Nigh Invulnerability / Western Animation

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• Roger from American Dad!. He's seemingly immortal, and invincible. Of course, he's an alien, and not only that, he's an alien who was literally used as a crash test dummy, so it's no surprise he's practically unkillable. Apparently, even his superiors weren't aware of how invulnerable he was, as they fully expected him to have died from blunt trauma. Oh, and he's fire-retardant too (which he hilariously did not know).
• Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • In Avatar: The Last Airbender, you can kill the Avatar all you like, but unless you get lucky enough to kill him in the Avatar State, you're going to have to deal with his reincarnation.
  • The Spirit Monsters from Season 2 of The Legend of Korra are Made of Air; normal Bending attacks just pass right through them, and one even catches a throwing knife inside its body before returning to sender. Only specialized Waterbending techniques and attacks from other spirits are shown to have any lasting effect.
• Ben 10:
  • Vilgax from Ben 10 is not only Made of Diamond to the point that he lived through being attached to a nuclear warhead as it was used to blow up his ship, but he has a tank full of healing fluid in case his next ship blows up partially, giving him Regeneration while he's in there. He's the Implacable Man's Implacable Man.
  • Ultimate Aggregor from Ben 10: Ultimate Alien. He takes a beating from Humongousaur (one of Ben's strongest aliens) and gets right back up without a scratch, even saying that he didn't feel a thing.
  • On Ben's side, we have Rath. When attacked by lasers, he doesn't get singed (there's a ring of smoke surrounding him instead). And if he drops from the sky at least a thousand of feet in the air, the most you'll get is him standing up and threatening to kick the Rath-shaped hole he made from impact.
• Grandfather from Codename: Kids Next Door. He survives a Colony Drop to the face without even a scratch and just dusts himself off afterwards.
• Cow and Chicken: Applies to both Super Cow and the Red Guy.
• Darkwing Duck has two of these characters. The Liquidator is a villain made out of water. And Dr. Bushroot, a mutant plant/duck who can regenerate after being run over by a running lawnmower.
• Parodied in Drawn Together, by the character Captain Hero, especially in an episode in which he and Foxxy Love go through an extreme form of BDSM relationship: because Captain Hero was indestructible, Foxxy could act out her most violent desires without fear of injuring him permanently (this disregarding the fact that all of the characters in the series die on a frequent basis, only to return shortly afterwards as if nothing had happened (which also is lampshaded by Captain Hero in one episode where he points out that they never really die anyway, and proceeds to behead himself with a katana only to walk in from the side and tell the viewer to try it themselves)).
• The Fairly OddParents!:
  • The Crimson Chin, a Superman Substitute. Timmy himself becomes this when he wishes for superpowers.
  • Super Bike is wished up to have this, which means he can't be wished away when he becomes a Yandere. However, Timmy realizes that his parts stop being invulnerable when they fall off...
• Futurama:
  • In the straight-to-DVD film "The Beast with a Billion Backs", the title beast is from another universe and made of "electromatter", which the professor describes as "normal matter's bad-ass grandma". Nothing can hurt it except something else made of electromatter.
  • "Lethal Inspection" shows that it's commonplace for robots to periodically upload a copy of their memory which will be uploaded into a new body if they are destroyed, with Bender being the exception because of a design flaw.
    • In "Jurassic Bark", Bender jumps into a pool of molten fucking lava in order to save Fry's fossilized dog. His sole injury is a slightly expanded torso chassis and his eyes melting.
    • "War is the H-Word" and "Rebirth" both have Bender survive a Doomsday Device exploding in his chest cabinet. He even remarks about it in the latter.
      Bender: Geez, what's it take to kill me?
  • Leela is a very possible contender. In addition to being a genetically modified sewer mutant who has never lost a single fight during the series' run, she also survived a near-universally fatal space bee sting in "The Sting", suffering a mere two-week coma instead.
