playable characters - nobody takes damage underwater unless attacked by monsters (or other players who happen to be in PK mode).
  • In-game story text reveals that Super Not-Drowning Skills are also justified for mixed-race individuals with half or more of their genetics being Tideborn. Early in the Morai questline, the player meets a couple that consists of an Earthguard man and a Tideborn woman, respectively named Situ and Huazen, and the elder of their two daughters, Little Leaf. The questline takes a shocking turn when the player character finds the corpse of the younger daughter, Little Yetz, at the bottom of a lake near where the family is currently living. The PC's first thought as to the cause of Little Yetz's death is accidental drowning, but a heartbroken Situ angrily cries, "My daughter is half-Tideborn! She couldn't have drowned!" A shape-shifting Chigo, the Serpent Emperor strangled her to death after she had been tricked into harvesting the coveted Immortality Fruit and dumped her body in the lake.

Platform Game

• Donkey Kong 64 for the N64 gives one character the ability to turn into a swordfish. This doesn't explain how the other characters can breathe underwater indefinitely.
• Kirby likes to put on a scuba mask when he's underwater, but sometimes doesn't bother. Even when he does, he never dons any air tanks, just the mask, which he appears to only wear for vision and/or fun. Sometimes he outright wears a snorkel instead, even when he's nowhere near the surface of the water. He can also survive in the vacuum of space. Although none of this is directly explained, the lack of need for air could be justified by Bizarre Alien Biology, or by the pocket dimension he has access to being full of air.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Normally Sonic either dies instantly upon hitting water, or can only last about thirty seconds underwater before drowning, unless he breathes in a large air bubble to reset the counter. However, obtain a Bubble Shield in Sonic 3 & Knuckles and Sonic can stay underwater without worrying at all about air as long as he keeps the shield. Having Cream as his partner character in Sonic Advance 3 also puts Sonic inside of an air bubble while he's underwater, preventing him from drowning. Bafflingly, he doesn't have any trouble breathing in space regardless.
  • In earlier games, even the otherwise-completely-invulnerable Super Sonic can die by drowning. Hyper Sonic can breathe underwater, however. Sonic the Hedgehog 4, however, finally gave Super Sonic this trope.
  • And in Sonic Adventure 2, Knuckles can breathe underwater indefinitely after getting the Air Necklace. Although referred to as a necklace, it appears to be a small oxygen tank.
• Like the Sonic series above, Freedom Planet forces the protagonists to hold their breath if they go underwater. The water dragon Lilac can hold her breath the longest of the group, and there's a Bubble Shield which negates even that requirement, even when Brevon cuts the oxygen to the Final Dreadnought.
• Some of the Super Mario Bros. examples may be justified by the fact that some of the characters are given power from the stars... Though it doesn't explain everything. In many of the platform games, Mario has a five minute time limit to complete the level, which means with training he could hold his breath the entire time.
• The titular Starfy/Stafy from The Legendary Starfy. In most US localizations Starfy is a starfish but TOSE has gone on to say that Starfy isn't, confounding whether this is justified or not.
• Rabi-Ribi protagonists Erina and Ribbon can stay underwater indefinitely, though they move slower until they have a particular upgrade. Ribbon is a fairy, which might explain why she can survive underwater, but Erina is a human; a bunny turned human, but still.
• Theta vs Pi 7 protagonist Theta never had to come up for air. A probably justifiable example since not being a human, an animal or having a nose or mouth it's entirely possible Theta (literally the Greek letter theta) doesn't need to breathe normally.

Real-Time Strategy

• StarCraft II has multiplayer maps set underwater, with none of the playable races affected by it in the slightest. The Terrans can be explained by having air-tight Power Armor and vehicles that are also capable of functioning in space. The Zerg are a race known for mutating to quickly adapt to new environments, so they likely just grew gills. The Protoss absorb the water they need to survive through their skin, and Dragoon/Immortal pilots are men in the machine kept in fluid-filled People Jars, so it's entirely likely that they can just breathe water.

Role-Playing Game

• Might and Magic VIII has the Elemental Plane of Water, which unlike the swimming level of the previous game doesn't require a wetsuits for the characters — but on the other hand, it is a magical alternate dimension and not a mundane underwater area, so the normal rules might not apply.

Visual Novels

• Muv-Luv: BETA either don't need to breathe, or are capable of holding their breath for hours to days, enough to ford narrow seas and straits by walking across the seafloor: in the anime of Muv-Luv Alternative, they're shown first crossing into Japan via the seafloor of the Korea Strait and the East China Sea, and then coast-hopping their way around the secondary defensive line in the center of Honshu, while Muv-Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse shows them attempting the same tactic through the Sea of Okhotsk to get around the Red Army's defensive lines on the Kamchatka Peninsula. However, they either can't hold their breath long enough to cross areas of open ocean, or the water pressure is too high or the temperature too low. This is the main reason the Americas remain BETA-free: the only potential crossing point is the Bering Strait, and the United States is quite happy to use the Nuclear Option against attempted orbital insertions. Though they've also somewhat inexplicably been kept out of Africa so far despite overrunning Europe decades ago.

