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Disability Immunity: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
{{quote|''"What can I do to this guy that life hasn't already?"''
|'''The Monarch''', ''[[The Venture Brothers]]''}}
This is a subtrope of [[Disability Superpower]] where, rather than a character's disability giving them an actual power, it instead renders them immune to some sort of attack, trap, or ploy that would otherwise be effective against them.
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* A lack of senses protecting someone from the effects of a [[Brown Note]], [[Evil Eye]], [[Enthralling Siren]], hallucinogenic illusion, (etc.) because they aren't capable of sensing it in the first place.
* Alternatively, lacking the physical ability to trigger a trap, e.g. being too short to [[Schmuck Bait|reach that pretty red button]].
* Already being harmed in such a way, so it makes no difference. ([[The Last Dance|You're already dying]], perhaps of a [[Convenient Terminal Illness]], resulting in [[Suicidal Overconfidence]]. The ultimate example is being [[Dead to Begin With]] - you've already died, so you're [[Nigh Invulnerable]] until someone figures out how to kill you [[Deader Than Dead]].)
* Not having the frame of mind to be fooled, which would otherwise be a disadvantage (for example being [[Too Dumb to Fool]], [[Jerkass|too nasty]] to be emotionally blackmailed, being [[Too Kinky to Torture]] etc).
See also: [[Disability Superpower]] (for when this grants other abilities to compensate), [[Too Kinky to Torture]], [[Too Dumb to Fool]], [[Insanity Immunity]] (which fall under the "frame of mind" variation), and [[Kryptonite Factor]] (for the opposite; someone being ''more'' vulnerable to something to balance out their power). See also [[One Curse Limit]], when being affected by one thing prevents immunity to being affected by ''anything'' else. [[The Hard Hat]] is when a steel plate left in the skull from surgery makes someone immune to [[Mind Rape]].
{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* In ''[[Bleach]]'', {{spoiler|Aizen's}} shikai only affects those who see it. Being blind, Tosen is immune to it, as well. {{spoiler|He is, however, already on Aizen's side.}}
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* In ''[[Saint Seiya]]'', Shiryu blinds himself to fight Algol's [[Taken for Granite]] powers. This even enables him later on to avoid being fooled by Gemini's illusion of an empty suit of armor, preventing Seiya from striking the illusion (Hyoga was not so lucky), and actually sensing the temple exit where Seiya would only see a suit of armor and a wall behind it. Bonus points for the [[Big Bad]] pointing out that he should have known Shiryu would be immune, though it doesn't matter. Cue [[Evil Laugh]].
** Later on, the nigh-invincible God Warrior Siegfried was beset by the hypnotic flute of Siren Sorento. He gouged out his own eardrums...but it was revealed that Sorento's music [[Subverted Trope|pierced the victim's brain directly, and it was impossible for Siegfried to defend himself from it]].
* Alluded to a couple times in ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist (manga)|Fullmetal Alchemist]]''; for example, when the Elric brothers break into the Fifth Laboratory, Ed remarks that his metal hand and Al's armor body allow them to climb over the barbed wire on the fence without injury, and when climbing through a duct, Ed thinks to himself [[Berserk Button|with increasing horror]] that if he weren't so short, he wouldn't fit through the ducts.
* ''[[One Piece]]''. Usopp is unaffected by Perona's negative hollow because he already has self-esteem issues.
* On one episode of ''[[Inuyasha]]'', they travel along with a miko that doesn't have real powers, later when they encounter a monster with a high Spiritual Energy Level, they all are affected by its pressure, everyone except the powerless miko.
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* ''[[Nextwave]]''. Forbush Man decides to torment the heroes with their worst nightmare. Apparently Boom-Boom simply didn't have enough of a mind to torment. Compared to Aaron Stack's whose mind was programmed in...
* In ''[[Locke and Key]]'', Rufus Whedon's unspecified mental disability makes him immune to the mind-tampering effects of the Head Key.
* There was a bizarre issue of ''[[Blackhawk]]'' back in the '60s or '70s in which the villain had incapacitated five members of the Squadron, one by one, with weapons that attacked a different sense each time. Blinding, deafening, a ghastly odor that left the poor guy unable to smell anything ''else'', something the victim described as tasting like "chewing on a dynamo," and a numbing drug that wiped out the man's sense of touch. But then, the next time he faced them, [[Nice Job Fixing It, Villain|the previous attack had immunized one team member against each of his new attacks]], and like a relay race, they passed on the necessary tools and [[Determinator|got ever closer, until they'd defeated him]].
==
* Hanna "Action Girl" Heller from ''[[The Secret Return of Alex Mack]]'' turns out to be immune to certain kinds of psionic attack because she was genetically engineered to lack any sense of fear.