• In Gargoyles, Demona and MacBeth are essentially immortal. Due to a pact they made back in Medieval Europe, when one dies, they both die. However, due to some weird twist of logic with the pact (or just the "Weird Sisters" reviving one of them), since one of them wasn't killed directly they both come back to life shortly afterward (Elisa Maza once temporarily killed Demona to keep her from fighting MacBeth so she could talk to him). Allegedly, the only way for them to permanently die is to kill each other.
• In Invader Zim, it's specifically stated that the Irkens' consciousness, personality, emotions and memory are all stored in their PAKs. In a fully scripted but never animated episode, Zim could take over Dib this way; his physical body would be dead, but his mind would be in a new body, so that's okay. This theoretically applies for every single member of the Irken race, which would make them all immortals who change bodies every so often (as it's unlikely their best soldiers would be allowed to die when they're still usable). Since a PAK can attach to someone even after you killed the body hosting it and is made of the same Irken metals that allowed The Massive to go through a star without being heavily damaged, the only way to kill an Irken is to either take the PAK to Irk and have it be erased by the Control Brains or hide it away from all living life. Basically, if Zim wasn't such an idiot, he'd be nigh unstoppable. In the same script, though, Zim claims that Dib's "filthy human body chemistry isn't compatible with the PAK. It would've destroyed you!" Of course, considering the source, that may not be the case...
• In Justice League, this is deconstructed in "The Enemy Below". Aquaman is injured by an antitank rocket, and the surgeons can't get a needle into him to help because his skin is super-tough.
• Quack Quack from Kaeloo, as a result of several scientific experiments being conducted on him when he was younger. Blast him with a bazooka, cut him in half, whatever you do, he'll be absolutely fine. However, one episode suggested that even though he's indestructible, he's not immortal and will die one day, probably of natural causes.
• The main protagonists of King Star King seem to be practically unkillable, because they usually just reform themselves after even the most gruesome of mutilations. The pilot episode really shows this ability off by having the titular character heal himself completely after having all of his internal organs torn out with a machine gun and getting hit with a nuclear Easter Bunny egg.
• Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies:
  • "Lighter Than Hare'': Bugs Bunny short pitting the rabbit against Yosemite Sam in a science-fiction setting. Sam fancies himself as invincible (as he usually does), and even claims that varmit will be no match for his indestructible tank and undefeatable army of robots (dubbed the "Demolition Squad"). Of course, the plan (hilariously) fails.
• Most characters from Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry can survive vicious beatings, gunshot wounds, falling from cliffs, and explosions unless the creators want the character to die.
  • Wile E. Coyote comes back from insane amounts of punishment. Unfortunately, this trope does not imply immunity to pain....
  • Subverted in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? with Dip, a mixture of various solvents that broke down the ink that Toons are drawn from in what is essentially permanent death for them.
• Mighty Max has the (mercifully) one-shot villain, Spike, a psychotic barbarian warrior from over 10,000 years ago. When Norman was a child, Spike attacked his village; he had multiple branches thrust into his face, then was dropped off of a high cliff into a deep river, where it's revealed he was frozen solid and spent 10,000 years trapped in a glacier. Unleashed in the present, Max drops him into a car compacter, which doesn't even slow him down. He leaps to try and jump on a train, only to land behind it, and is seemingly dragged for miles behind it before he clambers back up. He leaps off of the train and over a bridge, only to plunge into another river. The episode ends with him being hurled off of yet another cliff, but by this point, no viewer believes he's really gone for good. To make matters worse, he's a Combat Sadomasochist, so he just laughs and jeers at your futile efforts to hurt him.
• The Kane Safe-T Suits in Motorcity, though they do have a threshold before shutting off.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • While she can be hurt and knocked out, Celestia has withstood energy blasts powerful enough to blow holes straight through solid rock and seriously damage a castle and was only knocked out for a few seconds. Justified, as the Alicorns have All Your Powers Combined from all three tribes taken up to eleven, which includes durability.