Wide-Open Sandbox

• Kerbal Space Program is hard to pin down with this trope. Kerbals are super-bouyant, but you can trap one underwater by, say, attaching a command chair to a tank full of heavy ore, and they won't drown. The obvious explanation is that they wear spacesuits; the problem with this is the extreme timescales the game works in. You can abandon a Kerbal in deep space for literal years with just their suit for company, and they won't even suffer from unhappiness; trapping them underwater for the same amount of time is equally harmless. Either the suits contain infinite life-support resources, or Kerbals are immortal and wear spacesuits for fun (and for the jetpacks).
• Oxygen Not Included: Accounting for Videogame Time, your Duplicants have impressive lung capacity for both underwater and working in unbreathable gas pockets. Sure, they panic and rush to have a breath before they're even at risk, but if forced to they can stay put and work for quite a long time. Even more so for those with Diver's Lung and Deep Diver's Lung as traits. The possible justification comes with Duplicants being a Human Subspecies engineered and cloned specifically for space colonization, where lung capacity would be a desirable attribute.
• In ARK: Survival Evolved, the Oxygen stat rules not just a creature's ability to hold its breath, but also its swimming capability, leading creatures like Ankylosaurus and Doedicurus to be more agile in water than they are on land simply because their Movement Speed is that low. In addition, the complete lack of an Oxygen stat denotes a creature that simply does not need air... which, in addition to fish, applies to a surprising number of aquatic/semiaquatic reptiles.

Non-video game examples:

Anime & Manga

• At one point in Digimon Tamers' Digital World arc, Takato and Henry are forced to swim through an underwater cavern, at which point they discover that since they're being rendered in a Virtual Reality they don't need to breathe at all.
  • An early episode of Digimon Fusion had Shoutmon X2, already a Fusion Dance of Shoutmon and Ballistamon, fuse with ChibiKamemon to get this so that it could fight an Octomon after getting dragged underwater with the heroes.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Stardust Crusaders: When Jotaro and Captain Tennille are submerged in water, the latter boasts he can hold his breath for over six minutes. After Jotaro defeats him, Jotaro speaks out to him without any negative repercussions underwater.
  • Stone Ocean: When fighting against Foo Fighters, Jolyne and Ermes travel quickly underwater and have a quick exchange without having trouble for oxygen.
• Marine Boy uses one of Professor Fumble's inventions: "oxy-gum" which Marine Boy can chew and receive hours of oxygenation.
• Subaru Nakajima of Lyrical Nanoha is capable of spending up to an hour underwater without an air tank, as a result of being a Combat Cyborg.
• In the anime Grenadier, Rushuna encounters an opponent who uses an apparatus for breathing and fighting underwater. She fights with seemingly no ill effects for an extended period of time. Although she does eventually need to get air, she goes well over two minutes without any.
  • In the same fight, she evens the scales with a breathing apparatus provided by one of her allies. Said ally is a balloon seller by trade, and the apparatus in question is a helium pump.
• Pokémon Special: Though not exactly Super Not Drowning Skills, more like Super breath holding skills, during the Aqua op at Mt. Chimney, Sapphire and Flannery are trapped in a air tight cable car that has filled with water, and are able to survive about 7 minutes without oxygen, even though they're both just kids. Also apparently, The girls can hear every word the bad guy was saying even though he was wearing a air filled helmet, and even if he wasn't, you can't hear stuff underwater as well as in air. (Some wild Pokémon can track their prey by sound or scent, and Sapphire would have to hold her breath and remain completely still to avoid detection in those instances. She is the Wild Child of the dex holders, after all. That, and the other Badass Normal feats she performs, make this par for the course.)
• Misty is hinted to have this no less than twice in Pokémon: The Series:
  • Apparently, a mermaid costume gives you such skills automatically in the Pokéverse, as "The Misty Mermaid" was more than happy to demonstrate.
