Hard Head: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

Concussion? What's that?

All right, you can also have [[Circling Birdies]] if you want. But ''nothing else.''

== Anime & Manga ==

* Killy, the protagonist from ''[[Blame]]'', takes more physical punishment than any normal human would ever be able to survive. Most notably in one chapter, where he gets half his head ''blown off''. It has its consequences, naturally, but he still gets better.

* Averted in ''[[Black Lagoon]]'' when Revy actually gets a concussion, rendering her non-responsive for about a whole episode, during her fight against {{spoiler|[[Ninja Maid|Roberta]]}}. Granted, in the anime it took no less than a near-direct hit with a grenade launcher (just an armor-piercing round to the shoulder in the manga), but still...

** Not to mention the fact that she fully recovered less than an hour later, immediately after being in ''a car crash''.

* Ryōga Hibiki of ''[[Ranma One Half]]''. Even for someone who uses [[Supernatural Martial Arts]], he's considered insanely tough. His most well-know "technique" is the Bakusai Tenketsu, [[Training From Hell]] in which he slammed himself face-first into boulders so much that he toughened up way into the higher grades of [[Made of Iron]]. There was one gag where he headbutted a concrete pole so hard that he not only dented it (noting that it didn't hurt in the slightest), but it actually cracked in half and fell on his head with enough force to shatter into pieces after he turned around. This resulted in a [[Cranial Eruption]] and him commenting that it hurt a little. In at least the anime version of the "Waterproof Soap" story, after Ryōga's apparent "cure" has been revealed, Ranma [[Cute Bruiser|casually lifts a huge boulder]] and slams him on the head with it, only for Ryōga to pop back up, completely oblivious, causing it to flip over and crush Ranma instead.

* In the manga ''Ironfist Chinmi'', one of the first [[Villain of the Week|minor opponents]] that Chinmi fights are a pair of identical twin martial artists called [[Meaningful Name|the Stonehead Brothers]]. They've taken this trope and made a form of [[Martial Arts and Crafts]] based around it.

** It got started way back when he was still a [[Badass Normal]]. When Yusuke gets into a [[Bar Brawl]] during an attempt to rescue Keiko from a rival school's gang, one of the [[Mooks]] [[Grievous Bottley Harm|hits him over the head with a beer bottle]]. Yusuke basically says "ow", then complains about the guy wasting good brew.

** His insanity may instead be the result of {{spoiler|Jagara's poison}}.

* [[Doraemon]] always do this as his [[Finishing Move]] against the [[Big Bad]] in the movie (some of them). [[Justified Trope|Justified]] since Doraemon is a robot after all.

** Pain, holy shit, Pain. In Naruto Shippuden 167, he was punched in the face, hammered into the ground by a 5-10 ton boulder, and thrown with incredible force head-first into a cliff, courtesy of {{spoiler|[[Unstoppable Rage|6-tailed]]}} Naruto. ''And he didn't get even a scratch.''

*** Considering he's practically undead, that makes sense of why he didn't die.

** The fairly strong Jugo punched Killer Bee ''right in the face'' (and followed it up with a [[Power Fist|rocket boosting]], but Bee appeared to have dodged that [[Offscreen Teleportation|somehow]]), which doesn't slow him down at all.

* Sakuragi from [[Slam Dunk]] has a really hard head. His most well-known fighting move is his headbutt. It doesn't even hurt him when he headbutts the floor of a basketball court with all his might.

* While it is never officially stated, in ''[[Saint Seiya]]'' the eponymous Seiya is hit in his head very often. And by "very often" we mean every single time there's an unstoppable, all-powerful technique used on Seiya, it'll unerringly hit him in the head. And in fact he usually seems to be more affected by attacks in his body than attacks in his thick skull.

* The titular ''[[Inuyasha]]'' tends to get thrown through the terrain face-first a lot. Usually, the terrain gives up. In fact, he never responds to head injures, and the only damage he pays attention to is [[Determinator|the kind that]] [[Made of Iron|makes it harder to swing his]] BFS around.

* In ''[[The Beano]]'', it's a [[Running Gag]] that Smiffy of The Bash Street Kids is [[What an Idiot!|so thick]] that his head is indestructable.

* Played with in one of Don Martin's paperback collections. One story tells of Fester Bestertester discovering that Karbunkle has "The Hardest Head In The World". The plot then becomes a parody of the typical movie rags-to-riches-to-rags-to-recovery story ... Karbunkle becomes a star, rich living [[Literal Metaphor|makes him soft]] (literally, to where his skull can't even stand up to creamed spinach), his [[The Power of Love|family forgives him]], and he [[Training Montage|works his way back]] to [[Earn Your Happy Ending|success again]].