== [[Film]] ==
* ''[[Signs]]'' - [[Mel Gibson]]'s son has asthma, and an asthma attack prevented him from breathing in the aliens' poisonous fumes.
* ''[[Kung Fu Panda]]'' - Po is [[The Chosen One]] not just because [[Time to Unlock More True Potential|he has a LOT of potential]], but because he is [[Big Fun|just too fat]] to be affected by Tai Lung's [[Pressure Point]] attacks.
* ''[[Serenity]]'' - Mal is immune to {{spoiler|The Operative's [[Pressure Point]] [[Finishing Move]] because his spine was damaged in [[The War of Earthly Aggression]], and the nerve cluster The Operative meant to hit was moved.}}
* ''[[My Favorite Martian (film)|My Favorite Martian]]'' - Brace Channing, a [[Brainless Beauty]] is a borderline case; Uncle Martin uses a sort of mind meld on her while copying her form and while the copying ''works'' he's left seriously disorientated by her lack of brains.
{{quote|'''Martin (visibly wobbling):''' "Boy, her head was dark and empty".}}
* The [[Big Bad]] of ''[[The World Is Not Enough]]'' is highly resistant to pain because of a bullet slowly moving through his brain. {{spoiler|The fact he is dying also means he's willing to engage in [[The Last Dance]] in order to further the plans of [[Bitch in Sheep's Clothing|Electra]].}}
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== Folklore ==
* In ''[[The Pied Piper of Hamelin]]'', at most three children can get left behind when the Piper plays his alluring music. One is deaf so they can't hear the music, one is blind and can't follow the Piper, and one is lame and can't keep up. Different versions use different variations.
== [[Literature]] ==
* ''[[Discworld]]'' mentions one prison guard as being "[[Too Dumb to Fool|too stupid to fool]]".
* Billy Raven, an albino character from the ''[[Children of the Red King]]'' series is immune from another character's hypnotism because of his poor eyesight.
* Inverted in the Foundation Trilogy by [[Isaac Asimov]]. The Second Foundationers have near unstoppable psychic powers, but one character discovers that he can disable them by broadcasting a loud psychic static with a special electrical apparatus while leaving normal people unaffected. He compares this to flashing a bright light in somebody's eyes; somebody without sight (i.e. normal people, without the psychic powers) are not even aware of the light, whereas people who can see will be hurt and incapacitated. {{spoiler|Once he succeeds, however, it is revealed to the reader that it was all part of a [[Xanatos Gambit]] by the Second Foundation itself.}}
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== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* In ''[[Farscape]]'' John Crichton was resistant to something that was affecting the crew because humans have eyesight which is far too poor to see whatever it was that caused it.
** At least that's why the [[Villain of the Week]] [[Villains Never Lie|implies]] [[Everybody Must Get Stoned|everyone is losing their minds]]. In practice, it's more that Humanity has a [[Planet of Hats|racial trait]] - ''[[Humanity Is Insane|insanity]]''. Crichton is able to maintain functionality long enough to organize and execute a plan to kill the bad guy because being Freaked out, Insecure, Neurotic and Emotional ''[[Insanity Immunity|is his normal mental state]]''.
* In an episode of ''[[The X-Files]]'', Mulder proved immune to some subliminal brainwashing because of his colorblindness.
** In another episode, all the living creatures in a given area die horrifically when their inner ears pressurize and explode out of their skulls. Amazingly, they find a single old woman sitting in her home, unaffected as death surrounds her for miles. It turns out the cause of the hemorrhages was a high frequency sound, and the woman was born without eardrums meaning that there was nothing for the pressure to build up against.
* One episode of ''[[The Outer Limits]]'' called "From Within" starred a
** Another ''Outer Limits'' episode called "Stream of Consciousness" posited a future where all brains were networked and had access to the world database, except for the protagonist, whose body rejected the procedure. This made him pretty much useless except as A) a janitor, and b) the [[Only Sane Man]] when the network became malevolent.
* ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' had the episode "Band Candy" where chocolate bars sold all around Sunnydale cause anyone who eats them to revert to their teenage personalities. None of the young heroes are affected, despite Xander eating a large amount of his own chocolate, because they are ''already'' teenagers.
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== [[Video Games]] ==
* In one of the ''[[Mortal Kombat]]'' games Kenshi saves his friend from an ambush when they're attacked with a flash bomb; being blind he's unaffected.
* Some works featuring undead make them invulnerable, what with being already dead. [[The Frozen Throne]] [[Animate Dead]] spell works like this (in the original, the units were vulnerable, but lasted longer).
* ''[[Final Fantasy V]]'' features a Banshee-like boss who charms her victims into submission by conjuring illusions of their loved ones. It works on everyone except the team's [[Badass Grandpa]] who, having suffered from amnesia, doesn't recognise his 'granddaughter'.