  • More notoriously, the Pokémon Chronicles episode "Cerulean Blues" got pretty blatant about it. When three brothers who are battling Misty to challenge her position as Cerulean City Gym Leader are disqualified for fighting unfair, they begin to attack her Gyarados, which is in a cage as it was out of control throughout the episode. Misty immediately dives down to help Gyarados, taking the full blast of the attacks directed at Gyarados and quickly losing consciousness in a matter of seconds. Gyarados, seeing this, desperately tries to escape and save her, while the three brothers show absolutely no concern that their Pokémon are potentially drowning another person. Gyarados, of course, breaks free of its cage, and rushes Misty to the surface, where she awakens, despite no CPR, and the fight resumes. That's not the end of it, though! Misty is immediately submerged yet again, likely without enough time to draw another breath, and—get this—talks CLEARLY underwater, giving Gyarados commands for attack—twice! There's no distortion or gurgling effect at all!^note Or any bubbles, for that matter. Then she's back out of the water, completely fine. No coughing or anything. Our Mermaids Are Different, indeed. It would seem they don't call her the Tomboyish Mermaid for nothing.
• Naruto occasionally treats us to extended fights underwater in which the characters seem to forget about drowning.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion: You wouldn't know it from a casual glance, but the EVA pilots' cockpits are filled with LCL, a viscous orange fluid that is somehow made transparent. Even if they try justifying it by having the liquid have a high O2 saturation, there's still the issues of insufficient tidal exchange.
• Nino from Arakawa Under the Bridge tries to teach the iron brothers how to swim by example. She disappears underwater for eight minutes, and returns with armfuls of fish. Eight minutes is very impressive, although not world record material. Later, a minor character followed her underwater with SCUBA gear and remarks that an hour of oxygen wasn't enough. (Perhaps it's Nino's Venusian physiology?)
• Squid Girl, being oceanic, can breathe underwater (and demonstrates it, much to the boredom of her friends). However, in one chapter she forgets that she can breathe underwater and gets rescued by a lifeguard.
• There's a few lengthy underwater scenes (or at least mentions of how long they're underwater) in Dragon Ball and Z. It's kinda-justified for the Saiyans who can apparently hold their breath a VERY long time (including apparently being able to fight and, somehow, talk, in low orbit of a planet, at least for a while) but not so much the couple of humans like Krillin who get in on the action.
• Played completely straight in Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE-. Syaoran is wearing a eyemask (but no scuba gear!) and diving straight into the deep. They have enough time to start a fire before he resurfaces. That's gotta be at least ten minutes of holding his breath!
• One Piece usually goes out of it's way to avert this in the case of the Devil fruit users but there is one aversion in Jack whose is shown to still be alive despite being at the bottom of the ocean. Later, it’s revealed that he’s a fishman, a race that can breathe underwater.
  • However it's shown that it only extends to him being able to breathe, other than that he's as helpless as any other Devil Fruit user when submerged.
• It's mentioned during the Beach Episode of Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid that dragons can breathe underwater. Kobayashi briefly wonders if they have gills.
• Justified in Ronin Warriors in that the mystical armors allow their wearers to breathe underwater. However, only Torrent and Venom actually benefit from being underwater.
• Ojarumaru:
  • In 22nd series episode 25, Denbo, Kame, and Tome spend quite some time in the Moonlit Night Pond searching for Great King Enma's scepter with no effect other than echoey underwater voices. Denbo is only equipped with a small straw, which somehow allows him to breathe air deep in the pond. Somewhat justified with Kame and Tome as some turtle species can spend longs periods of time underwater by absorbing oxygen from the water.
  • A great portion of 23rd series episode 32 takes place in the ocean with the Sannin Taro not having any difficulty breathing.
• Goblin Slayer has a whole stack of magic breath rings allowing breathing in any low oxygen environments.
• The Anpanman movie, "Nanda and Runda From the Star of Toys", depicts Nanda and Runda being able to breathe underwater.
• Future Boy Conan: Conan's years of diving in the ocean around his home island, and generally superhuman abilities, let him swim underwater for long periods. At one point, he's stated to have stayed under for over three minutes and wasn't even short on breath when he came up.