  • In the episode "Twilight's Kingdom –- Part 2", during their battle, Twilight throws Tirek into the ground so hard he's buried under several feet of rubble. He shows no sign of injury afterward. Twilight also takes her share of hits during the fight (at one point being driven through a mountain) but her shields are powerful enough to shrug it off without any visible damage. This eventually convinces Tirek to negotiate instead, as two Nigh-Invulnerable fighters makes for a rather pointless battle.
  • In "Make New Friends but Keep Discord", on top of being Anti-Magic, Blob Monster the Smooze easily shrugs off having holes blown in it or getting split in half. Fitting, given that the G1 version's defining trait was how unstoppable it was.
  • Flash Magnus, one of Equestria's legendary weapons, possesses a legendary shield called Netitus. Not only is it fireproof enough to withstand dragon fire from two adult dragons at once and immersion in molten lava, it can easily tank a Breath Weapon from the Sirens strong enough to vaporize huge boulders in seconds without Flash or the shield being harmed at all. Even after being lost for over a thousand years, all it takes is a good cleaning to be good as new.
• The Powerpuff Girls are Immune to Bullets and cannot be handicapped through physical force. In fact, not even an iron maiden can kill them.
• The characters of The Ren & Stimpy Show, combined with extreme Status Quo Is God.
• Several characters from Samurai Jack have varying degrees and types of nigh-invulnerability, most notably Aku, the Guardian, and especially the Minions of Set, who are so powerful they can only be killed by a god and are effectively invincible.
• The Beast Planet from Shadow Raiders isn't fazed by any of the heroes' attempts at destroying it^* Which include ramming Planet Fire into one of its claws & detonating Planet Jungle in its interior.
• The Simpsons:
  • "Bart the General": Bart — being harassed by Nelson — has an Imagine Spot where he tries fleeing from Nelson, and to ward him off, he tries firing a gun, a slingshot, arrows and knives at his tormenter. Not only do these methods fail, they make Nelson angrier and much larger ... until Nelson catches Bart and eats him whole!
  • "The Homer They Fall": Homer appears to have this — an inability to be hurt when he is hit repeatedly, in a manner that should seriously injure, render unconscious or kill another man — and takes up boxing, with Moe as his manager. In his early fights, Homer's apparent condition serves him well as the hobo boxers he competes against all fail to so much as faze our protagonist. This eventually flies completely out the window when Dredrick Tatum (a Mike Tyson parody) immediately pummels Homer with more than enough force to render him in serious trouble early in the first round of their match.
• In the early seasons of South Park, Kenny was always killed off Once an Episode, only to inexplicably return the next week. In later seasons, it's revealed that he will always resurrect due to a Lovecraftian curse that was placed on him. Worse yet, because of the curse, no one can remember any of his previous demises.
• SpongeBob SquarePants might seem like an average kitchen sponge with limbs and a face, but he is much more durable than that. Cut his arms off? He'll regrow them. Tear him in half? Those halves will rejoin with each other. Remove his internal organs? He can regrow them, too. Even today, he's suffered very few injuries that left him in the hospital. Punch him with all your might? You'll collapse from exhaustion before managing to injure him in the slightest.
• Steven Universe:
  • All Gems have Super-Toughness as an inherent ability, and can regenerate their whole body so long as their gemstone Heart Drive is intact, but Jasper takes this up to eleven. Being hurled into the reactor of a warship which explodes then being caught completely unprotected by the SHIP exploding with her still inside isn't enough to destroy her physical form, and it seems a Gem Fusion is the bare minimum required to harm her. This may be because it turns out that she's a 'perfect' "Ultimate Quartz" rather than a rank and file soldier. It's telling that when she's finally "poofed" it's only after she'd succumbed to The Corruption. Her Gem likewise survived all that, and was only shattered by Steven while he was using his Diamond power during a fight.