* ''[[Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater]]'': Raikov is not affected by the girly mags...NotThatTheresAnythingWrongWithThat, but the game is set in the 60's.
* ''[[Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots]]'': Johnny has no nanomachines to enhanced his abilities. So, when there was an attack on the Patriot AI system that affected everyone with nanomachines, Johnny was fine.
* In the ''[[Pokémon]]'' games, if you're already asleep, poisoned, paralyzed, frozen, or burned, you can't be affected by any other one of those effects. There are a subset of status effects that do overlap with these though.
** And in a [[Fridge Logic|cold]] aversion, Abra can still be afflicted with sleep despite being said to spend most of its day sleeping, and it's Psychic powers allowing it to function while asleep. In fact, it's one of the best ways to catch one so it doesn't teleport away.
* The ''[[Heroes of Might and Magic]]'' series gives us the troglodyte, a blind creature of the deep. Their inability to see renders them immune to the spell blind, known to stop stronger creatures in their tracks. By removing the right creature from the fight for several turns, a single well placed casting of blind has been known to steer the course of entire battles. The thing is, troglodytes are some of the weakest units in the
* In ''[[Portal 2]]'', after {{spoiler|1=Wheatley [[Face Heel Turn|turns evil]], GLaDOS tells him a
* In ''[[Final Fantasy X]]'', being Zombified makes you immune to Death. This means that refraining from curing your Zombification is actually one of the best ways of beating {{spoiler|Yunalesca}}, who uses Death on every party member at the end of each round (as long as you remember she also [[Revive Kills Zombie|casts high level heal spells on zombiefied characters]]).
* Sergeant Johnson from ''[[Halo]]. After "liberating" a crate of plasma grenades to help save his men, he got radiation poisoning which resulted in Boren's Syndrome. This disease degraded his DNA so much that the Flood wasn't able to synch with his nervous system, giving immunity to infection.
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== [[Web Comics]] ==
* An early strip in ''[[The Order of the Stick|Order of the Stick]]'' has a priest of evil casting Unholy Blight on the party which disables all good beings. [[Token Evil Teammate|Belkar]] calmly walks up and stabs him.
** A later strip has Belkar hanged, which he survives since he's a 30-pound halfling, and his weight doesn't even pull the rope taut enough to strangle him.
** Also in [[The Order of the Stick|OOtS]], there's the, ahem, 'squid thingy' that refuses to eat [[Spoony Bard|Elan]]'s brain because his low Int score makes it seem as nutritious as diet Coke. [[Genius Bruiser|Roy]] isn't as fortunate, though...
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** Only bald Luthor and blind Mia can pull off [http://www.unintentionallypretentious.com/index.asp?c=94 these costumes]
** In one [[Halloween Episode]], she's also immune to the effects of the Necronomicon.
* ''[[Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic]]'' (Chapter "A Snake in my Pocket") had a gorgon trying to petrify the Grell. "You know I don't have eyes, right?"
== [[Web Original]] ==
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* Mort from ''[[The Penguins of Madagascar]]'' is ''too stupid to feel pain''. This led to an odd sort of inverted [[Flowers for Algernon Syndrome]] episode, which involved the penguins lowering their intelligences down to Mort's level.
* In the ''[[Earthworm Jim (animation)|Earthworm Jim]]'' episode "Lounge Day's Journey Into Night," Jim, despite being without his [[Powered Armor]], is resistant to evil lounge singers because, as an earthworm, he has no ears.
* [[Rocky and Bullwinkle|Bullwinkle]] was immune to Boris & Natasha's Goof Gas Attack.
{{quote|Goof Gas affects the brain and - no brain, no effect!}}
** Similarly in [[The Movie]], he was impervious to their mind numbing television programs.
* An example happens in the "Blind Alley" episode of ''[[X-Men: Evolution]]'': Scott's ruby visor is stolen by Mystique, and he can't open his eyes without destroying whatever's in front of him, effectively blinding him. But he manages to even the odds by blowing up the lights.
* ''[[The Powerpuff Girls]]'' once fought a brain-sucking villain. They defeated him by tricking him into attacking the Mayor, who didn't have enough brains to be affected.
* In ''[[Futurama]]'', Fry's limited intelligence occasionally comes in handy. Brain Slugs die of starvation when they attach to him. He's also immune to the Brain Spawn's intelligence-sucking powers because his [[My Own Grampa|previous time-travel incident]] gave him a "special mind."
* An entire subset of jokes in ''[[Family Guy]]'' involve Joe getting his legs smashed, mangled, or otherwise horribly injured, only for him to laugh it off (or at the very worst, become mildly annoyed), because they're already useless.
** Also, the episode where Peter goes temporarily blind, he walks into the Drunken Clam bar during a fire and rescues the trapped bartender. When asked, his reply is priceless.