Comic Books

• The Kraken from The Umbrella Academy can only, as creator Gerard Way said, "hold his breath and throw knives." He also said he was "fucking useless" and compared him to Aquaman. Ouch.
• The Juggernaut from X-Men has walked along the bottom of the ocean multiple times. This is justified in that he has mystical abilities.
• Modesty Blaise as well as sidekick Willie use yoga training to stay underwater for up to five minutes. Notably they're perfectly aware of the exact limits of their bodies, and even count how many seconds a given pulse-raising activity (such as fighting) costs them, which is most definitely a Super Not Drowning Skill.
• Marvel comics characters who fight the Sub-Mariner often get in extended underwater battles. This is especially true for the Fantastic Four; Ben can hold his breath for nearly ten minutes, but the others usually need Reed to invent something for them. It's taken to ridiculous extremes in one episode of Fantastic Four: The Animated Series, where Reed comes up with an "oxygenating spray" that lets them breathe without any gear (and survive deep-sea pressure, apparently) for three hours. He also makes it possible for the Torch to burn underwater... with a wristband. And, in fact, the show did not invent anything here. The "oxygenating spray" and the Torch burning underwater (albeit not the wristband) were created during the Lee-Kirby era, in the comic book that episode was based from.
• The Avengers have also gone underwater with no gear before, courtesy of Sersi using her matter-rearranging powers to turn them into water-breathers. This was crazy enough that even the characters remarked on it, but as the Beast pointed out, she does that kind of thing.
• According to his profile on Marvel.com, The Incredible Hulk requires very, very little oxygen to function. This is part of the reason he can function in space by holding his breath, but even more amazing is that he has developed an organ that fills his lungs with a breathable fluorocarbon liquid in cases where he is deprived of oxygen! How about that?
  • The Thing, a frequent rival of the Hulk, can hold his breath indefinitely. His endurance isn't on the same level since he'll eventually use up all of the oxygen, but that takes him quite a while and his super-tough stonelike body can withstand immense pressure in even the deepest parts of the ocean.
• Sublime of DV8 once tried to commit suicide by jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge. Her density powers kicked in subconsciously, putting her in a state where she doesn't need air, and she couldn't turn them off.
• One of Meriem's explicit powers in Cavewoman is an enhanced capacity to hold her breath... and capacity to expel water from her lungs even if unconscious.
• The Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) mini-series issue #2 story, "A Crowning Achievement Part III", has Sonic and Tails diving to an underwater cavern to retrieve one of the missing Freedom Emeralds from King Acorn's crown. They seemingly have no difficulty breathing underwater, despite the fact that the previous issue's story, "Something Fishy", depicts Sonic struggling to breathe underwater.
• Played with in Swordquest: Waterworld. Shortly after arriving in Waterworld, Torr finds a helmet that lets him breathe underwater. However, after he meets the mermaid queen Aquana, he no longer needs it.
• While heavily subject to Depending on the Writer, Kryptonians like Superman are sometimes portrayed as not requiring oxygen for as long as they have yellow sunlight, making breathing more of a formality than a necessity. Because of this, they can survive underwater and in space indefinitely for as long as they have ample access to the sun's rays.
• Wonder Woman Vol 1: In the Golden Age the Amazons, including Wonder Woman herself, were depicted as avoiding contact with outsiders by swimming underneath their boats and ships and then pushing them away from their island from beneath without ever having to come up for air. Special mention goes to Virgina True who isn't an Amazon but after being knocked out underwater and then it taking a bit for her to be noticed missing and recovered is brought to by Wonder Woman elevating her feet. This is never explained.
• Vampirella: Vampirella can last underwater indefinitely as long as she gets extra blood. See Warren #29 "Vampirella and the Undead of the Deep!". #103 contradicts it somewhat but Continuity Lass is no friend of hers anyway...

Fan Works

• Heroes of the Desk: Justified for Sylvanas Windrunner. She's not even technically alive, being undead and all, so air is not a concern. Explicitly pointed out by Kerrigan and Sylvanas herself, who muses on what she would do if everyone else drowned since they were near the ocean bottom at the time. Apparently, being undead also means immunity to eight tons of pressure per square inch as well.
• The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World: Paul discovers that he doesn't need to breathe when he freezes so thoroughly after going to high strength that he doesn't even let his lungs inflate. Proves very useful when he ends up trapped at the bottom of the Hungry Sea for a while. He reveals this little tidbit as a casual aside, and the others are too distracted by their circumstances to immediately notice it. Later, though, John quizzes him on how he survived underwater, and he nonchalantly says, "Turns out I don't actually have to breathe."
• Meloetta: Melody of Discord: Meloetta can swim for an unlimited amount of time without even needing to breathe, unlike the other playable characters, who die the moment they touch water.

• Pokémon Reset Bloodlines: Misty is a Water Heart Bloodliner, which grants her the general abilities of Water-type Pokémon, which include being able to breathe underwater and withstand extreme pressures.
• Sword and Claw: Poseidon's charms allow their users to not only breathe underwater, but also see and move around as if on land, and drink seawater.

Films — Animation

• In the Dot and the Kangaroo sequel Dot and the Whale, a dolphin named Nelson teaches Dot how to breathe underwater the way his species does, despite Dot being human. This enables them to travel from Australia to Antarctica together in order to seek help with rescuing a beached whale.
• Lampshaded in Heavy Metal, when Den is surprised that neither he nor the Damsel in Distress drowned during an underwater escape.
• Oh spends several hours underwater at one point in Home (2015). Presumably, so can the other Boov.
• Beetle in Kubo and the Two Strings can hold his breath for a very long time, just like a beetle in real life.
• Pinocchio: Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket spend eight minutes of screen time (and possibly days of real time) under the ocean looking for Monstro the whale with no effect other than garbled underwater voices. It sort of makes sense for Pinocchio, since he's made of wood — what doesn't make sense is that a few minutes later, he apparently drowns.
  • And as for Jiminy? Well, he was in a bubble... briefly, until it filled up with water. Probably gave many physicists headaches.
• The Sponge Bob Movie Sponge Out Of Water has Super Not-Asphyxiating Skills. The gang seems to function perfectly fine above water in spite of not being able to breathe air (though this does make sense for Sandy and Mr. Krabs — note that the former doesn't seem to be wearing her helmet). It turns out that Bubbles the dolphin granted them these skills as a reward for causing him to lose his job (he never liked his job as the protector of the universe, but he never had the courage to quit, either)

