Immortal Life Is Cheap

If a character is immortal -- even if it's the "immortal but can die temporarily" type -- then their opponents don't need to hold anything back. Not even if those opponents are good guys.

Immortality is a sweet gig. Whether it's because the character can download into a new body as part of a Hive Mind, has a Healing Factor strong enough to reconstruct From a Single Cell, or possesses some even stranger way of staying among the living. The downside is everyone else now considers you fair game for target practice.

It's common sense. There's nothing wrong with using non-lethal force to stop someone. So what if it just so happens that, with this person, non-lethal force happens to include bullets? It's not that the code against killing doesn't apply. They're just not killing anyone. Which means heroes who normally have to fight with Swords Set to Stun to avoid things getting messy, or otherwise take pains to Never Bring a Knife To A Fist Fight can now cut loose against the immortal enemy.

This can be implicit or acknowledged in the story. The characters might never come out and say that they feel no remorse for blowing off a regenerator's head or throwing a grenade into a room full of robo-clones, or they may well explain it at length as a form of dehumanizing their enemy or as Trash Talk in a fight.

It's worth noting that this trope is often applied on targets that can bleed and feel pain. No Bloodless Carnage here. The trope provides interesting opportunities mostly because it allows more drastic violence against important characters that has tangible results while avoiding the usual Unfortunate Implications for both attacker and victim.

See also What Measure Is a Non Human, What Measure Is a Non Unique, Good Thing You Can Heal and Immortality Hurts. Fearless Undead can fit this as well, depending on the nature of the undead. May be played alongside a World of Cardboard Speech.

Anime and Manga

 * Lots of it in Mnemosyne: every Big Bad who knows about Rin's immortality prefers to snap her neck first, ask questions later. Goes especially for Sayara.
 * Also, the in Kiddy Grade are commonly sent on suicide missions because GOTT can always resurrect them.
 * Mai Chans Daily Life is all about this. To clarify, the protagonist's Healing Factor makes her effectively immortal...which makes her the client favourite of a torture brothel.
 * In Excel Saga, the Great Will of the Macrocosm will commonly resurrect any important character who happens to die. This leaves Lord Il Palazzo free to kill Excel for the slightest irritation. This happens several times in the very first episode nad a few more times throughout the series.
 * The Homunculi of Fullmetal Alchemist get this a lot, as they can instantly regenerate. To be fair, several are eventually killed, but it still counts seeing as one can get take three clips of bullets, get up, and ask, "Are you done yet?"
 * Later really show how damn painful this trope can be.  was burned alive several times, and at one point   let his eyes explode. And   was impaled again and again, twice right through his face.
 * That one guy from Ninja Scroll, the one who turns himself to stone all over... except for his eyes, which is, of course, how he gets beaten.
 * And the Big Bad, who suffered an And I Must Scream defeat.
 * Yakumo Fujii, from ~3x3 Eyes~. Being unkillable is a lot less fun than you might think, especially when horrible monsters are trying to kill you anyway.
 * Several characters in Baccano! go to town with this trope, most notably Fermet, who spent a couple hundred years taking advantage of his and Czeslaw's immortality to perform every kind of gruesome "experiment" on poor Czes that he could think of. Then again, since almost everyone in the series is a gangster, a Psycho for Hire, or just plain Ax Crazy, life is pretty cheap in general, and it's not just the immortal characters who get maimed.
 * Accordingly, avert this, as during the entire anime  was only injured one or two times, and  wasn't at all.
 * Code Geass: Quite a few characters suffer grisly deaths and reappear in the next episode unharmed. C.C. also sometimes gets this sort of abuse, such as when Mao decided he was going to "make her compact."
 * A couple of characters in Naruto are like this. The Akatsuki member Hidan takes sick pleasure in doing horrible painful things to himself in battle after performing a ritual to ensure that his opponent feels the same thing. Hidan is virtually immortal (e.g. getting his head cut off hardly slows him down), but the same cannot be said of his opponents who get trapped by the ritual.
 * He's paired with Kakuzu specifically for this reason. See Kakuzu has a habit of killing his partners so the Big Bad gave him a partner he couldn't kill.
 * Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-chan feels free to beat Sakura to death with her spiked baseball bat any time she suspects him of ecchi thoughts, or indeed, any time she's bored, because she'll just resurrect him for another round immediately anyway.
 * Love Hina: Keitaro isn't any more durable than is usual for a main character in his genre, but unusually for the genre, other people notice and take advantage of this. Kitsune outright states that lethal force is acceptable against an "immortal" like him.
 * Angel Beats is full of this, episode 2 in particular.
 * Hakamada from Aphorism. Used as scapegoat once by his friend to dodge an attack.