* Another Pixar film, ''[[Toy Story]] 2'', has Rex being used as an impromptu battering ram. Over his objections. An "outtake" shows them doing this, and ''failing''.

** Justified in that Rex is a toy and can probably take the punishment just fine.

** This one very much IS [[Truth in Television]]. While the very top of the head is vulnerable, the frontal bone of the cranium is ''way'' tougher than the bones in the hand.

* In ''[[Shaolin Soccer]]'', the eldest of the Shaolin monks is "Iron Head", who has a seemingly impervious cranium. His abusive boss repeatedly breaks bottles over his head to chastise his poor performance, with no effect.

{{quote| '''Paul:''' ''(holding his head in pain)'' Nobody wins with a headbutt!}}

* ''Conspiracy Theory'': Mel Gibson goes around knocking people out with blows to the head. A few hours later they are just fine.

== Literature ==

* [[Nancy Drew]] and her friends (and the [[Hardy Boys]] in their books) were knocked unconscious multiple times in every book. It apparently didn't cause any lasting damage: Nancy never lost her detecting touch.

* Subverted in [[Sandy Mitchell]]'s [[Ciaphas Cain]] novel ''Duty Calls''. Cain suffers a realistic head injury, putting him out for three days and inspiring nausea and dizziness. Cain plays it up or down as suits him, causing other characters to remind him that such an injury is serious.

*** Uhm, no mention of the Carapace armor helmet he was wearing at the time?

** In William King's ''[[Warhammer 40000]]'' novel ''[[Space Wolf]]'', when Ragnor considers that injuries can be more severe than they look, he remembers stories of men who suffered a light blow to the head, fought through a battle -- and dropped dead.

* Kahlan, in ''[[Sword of Truth]]'', becomes determined to sneak out of a palace at one point, and is very reluctant to hit any guard who might insist she stay inside for her own safety, as she knows that she could as easily kill them as knock them out.

* In the two-part ''[[Doctor Who]]'' [[Eighth Doctor Adventures]] novel ''Interference'', Sarah Jane [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] this, by pointing out the risk of severe damage, and asks an alien exactly how they manage to do it without inflicting said severe damage, ''every damn time''.

* In P.C. Hodgell's ''[[Chronicles of the Kencyrath]]'', heroine Jame is hit over the head at least twice per book, and recovers just fine. However, she's not human, and is or a race with a powerful [[Healing Factor]]; furthermore, even with that, she suffers realistic concussion effects from the worse beatings (ones that a normal human would have died from).

** Occasionally, he hits his targets too ''lightly'', and they wake up too soon, usually adding humor to an otherwise suspenseful scene. Or it could make it even ''more'' suspenseful, if he ends up being caught by the enemy.

* Averted in Susan Dexter's ''The Prince of Ill Luck''. Leith, the eponymous unlucky prince, gets hit on the head twice during the course of the book; both times, it renders him so sick as to be incapacitated for several days following.

** All of Susan Dexter's books seem to approach this one pretty well; in ''The Wind-Witch,'' Kellis is so incapacitated by a blow to the head that he is unable to escape his prison when his fellow pirates do, and remains sick and nearly crippled for the week that follows his release. Admittedly, he was also {{spoiler|hit by cold iron, which has poisonous effects on shapeshifters.}}

* In ''[[Otherland]]'', a drinking game could be made from the number of times a scene transition occurs through one or more protagonists getting knocked out, then reviving later with no ill effects. They are [[Inside a Computer System]], so it's all technically virtual, although [[Your Mind Makes It Real]] is in play and many characters do indeed die in [[Real Life]] from fatal injuries in the Grail Network.

{{quote| Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of trauma, I will fear no concussion.}}

* Subverted in Justin Cronin's [[The Passage]]. When Michael is said to have been unconscious for several days but has no slurring, unfocused eyes, or signs of a concussion, it tips off Sara, a nurse, that something isn't right.

* Averted in the ''[[Gone]]'' series. In the second book, Hunter is knocked out by a crowbar to the head. When he wakes up, he can barely speak coherently, and even after receiving [[Healing Hands|supernatural healing]], he is left with permanent brain damage.