Films — Live Action

• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home: Captain Kirk. He rescues two whales from the cargo hold of a crashed, sinking Klingon starship. Played with in the case of the whales themselves, it's pointed out that whilst they naturally do have Super Not Drowning Skills in comparison to humans (being aquatic mammals), they do need to come up to the surface to breathe and will drown if they don't.
• Averted in The Abyss: Lindsey survives a long swim by being resuscitated rather than by this means.
• Godzilla can breathe underwater. Japanese guide books created during the Showa Godzilla era explained that the holes in his neck^note The holes that allow the suit actor to see and breathe are a set of gills.
  • A more extreme example is in Godzilla and Mothra: The Battle for Earth when Godzilla swims a great distance through LAVA and doesn't die.
  • Prior to that, he actually spent five years trapped in a volcano in the interregnum between The Return of Godzilla and Godzilla vs. Biollante, and was no worse for wear after he got out.
  • Just try figuring out how the Godzillasaurus survived underwater for as long as it did in Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah. Untouched by radiation, we see the dinosaur in the film walking comfortably on the bottom of the ocean before it becomes Godzilla again. Maybe drowning just wasn't a problem for dinosaurs?
  • Justified in Godzilla (2014) where Godzilla is given a more obvious set of traditional gills on the side of his neck.
• Strangely, this seems to happen in The Boat That Rocked. When the ship starts to sink, Carl and Bob spend plenty of time arguing underwater about Bob trying to rescue all of his records at once, without looking even slightly distressed at the lack of oxygen. Bob then spends further time trying to choose one record to rescue, still not looking at all bothered about being underwater for so long.
• The Poseidon Adventure was mentioned in Roger Ebert's book of movie cliches (see Shelley Winters Index).
• In Highlander, Ramirez throws Connor (who is discovering he's immortal) into a lake, causing him to discover he doesn't drown.
• In Alien: Resurrection, the characters hold their breaths for five minutes in the underwater scene. It's especially silly in Christie's case, since he's carrying someone else on his back as well. Justified for Call, since she's an android, and possibly Ripley, depending on how much her physiology was altered by mixing with the Aliens' DNA (who do just fine underwater).
• The Shape of Water: Zig-zagged with the main character Elisa. She is more comfortable with water than most humans. When she floods the bathroom to the top window, she doesn't worry about drowning, nor does she put her head above water to breathe. After only a minute or two, Giles opens the door and all the water comes out. In the final scene, she falls into the flooded dry dock, apparently too weak to swim. The Amphibian Man turns her neck scars into gills so she can breathe underwater.
• A few of the children in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children display this. Emma in particular can manipulate air, and even create Oxygenated Underwater Bubbles. It's showed she has enormous breath capacity, but even so, it looks like she straight up inhales the water to blow all that air into the underwater boat.

Literature

• Older Than Print: In Beowulf, the title character spends several hours underwater going after Grendel's mother. It's unclear if he can breathe underwater or if he's just badass enough to hold his breath that long, but either way, it's impressive. Elsewhere in the poem, his recounting of a week-long swim during his youth makes clear just how good he is in the water.
• Averted and/or justified in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. One of the events requires the contestants to stay underwater for a significant period of time, and much of the challenge is figuring out how to do that. Turns out that magic offers several ways of doing this.
• In Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Percy is the son of the sea god Poseidon, so he has several water-related powers, including this—in fact, he can go underwater without even getting wet if he wants to. He can also bring friends with him by encasing them in a bubble of air, though by himself he doesn't need the bubble.
• Michael also uses this to demonstrate his mental abilities in Stranger in a Strange Land.
• Septimus Heap's brother Simon apparently spent months with his head in a bucket learning the Darke Art of Suspension Underwater.
  • The Darke Disguise offers this power for free. It grants you not only the ability to breathe underwater, but also calms you and clears your vision. Septimus uses it in Darke. But it only lasts a certain amount of time and then if you don't find air, you drown.
• The backstory to Titan, the world of the Fighting Fantasy gamebook series, describes how Hydana, the god of the sea, got lonely in his underwater kingdom and decided to kidnap some humans so he could have some company. It wasn't until after the first few humans had drowned that Hydana realized they couldn't breathe underwater. After that, he turned the lungs of his human "guests" into gills (he's a ''god'', he can do that sort of thing) so they could breathe. This led the humans to be turned into Mermen, even as the elves, trolls and even giants that Hydana added to their number also adapted to the ocean in their own ways.
• In the Mind Pool duology by Charles Sheffield, Angels (a species of plant-like creatures; no relation to messengers from heaven) can survive underwater for extremely long periods of time. One describes it thus:
  Angel: We can not breathe underwater... however, we can not breathe underwater, as well.
• In Dragon Steel, the second book of Laurence Yep's Dragon Series, dragons can breathe and move underwater as easily as they can in air or on land. Humans visiting the dragon kingdom, however, need an enchanted pearl to allow them to breathe and talk while under the sea. It also keeps them warm and prevents the crushing pressure at the bottom of the ocean from killing them. There are ordinary humans who have spent their whole lives—birth to old age to death—living at the bottom of the ocean.
• Chelestra, the completely water-based world in the third book of The Death Gate Cycle, automatically granted this power to everyone — even visitors could breathe underwater. Of course, the ocean also had the property of obliterating rune-based magic, so it might not have been water.
• The Destroyer: For Remo and Chiun, spending about half an hour underwater (freezing one) is just one of the vast array of their Shinanju abilities.
• The Crocodile God: The Filipino sea-god Haik has children with the human Mirasol, who can swim in lethal conditions like monsoons or shark-infested waters... starting from infancy (for their older daughter) or early childhood (for their son). And that's without Animorphism. Justified since Haik is the title's crocodile-god of the seafaring Tagalog tribe, and in the story, he's also descended from outright Born Under the Sail Polynesians. It's also noted that their Semi-Divine children were supposed to be full deities before an angry Spaniard shot the pregnant Mirasol, which sent Haik over the Despair Event Horizon. (Their stillborn daughter was born as an extremely tiny whale-calf.)
  • Becomes a Downplayed Trope near the end of the story—it's stated that Filipino gods can be killed, and even Haik would drown eventually. The trick is that he can sail back to the mortal realm. He is also not immune to getting eaten by sea-creatures BEFORE drowning.
• The Daevabad Trilogy: As a side effect of Ali's marid-inflicted Making a Splash powers, he can't be drowned in water. He tries to hide his abilities, but his Secret Secret-Keeper friends point out that they've known him to explore underground cisterns for hours at a time.
• In My Brother is a Superhero, Zack goes to the pool and discovers that this is one of his six superpowers. Although technically, its purpose turns out to be letting him breathe in space.
• Dragonlance: The New Adventures: In Queen of the Sea, all the passengers and crew on the ship Nearra and co. take are given magic rings blessed by priests of the sea goddess Zeboim, that allow them to breathe underwater (however, they only work once, so they can't go back to the surface until their mission is over).