  • Even tougher than Jasper are the Diamond Authority themselves. Blue Diamond tanked a Combination Attack from the entire team, a barn dropped right on her head, and having her own mile-long spaceship slammed on her. End result? Just slightly ruffled hair. The one time a Diamond had their form dissipated, when Pearl slashed Pink Diamond with Rose Quartz's sword, it may have only worked because she wanted it to happen to her.
• The DC Animated Universe version of Superman isn't quite as tough as his comics counterpart, but is still monstrously hard to kill.
• In Teen Titans (2003), Trigon is completely invincible to all of the Titans, with their attacks doing nothing but annoying him. Only Raven in her ultimate form is able to defeat him.
• The titular character from The Tick. No one is sure how he acquired his invulnerability, but considering he's been punched into orbit, and survived re-entry, we can be sure nothing can destroy him.
• Transformers:
  • Transformers are a nigh-invulnerable race, generally of the "Spare Body Parts" variety. They don't generally regenerate on their own, though some can, but pretty much any damage can be repaired; the line between what can be repaired and what's fatal, however, is nebulous at best. Generally speaking, a Transformer can survive pratically anything as long as their spark chamber (equivalent to a human's heart) and CPU (equivalent to a human's brain) are both physically intact. As you would expect, these two components are typically located within the most heavily armored parts of their bodies, making it even more hopeless for an average human to fight one, even before taking into account the difference in physical size between an average Transformer (20-30 ft. tall) and a human (~6 ft. tall). Inflicting significant damage to other body parts will certainly slow them down, though, and might even render their vehicle form(s) useless. After all, a Transformer who lost an arm can't change into car mode with the car parts that form that arm now missing.
  • Decepticon Super Warriors are the nigh-invulnerable members of a nigh-invulnerable race, shrugging pretty off injuries and wounds that would kill an ordinary Cybertronian. They are usually outfitted with Restraining Bolts for this very reason.
  • When Animated Starscream is revived by a piece of the Allspark lodged in his head, he gains the resurrection method. Anytime that he is killed, the Allspark resurrects him. Discovering this, the Autobots opt to just capture him. Then he is Killed Off for Real when he has the Allspark fragment removed at the end of the show.
  • In the G1 continuity that Starscream's spark is immortal, allowing him to possess other Transformers, and apparently float through time and space since he turns up in Beast Wars too. An ability that was copied into BW Rampage. Rampage can regenerate, but he's later killed by a spike of raw energon going through his spark. In an earlier episode, a processed energon knife cutting parts of his spark did not do the job (though Megatron says it would've killed anyone else, and he takes it as proof of Rampage's immortality) however. It's unknown whether Starscream could be similarly killed.
  • What Beast Wars Waspinator goes through on a daily basis has got to qualify him. A trait carried over into his Animated counterpart.
  • Animated Megatron goes at ground zero of an explosion capable of destroying everything in a hundred-mile radius. For comparison, the Tsar Bomba, the most powerful nuclear device ever made, had a complete destruction radius of 40 miles. Megs survives (though he's pretty banged up). Prime Megatron is also at ground zero of a space bridge explosion. He also is revived when Bumblebee gets the cure to the Cybonic Plague from his mind.
  • Animated Soundwave also deserves mention, being able to take Spare Body Parts an order of magnitude further than your average Cybertronian (and, indeed, he's not Cybertronian. Possibly that has something to do with it). Twice now he's been reduced to a component the size of a human hand and remained online. This ability is somewhat balanced out by his tendency to shatter if you hit him hard enough. The downside of a body without any Cybertronian alloys in it.
• Professor Impossible from The Venture Brothers is seemingly unkillable due to his body having the properties of elastic. He once swallowed an explosion meant to destroy an entire island in a failed attempt at suicide.
• Young Justice (2010): In the episode "Schooled", Amazo has absorbed the powers of, among others, Superman, the Flash, and Martian Manhunter, meaning he is Made of Diamond, intangible, and has Super-Reflexes and Super-Speed. Unfortunately for the android, Amazo only seems capable of using one of these powers at a time after announcing which hero he's emulating at the moment, making him vulnerable to team-based tactics.

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