Comic Books

 * X-Men
 * Several attempts to stop the villain Juggernaut. On one occasion he took a pair of katanas through the eyes. In another battle, all of Juggernaut's flesh and organs were magically incinerated by a powerful demon.
 * Wolverine has fallen prey to this many times. He is often burned to a crisp, has all of the metal pulled out through his pores by Magneto, and at one point The Punisher shoots him in the crotch with a shotgun, where he then gets his legs sawed on by midgets, and then flattened by a steamroller. There is also an episode in the animated series where Proteus uses his reality altering powers to rip Wolverine in half and then melt him into a puddle (he comes out crying). The other X-Men are also attacked by Proteus, but no one else gets the Nightmare Fuel treatment, even though in this case they may have survived afterward since Proteus's effects go away when he leaves the area.
 * Parodied with Marvel Comics character Mr. Immortal, who has no other superpowers aside from his immortality. He ends up dying horribly at least several times in every issue he appears in. However, when he does die, he comes back in the throes of a beserker-style rampage due to the incredible pain he experiences when he dies.
 * Neil Gaiman's The Sandman series features the immortal Cain and Abel, the former frequently murdering the latter over a minor dispute or simply to pass the time.
 * In the Ultimate Marvel universe, Hawkeye remarks during a fight that the best thing about killing Multiple Man is that there's always more of him.
 * Deadpool: During one crossover, Bullseye slit Deadpool's throat with a straw because he was talking too much.
 * Deadpool's sometimes-partner Cable has been known to telekenetically blow up his brain to get him to shut up for an hour or so.
 * DC Comics character Resurrection Man gets this a lot, naturally. One issue has a confused Batman trying to figure out why the same guy keeps getting murdered by Gotham City criminals. A crossover with Hitman sees Hitman repeatedly shooting him over and over until he gets a useful power. In the 853rd century, even Resurrection Man himself gets in on the act, wearing a gauntlet that lets him commit instant suicide.
 * Multiman gets this in Last Laugh, where The Joker repeatedly murders him until he gets a power useful in escaping prison. Afterwords, the entire prison gets sucked into a black hole, stranding a number of people. They eventually escape... by repeatedly murdering Multiman until he gets a power that helps them escape.

Fan Works

 * Luminosity: keep vampires disassembled, in case they can ever find a way to bring them to their side. Sort of like freezing someone, except they're in terrible pain. And alone. For years.

Film

 * In Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Captain Jack Sparrow has developed a habit of shooting the undead monkey whenever he is angry.