Live-Action TV

• Grey's Anatomy: Meredith Grey spent an entire episode floating around underwater and suffered no physical consequences.
• H₂O: Just Add Water: Justified, as the main characters are mermaids, though they have the limitation of a live-action actress, meaning they can't breathe underwater. They can still hold their breath for longer than any human, clocking fifteen minutes in their first week of being mermaids. Fast-forward to Mako Mermaids: An H₂O Adventure, Ondina, a natural-born mermaid, spends at least an hour crying underwater with no ill effects.
• Joann Owosekun of Star Trek: Discovery grew up practicing freediving in the Ogbunike Caves, and claimed she was capable of holding her breath for at least ten minutes underwater.
• During the episode, "Descent" of Stargate SG-1, this happens twice, when a Goa'uld Mothership they're on crashes and sinks into the Pacific Ocean. They often find themselves in a watery situation, and they're not even hindered by the undoubtedly cold temperatures of the deep Pacific.
  • Col. O'Niell and Major Carter find themselves trapped in a rapidly flooding corridor, and find themselves completely submerged for a good amount of time, almost to the breaking point. Though Carter's father is unable to open a door and help them escape, they ultimately survive when the door opens by itself, due to Thor's consciousness being trapped within the system of the ship.
  • Jonas Quinn manages to swim through flooded corridors to a power conduit to activate a force field which would prevent the flooding of a hangar. He is submerged throughout the process of swimming to this conduit, activating the force field, and swimming to a submerged ring transport room to transport himself to the other members of SG-1. Possibly justified as Jonas isn't exactly of Earth, yet he's still human.
• The X-Files: The episode "The Erlenmeyer Flask" has an early version of human-alien hybrids or alien clones. One of them spends three days hiding underwater. Justified as they're able to breathe there.
• Game of Thrones has a few examples.
  • In a sixth season Arya-centric episode, she escapes an attacker by swimming away underwater far enough that the attacker can't find her. Aggravated by the fact that she was stabbed in the belly 4-5 times before pushing away the attacker and jumping in the water.
  • Similarly, Jaime Lannister, who was charging a dragon with a lance, was saved by Bronn by tackling him into the water. Both of them were armored, but despite this apparently they could swim well enough. Also they were apparently pretty good at holding their breath, because by the time they resurfaced both armies were far away, which should take an hour or two.
  • Jon Snow had pretty much an identical scenario. But he fell in freezing water and stayed underwater until almost the whole undead army passed, with only a few stragglers remaining. He even had strength to fight them off with help and to ride away.