{{quote|'''Peter''': [[How Did You Know? I Didn't.|That freaking place was on fire?!]]}}
* In ''[[Gargoyles]]'', Demona's spell to [[Turned to Stone|turn everyone in Manhattan to stone]] only affected people who both saw and heard her cast it. Jeffrey Robbins, a [[Blind Black Guy]], heard her spell on TV but was immune.
* One episode of the ''[[Mega Man (animation)|Mega Man]]'' animated series featured a deaf little girl who was immune to Dr. Wily's sonic form of mind control.
* ''[[The Grim Adventures of Billy
** And in [[The Movie]], Grim is the only one who can claim the [[MacGuffin]] that makes people face their greatest fears, because his greatest fear is having to spend time with Billy and Mandy, which he already has to do anyway.
* A Halloween episode of ''[[The Simpsons (animation)|The Simpsons]]'' had a bunch of zombies leave Homer completely unharmed. They were looking for brains to eat, and after a brief inspection decided that Homer just wouldn't do.
** Similarly, Homer was immune to a cult's brainwashing because his attention span was so short that he didn't pay attention to it for long enough to work. (After struggling with this for a while, they then manage to brainwash him by singing the theme to the old '60s ''[[Batman (TV series)|Batman]]'' TV show with the word "Leader" in place of the word "Batman".)
* In one episode of ''[[The Venture Brothers]]'', the Monarch tries to kill Dr. Venture by [[Journey to the Center of the Mind|going inside his mind]] and unleashing waves of sanity-breaking mental trauma upon him. But, as Dr. Venture explains, he's ''already'' so miserable that nothing the Monarch does can even phase him.
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** Another episode had a small bitter man use a machine that lets out a "Curtain of Cruelty" to blanket the entire area of Nowhere and turn all inhabitants cruel so he can be elected mayor. Eustace, already a cruel man to begin with, is completely unfazed by the curtain (in fact he's so cruel that not even Courage's tampering of the machine to create the "Curtain of Kindness" affected him either).
* An episode of ''[[Skunk Fu!]]'' had Baboon use a potion on the monkey ninjas to make them invisible the only one who could see them was the token dumbass Ox, after the others realize this they stop thinking and they can also see them.
* Subverted in the ''[[Justice League (animation)|Justice League]]'' episode "Wild Cards". [[The Joker]] has Ace use her powers to drive everyone mad with a look. He claims he is immune himself because he is already insane. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiEWL7o4KbU&feature=player_detailpage#t=336s It turns out that isn't true].
* In the ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987 series)|Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles]]'' episode "Corporate Raiders from Dimension X", Shredder's plan involves taking over the Octopus Inc. corporation with a brainwashing device. However, because the CEO is hard of hearing and his hearing aid is broken, the device doesn't work on him, so they tie him up and lock him in a closet. When the heroes find him and Donatello fixes the aid, he's able to help them defeat the villains.
== [[Real Life]] ==
* People with cardiac arrhythmia (irregular heartbeat) are immune to polygraphs (lie-detector tests) that measure stress-induced changes in heart rate, since they're having them all the time anyway.
* The Thalassemia trait appears in some people because of a genetic mutation may provide some protection against malaria
* This is also true of another genetic disorder, [[wikipedia:Sickle-cell disease|sickle-cell disease]] (AKA sickle-cell anemia). Though the heterozygous "carrier" version is even better as you have no symptoms and immunity to malaria, just a chance your kids will have sickle-cells.
* It's not much, but being bald pretty much assures you will be head lice free.
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* There is a rare genetic defect that leaves people with no helper T-cells. While this isn't exactly much a disability, it does leave those with the defect immune to HIV.
* Most kind of physical and mental disabilities will mean you don't get drafted into war, although this depends on the war's intensity.
** Some armies have been recruiting people with colorblind people as snipes as their version some varieties of camouflage don't blend in easily.
* When it comes to distracted drivers, the rate seems to be lower in those who happen to be [http://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/topics/driving_and_the_deaf.htm deaf] than those who can hear. This is mostly due to the fact most causes of distracted driving are auditory, which the ability to detect is missing in someone who’s deaf. For the most part, a deaf driver is notices what automobile has to go by them with their sense sight, like seeing flashing lights or checking mirror facing the rear-view.
* A Danish study looked into a population of those who were born blind and discover a lower-rate than avenge rate of [http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-imprinted-brain/201411/blindness-and-schizophrenia-the-exception-proves-the-rule schizophrenia] than those born normal.
* Sensory deprivation has been knew to be damaging to a person's hearing or sight unless the victim happens to be deaf or blind... to begin with.
* For a [[Smelly Skunk]], owls are their own nightmare as they have a poor sense of smell.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:
[[Category:Disability Superpower]]
[[Category:Disability Tropes]]
[[Category:Disability Immunity]]▼
[[Category:Example as a Thesis]]
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