Literature

 * In Cory Doctorow's Down and Out In The Magic Kingdom, people can take backup copies of their personalities in case of death. Nobody is particularly worried about this, because everybody who had a problem with it "you know, died".
 * In Richard Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs series, everybody is implanted from birth with a "cortical stack" that records their personality in case of death. The hero occasionally kills people and steals said stack for later interrogation.
 * Accelerando: Taken to extremes in the last chapter of Charles Stross' novel.
 * Threnody in Xanth often cuts off bits of her husband Jordan, such as his tongue. This is not considered a big deal because his talent is incredible healing.
 * Gilbert Gosseyn in A.E. van Vogt's The World of Null-A can be killed, and then he just wakes up in a new Gilbert body with all his memories.
 * Used and subverted in Kiln People by David Brin, in which people download their personalities into short-lived clay golems which they use for work and pleasure. While these golems are regarded as totally expendable, no-one risks their real self any more, and for someone to suffer even minor injury is quite a scandal.
 * Simon R. Green's novel Hellworld features the protagonists being dropped onto a planet to determine its potential for colonization. They find the planet apparently devoid of most animal life, with large pools of what can be described as greyish, primordial goo. Then, they discover that  The psychic member of the group discovers that   To make matters worse,
 * In a story Distant Rainbow by Strugatski Brothers, Camillo is a cyborg whose machine part (and that includes brain) is virtually indestructible (can sustain nukes without any damage) and can regenerate the living part of his body even from nothing, using raw materials. So of course Camillo dies thrice in the course of just one day and is going to die a fourth time when  and he will regenerate afterwards, too.
 * In the Dresden Files, Harry can really only cut loose on the immortals. Why? Two reason: first, the laws of magic prevent using magic in anything related to killing people and second, anything that isn't a human (or an animal, which as it turns out are exempt from the laws of magic) is immortal.
 * That said, most of the time he can only kill their construct. Harry has only killed a few otherwise-immortal beings

Live Action TV

 * Cylons in Battlestar Galactica would occasionally shoot each other without batting an eye if it were expedient, since they could download into new bodies.
 * The horrifying aspect is played up on occasion, such as when a Cavil mentions being too impatient to bleed to death after an ambush, and so has to cut his carotid open with an empty shell casing. Later episodes also feature the prospect of 'death as a learning experience' and the major trauma caused after someone is killed in an especially gruesome way and essentially suffers the worst PTSD ever.
 * In Torchwood, Captain Jack Harkness becomes an absolute damage-magnet for the first series-and-a-half, after which other characters start eating bullets. The Master points this trope out right after he zaps Jack with a laser screwdriver. "And the good thing is, he's not dead for long. I get to kill him again!" Then Jack gets buried alive for 2000 years, constantly suffocating and reviving, somehow without going insane.
 * Leo from Charmed, who can reassemble himself if his body is destroyed. The sisters have occasionally used him for target practice (with and without his consent), and a throwaway gag indicates that Piper tends to make him explode when she's mad.
 * The crew on Farscape once ganged up on Pilot and forcibly amputated one of his arms, so they could sell it to a scientist. They rationalized this action because Pilot's species can regrow lost limbs. Another member of his species on a different ship was actually used as a replenishable food source for this reason.
 * The immortal heroine in Painkiller Jane was repeatedly shot by her friends for very little reason. Examples include being in the way, to convince someone else they were bad-ass or just for a cheap trick. Incidentally she was called "Painkiller Jane" because she had to eat a lot of them. Because she was repeatedly shot. By her friends.
 * She also shot herself plenty of times, like to convince a mind-altering Neuro that she reversed his nightmare-causing powers on him by shooting herself in the hand and having him watch the wound close.
 * It should be noted that she can die given sufficient damage. In one episode, her body is pulverized by a claymore mine. Luckily, this episode has a Groundhog Day Loop, and she is fine in the next cycle.
 * Buffy the Vampire Slayer: In the first season, Darla at one point shot Angel. She told Buffy, "Don't worry, guns can't kill vampires. Hurts like hell, though."
 * Angel: Played increasingly for comedy, to the point where Angel will walk around with a sword through his chest, looking only slightly miffed.
 * In Smallville, the Lesbian Vampires have fun throwing each other off the balcony. Since this is done to Lana, the scene might be favored more than it was intended.
 * Red Dwarf: The crew discovers that all (except one) of them are destined to survive the accident they are stuck in. Kryten proves this by shooting his gun at each of them. It jams each time. The Cat joins in by hitting Lister over the head with an iron bar, since he can't die. Lister is not amused and points out that he can still feel pain.
 * The writers of Misfits seem to gain some kind of sadistic pleasure out of killing the immortal character  week after week in ways so gory and painful that it quickly becomes hilarious. The fact that he's a total Jerkass might have something to do with it.
 * Sanctuary: Nikole Tesla is the occasional Butt Monkey, since, being a vampire, he can't die (at least until he is turned back into a human, sort of). He has been stabbed, electrocuted, having Jack the Ripper's fist punched through his chest, sliced with claws, dropped from a high-rise, etc. And he's still as cheerful and annoying as ever, especially since he lacks the any of the traditional vampire weaknesses (he walks in the sunlight, can eat and drink, does not require blood, can survive a stab through the heart).