Music

• The Sky Sailing song Explorers plays this trope straight.
  But the tide came in
  And we found ourselves in the sea
  Deep underwater
  We both found that we could still breathe
  So we spent the day submerged
  And we swam the evening away

Tabletop Games

• The Dishonored Roleplaying Game has a bonecharm effect called Yearning of the Leviathan, which allows anyone who holds the charm in their mouth to breathe underwater.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • The Water Breathing spell and a few magical items can let you breathe underwater.
  • And in the book on fantastic architecture, you can build a room of water breathable to both land and sea creatures.
  • 5^th Edition Air Genasi can hold their breath indefinitely thanks to their Air Elemental Embodiment ancestry.
  • The Elemental Plane of Water contains pockets of "liquid air", which is a liquid breathable by air-breathers. Unfortunately, there's no way of telling how long they last.
• The Shadowrun Verse's mega-Badass Kid Stealth was able to survive underwater for ten minutes after being tossed in the Sound with cement overshoes. A professional sniper-style hit man, he'd had an oxygen tank installed in place of one of his lung lobes so his own breathing wouldn't interfere with his aim.
• In Titan, the Fighting Fantasy world, the underwater races came about because of this trope. Hydana, the god of the waters, got bored just hanging out with the fish and other sea creatures, and started kidnapping humans to join him under the waves. When he realized that the humans were drowning after he took them underwater, he used his powers to turn their lungs into gills, and they eventually turned into the Mermen. Hydana would later repeat this feat with elves, trolls and giants, who all became aquatic equivalents of their land-dwelling kin as well.
• Scion has an interesting relationship with this trope. Scions with Epic Stamina can hold their breath for longer than mere mortals can - potentially for several years at God levels. The Water purview allows a Scion to breathe water (and the Fire and Earth purviews let them breathe in spite of smoke or burial, respectively). However, there is specifically no power that frees a Scion from needing to breathe at all, as breathing is an inherently human trait that anchors Scions and the Gods to humanity, unlike the Titans.

Webcomics

• Fighter in 8-Bit Theater invokes this trope when playing Drownball. He comes in last because of his Super Not-Drowning Skills but wins by default, because he is the only surviving participant.
  • Of course, this is a pretty naked reference to FFX's Blitzball, as outlined above, down to using the blitz pool and locker room from FFX as backgrounds.
• Adventure Dennis: Dennis doesn't even seem to notice that he is underwater.
• Tales of the Questor: The inhabitants of freedom shore can hold their breath for up to fifteen minutes and are compared to pearl dives.
• Hella Jeff hides in a clam at the bottom of the sea without any gear in the Paradox Space story "Summer Sea Fun".
• Justified in Mare Internum. Mike's parasites allow him to breathe underwater somehow. However, it looks like inhaling water is still unpleasant for him.

Web Original

• In the Dream SMP Minecraft roleplay, Fundy locked Technoblade in a dunk tank by (with the intent to drown him) as the latter was practicing trident leaps combined with "MLG water saves" at the Manberg Festival. However, this backfired on Fundy as Techno demonstrated the power of a helmet enchanted with Respiration III by staying in the tank for several minutes and overdramatically pretending to be in any real danger from suffocation while many of the other players awkwardly watched on.
• DSBT InsaniT: Waterfall Girl can grant this to anyone in the surrounding area, which is why you want her around in a fight with Cell.
• Fire Emblem On Forums: The signature skill of the Pirate class, Sea Walk and the promoted version, Sea Sprint, allows them to cross normally impassible Water tiles, with the class fluff implying they can swim.
• Red vs. Blue has an extreme example with Grif's sister according to an incident when she and Grif were kids.
  Grif: Listen, once when we were kids, we went ice skating, and she fell through the ice. She was under there for three hours, and when they pulled her out, not only was she still alive, she was pregnant. If you can explain that to me, I'll believe you when you tell me she's dead.
• SCP-076 from the SCP Foundation is able to survive for over an hour in the absence of oxygen. And SCP-682 is constantly kept submerged in acid.