Mythology

 * Baldur, the Norse god of beauty, had a prophetic dream of his own death. His mother, the goddess Frigg, responded by making everything on Earth vow never to harm Baldur--effectively making him Nigh Invulnerable. The other gods react to this, in jolly Norse God fashion, by making a game of hurling things at him, all of which harmlessly bounce off. (Unfortunately for Baldur, his mother neglected to bother with getting the lowly mistletoe to take the promise, so Loki, the Jerkass Trickster, made an arrow out of mistletoe and tricked Baldur's blind twin brother Hod into shooting Baldur with it, killing him dead.)

Another (completely different, by the way) version of the myth simply has Baldr as the rival of Hod (who is mortal) and already pretty much resistant to anything but a certain sword, whose name is Mistletoe.

Tabletop Games

 * In a Shadowrun monster-book, attached in-character comments by shadowrunners include remarks by someone the SPCA would probably burn at the stake. He claims to make a living by trapping Weres (sapient, regenerating animals which can take on human form) and repeatedly skinning them, then selling the pelts. Live-butchering a type of giant regenerating shark for meat was also mentioned.
 * On occasion in 2nd Edition Paranoia adventures the Troubleshooters receive an unlimited number of clones (instead of the normal six  receives). This can be used to "solve problems" by performing a Zerg Rush at otherwise unbeatable opponents or, in one case, crossing a chasm by filling it up with Troubleshooter corpses.

Video Games

 * There are sidequests in Planescape Torment that take advantage of this. The Nameless One can break his own neck to win arguments or let a woman pay for the opportunity to stab him, among other things.
 * And then there's the Practical Incarnation's 'tomb', an elaborate deathtrap for his enemies where the only way to navigate it is to die. Repeatedly.
 * And then there's the general quests and power up that take advantage of the attendant Healing Factor, which generally make the player glad the Nameless One can regenerate.
 * Touhou: Fujiwara no Mokou passes the time by killing (and being killed by) Kaguya. And in Imperishable Night, Reimu begins her fight with Mokou by pointing out that if she's the sort that can't die, I can go all-out on her, right?
 * Mokou actually endorses this on herself as a way to toughen up her body against attacks, in Inaba of the Moon and Inaba of the earth. Amusingly, this is with Reisen, probably the only person in the series who wouldn't be looking for an excuse to get in a fight.
 * As they're more or less human souls encased in cheap penguin suits, Prinnies of the Disgaea universe are infinitely revivable (slap on another suit and they're good as new), and thus infinitely expendable. Invoking this trope quite literally, it only costs 1 HL to revive a Prinny at any level, so their bosses will kill them for just about any reason.
 * Tales of Monkey Island:
 * Fate Route Shirou, not that he realises it. Thank god for.
 * There is also Raziel from the Legacy of Kain series. Managed to get yourself killed? No worries, you just get sent to the spectral realm where sucking on souls floating there gets you back to the land of the living. Managed to somehow get yourself killed in the spectral realm? No problem, you just get sent to an earlier check point in the spectral realm where there are lots of free floating souls to eat. There is no way to get a game over because you died.
 * In Arkham City, Batman follows his usual no-killing rule, right up until the boss-fight with the giant immortal zombie.
 * Inverted in Solatorobo, where Red is upset at the thought of having to . She points out to him that she is technically immortal, and he notes that somehow, that doesn't make him feel any better about it. Considering her form of immortality is just "never ages but can be killed", he's right to worry.
 * Taken quite literally in Disgaea. Prinnies, no matter how strong they are, are impossibly cheap to revive since they're basically dead souls stuffed into penguin suits. This, of course, means that demon lords have very little reason not to violently murder them at the slightest annoyance.

Web Comics
"Buck Godot: The PSmIths? You heard him. He/it's not really dead. Embarrassed, yes. Dead, no."
 * Looking for Group: A certain undead warlock has been stabbed by twin blades, shot with many arrows, buried under hot lava, nailed to a mast, beheaded, stuck with hundreds of knives and is still completely fine. In fact,.
 * In Buck Godot Zap Gun for Hire, Buck pits the very dangerous Der Rock the Destroyer against 35 PSmIths, and doesn't bat an eye when Der Rock kills them all.


 * In Starslip, the Quels' policy for Cyte attacks to to let the Cyte kill as many as they want until they leave.
 * Also, Protocol Officer Quine is essentially meant to be the face of the Paradigm wherever it goes, no matter how unhappy the locals are to see them, so his memory is constantly uploaded to the ship so that, in the event of his death, they can be downloaded into a clone so that he can get back to being an annoying busybody.
 * One arc features an excellent example of this trope: terrorists have hijacked the Paradigm and trapped the crew in a space station. Solution? Kill Quine so that he resurrects back in the ship and wait for him to rescue the crew.
 * Quine 'dies' many times in his attempts, and even uses his previous bodies as props to trick the terrorists.
 * In Peter Is the Wolf Town sheriff (and former alpha of the local Werewolf Pack) Con Nero stops a rampaging Sarah in full 11-foot-tall UberWolf form by Shooting her in the Heart! He wasn't using silver bullets though so she wasn't permanently harmed.
 * Ran from Bob and George, who can be killed by a sneeze (literally), but will have a new copy teleport in with memories intact. Notable as he is a good guy. The good guys kill him for practical reasons, such as needing multiple copies of his Cossack Buster, or just needing bodies. Or because they think it's funny. He's more annoyed by this than anything else. Apparently it's far more practical to go through with this than simply giving him a body that is durable.
 * Subverted in Sorcery 101; Danny casually shoots Brad in the heart to demonstrate how Werewolves can't be killed by normal bullets. Turns out that you can cure a werewolf, but it reverts all the injuries they've suffered. So now Brad can never become human without getting an instantly fatal gaping chest wound. D'oh!
 * To be fair to Danny, Brad already had all sorts of injuries that he couldn't survive that weren't Danny's fault...
 * In one Muertitos arc showing Death's brief career as a cartoon hero, Death fights a number of villains, including Multiple Chin, a chinese acrobat with multiplying powers -- who is actually a hero who's been brainwashed to work for the bad guys. Death slaughters Chins with wild abandon even over the protests of his sidekick, claiming that she's fine as long as there's at least one left. Then he realizes he's killed them all without thinking. The Commissioner even makes a brief mention of this at the end.

Western Animation

 * Starscream from Transformers Animated gets killed a lot. Transformers in general tend to get this treatment. Being eons old war machines, they are very hard to kill. Waspinator, being nigh unkillable even by Transformer standards, gets it even worse.
 * Lampshaded, inverted, and played both for laughs and drama in South Park with the super power of Mysterion. Being, he has died a thousand times, but wakes up back in his own bed every morning with nobody remembering that he died. At one point he gets so pissed off that nobody believes him that he can not die while he has to suffer through the pains of all kinds of horrible deaths on a regular basis and shoots himself in the head to prove it, but two minutes later everyone has forgotten. He later uses his ability to escape from R'yleh by throwing himself into a chasm to awaken back in his own bed and searching a way to save his friends, who are still trapped there. After everything is said and done, Mysterion mention that he's tired and just wants to go to bed, and shoots himself in the head again as a shortcut.
 * Agent K of Men in Black The Series has no compunctions about blowing the head off of the immortal alien informant Jeebs as part of his regular interrogation technique. Jeebs, after regenerating his head, usually complains about how much it stings before relenting the requested information.
 * There're also other Butt Monkey treatments for Jeebs; he also gets stomped into a puddle by a giant alien and ripped in half by a couple of teleporter guns.