Western Animation

• Darwin in The Amazing World of Gumball can breathe underwater. Justified, as he's a fish, but having developed lungs, can live comfortably on land.
• Just like the 2D games, The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! did at least one entire episode set underwater with the cast suffering no apparent breathing problems (or the Princess's hair even floating upward), and even holding conversations. Oddly enough, a later episode on follow-up series The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 had Mario almost drown when one of the Doomsub's lasers zapped him. Luigi immediately lampshaded this, saying that Mario swims better than most fish.
  • There's the episode "Plumber's Academy" from The Super Mario Bros. Super Show that had Mario and Luigi borrow scuba gear to fix a cemented clog in the sewers of New York City. And in "20,000 Koopas Under the Sea", a human character puts on a diving helmet to go underwater while Mario, Luigi, Toad, and Peach can breathe without one...
• In the Van Beuren Studios cartoon "The Haunted Ship", Waffles the Cat and Don the Dog are inexplicably able to breathe underwater.
  • Their characters of Tom & Jerry do this in "The Rocketeers", since most of the short is set underwater.
• The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: Billy is able to survive underwater by breathing his own farts. Try not to think about how his farts contain enough oxygen for Billy to survive. PLEASE don't think about it!
• In episode 20 of the web series Making Fiends, it's revealed that, as Charlotte puts it "I can hold my breath for niiiiine hours. Tee-hee!". Although, like Fighter and Grim, she probably doesn't need much air.
• In the Russian children's cartoon Moonzy, the titular "moon person" can breathe and speak equally well in water or in air, though at least some of the fish characters are apparently unable to leave the water.
• There's a Bugs Bunny cartoon, Hare Ribbin, where Bugs Bunny is chased by a dog into a lake and the rest of the cartoon takes place underwater.
• In one episode Squidbillies, Sheriff dives underwater and comes across a civilization beneath a lake and helps them out. After some ample time, one of the residents point out that Sheriff is actually experiencing a oxygen-deprived hallucination for being so long underwater.
• In a very bizarre episode of The Little Mermaid (1992), thawed dinosaurs have no trouble doing their regular stuff underwater. No, these aren't marine reptiles, which a lot of people think are dinosaurs — it's T. rex and the gang! And no, they aren't "magical" like the mermaids, either.
  • A different, but no less bizarre episode featured a pair of alligators that could breathe underwater just fine (while real alligators can hold their breath for a long time, they still need to breathe air), but for no explainable reason were unable to swim and therefore had to walk along the bottom as if they were on land. Ariel was forced to become an acrophobic fish to make them even slightly threatening.
• Highlighted in the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Kenny The Cat". Kenny becomes a celebrity in Bikini Bottom due to his breath-holding abilities. However, he later proves to be a Broken Pedestal by breathing into an oxygen tank stored in his fur coat, to the dismay of SpongeBob and his other fans.
  • A straighter, more baffling example is Sandy's ancestor, the Dark Knight, who doesn't wear a deep-sea diving suit like her descendant and yet is somehow able to survive underwater.
  • In another inversion, in the episode Pressure, Sandy bets that the rest of the gang can't stand one minute on dry land before asphyxiating. Not only do they manage to accomplish this feat with relative ease, but they also become live-action puppets once breaching the surface. Their celebration is short-lived, however, when they are attacked by seagulls.
• Averted in the Superman Theatrical Cartoons: the one moment where Superman is in serious trouble on the short "Electric Earthquake" is when an underwater explosion (and being pummeled with debris) drains him of all his air.
• In Flipper and Lopaka, Lopaka has two apparently mystical powers. One is that he Speaks Fluent Animal. The other is the ability to breathe underwater. Both are useful when your best friend is a dolphin.

Real Life

• Obviously averted in Real Life. A person can drown in a mere inch deep of water. The only orifices you can use for breathing - two nostrils and a mouth - are grouped annoyingly close together right at the front of your face.
• Fish. Though fish actually can drown if they're in water with insufficient oxygen molecules in it; while water molecules themselves contain oxygen, fish do not breathe that as they have no mechanism for separating the hydrogen from the oxygen. The extract the free oxygen that's dissolved in the water. And some types of fish, such as sharks, have to be moving forward in order for their gills to properly function; a shark will drown if it gets trapped in a net, for example.
• Sea turtles spend most of their lives underwater and can hold their breath for hours at a time.
• Real Life aquatic mammals such as whales and dolphins can hold their breath for periods ranging from several minutes to a few hours, depending on the species. Even they have to come up for air at some point though.
  • Additionally, all mammals automatically slow their metabolism should they be submerged in cold water. Not very helpful for humans (you get hypothermia, then you drown), but this ability allows aquatic mammals to live in places like the arctic.
• Houdini's magic tricks required him to hold his breath for three minutes, which is bordering on superhuman. Various rumors indicating that he could hold his breath longer were created by some of his tricks, or confusion with details of other feats as well (e.g. surviving 1 hour 30 minutes in a sealed casket underwater by controlled breathing).
  • Depending on who you ask, the current records are somewhere between 11 (On ordinary air) and 21 minutes (by saturating the lungs with pure oxygen).
• There is a hypothetical construct called a respirocyte, which is basically a nanotech version of a red blood cell. Made of diamond and capable of holding gases internally at pressures up to 1000 atmospheres, each would function over 200 times more efficiently than the natural counterpart. They could, when combined with a similar nanotech lung, let an average person hold their breath for nearly 4 days.
• Another promising possibility for constructing compact oxygen supplies or implants involves innovative materials capable of binding immense amounts of oxygen chemically in a very small volume and releasing them on demand.
• Because of the extremely fine water-repellent hairs covering their bodies, adult drain flies are virtually impossible to drown, and are not affected by contact with most water-borne toxins such as bleach. Boiling water has little or no effect on the adults for the same reason, and even the eggs are highly resistant to both chemical or thermal assault.
• The sport freediving, underwater diving without any breathing equipment, requires divers to be able to hold their breath for obscenely long amounts of time. The freediving world record is 700ft (213m), without taking a single breath. Of course, divers need to come up for air eventually, and they will always have a medical team on standby. (This all sounds very unpleasant to most of us, but many professionals describe the experience as liberating, and even relaxing.)
• In March 2018, Fortean Times (issue FT365) reported on experiments in how human beings could be trained to breathe underwater - by deliberately ingesting oxygen-rich liquid into the lungs. This has apparently been attempted, with no apparent ill-effects, by suitably inclined volunteers. A submission to the magazine's online discussion forum pointed out that without exception, every human being alive has already spent nine months doing this - while in the womb. So in theory it should not be too difficult.

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