** Lampshaded by Cordelia in the episode ''Gingerbread'':

{{quote| '''Cordelia:''' How many times have you been knocked out, anyway? I swear, one of these times, you're gonna wake up in a coma.}}

* Vyvyan of ''[[The Young Ones]]'' who, in one episode, strikes oil by cracking the basement floor with his head, later helps dig it out by headbutting the hole (which leads to Neil accidentally putting a pickaxe through his head), and, from his first appearance, has metal studs on his forehead.

* In ''[[Smallville]]'', Lex and Lana tend to get knocked unconscious about once an episode.

* In ''Scrubs'', Dr. Kelso apparently has a "head like a mountain goat", as evidenced by an occasion where the Janitor hit him over the head with his mop and it "only made him mad".

* ''Doc West'' trains three guys for a fight match, making them focusing on their stronger point: kicks for one, [[Berserk Button]] for another, and [[Hard Head]] for the third. This last is trained to ''get punched in the face for several minutes, without countering or dodging on purpose, to tire the opponent''. It works.

* Avon of ''[[Blake's Seven|Blakes Seven]]'' was knocked out an impressive number of times through the series, apparently without damaging his IQ (although he did go slightly off the edge in the last season).

* Averted in ''[[Mighty Morphin Power Rangers]]'': Kimberly, while practicing after being exhausted by a battle, falls off the balance beam and hits her head. She suffers a concussion and has to be put in the hospital.

** Morgana as well. Between the two of them, it's not wonder the show can run on [[Idiot Plot|Idiot Plots]].

== Video Games ==

* Subverted in the game ''[[Godzilla]]: Unleashed''. Whenever a monster (Godzilla, Rodan, King Ghidorah, etc.) runs headfirst into another monster (especially a [[Giant Mecha]] like Mechagodzilla or M.O.G.U.E.R.A), the first monster ends up stepping back and shaking its head as if in a daze.

** This is also played straight with [[Our Dragons Are Different|Mecha-King Ghidorah]], whose "victory pose" consists of him slamming his mechanical center-head into his flesh-and-blood side heads (which must be the three-headed dragon version of a "high five"). Don't ask how this doesn't cause the side-heads to end up with broken jaws or whatnot.

*** [[Rule of Cool|Because we're talking about a 500-foot tall lightning-spewing, nigh invulnerable, cyborg dragon]].

** In most of the games, he holds up a fist and hits the blocks with it, instead. Which then poses the question: why doesn't his ''fist'' get really sore? He's wearing gloves, of course. Also, don't forget that he grows taller by eating mushrooms, shoots fire out said fist by eating flowers, and becomes a raccoon by eating ''leaves''. And he gets hurt more if his ''hat falls off''. Basically, everything is justified, because nothing is.

*** Though despite his iron hat or whatever gives Mario his freakish bone density, he was still knocked out cold by a cave ceiling he springboarded into in Super Mario RPG.

* The first recruitable units in ''[[Brutal Legend]]'' were once enslaved miners, forced to break rocks with their heads instead of proper tools. Freed from the mine, they now use their heads for ramming attacks in battle. (It's a setting that runs on [[The Power of Rock]], so they're referred to as "headbangers.")

* The first, and eighth, ''[[Mega Man X]]'' game justified this by giving X a reinforced helmet upgrade.

* Link in the 3-D ''[[The Legend of Zelda|Zelda]]'' games will often ram into walls with his head while performing an [[Unnecessary Combat Roll]]. He is never harmed in any way by this, despite taking damage from falls and some other impacts. Perhaps his doing that so often made him [[Heroic Mime|mute]]?

* Eric from ''[[The Lost Vikings]]'' smashes through the walls with his head on a regular basis.

* Possibly played straight in ''[[World of Warcraft]]: Cataclysm''. A quest in Vasj'ir has the player relive a naga's memories of fighting kvaldir. The memory starts off with a naga remarking that "The skulls of these kvaldir are hard as rock!" since the player controlled naga had apparently just broken her trident over a kvaldir's head. Since this event is off-camera whether or not the kvaldir survived the blow to the head isn't known, but naga throughout the memories only kill kvaldir with torso-targeted attacks.

*** Justified in that Oggie is a Jaeger. When a genetically engineered monstrous featured super soldier offers you an obvious lie as part of an overture of friendship, it's generally considered a smart idea to accept it.

* In ''[[Dominic Deegan]]'': "I break things with my face."

** "Gnnngh! It was like hitting a solid rock!"

* In ''[[8-Bit Theater (Webcomic)|Eight Bit Theater]]'', Fighter is a master of the ram technique of Zodiac Kenshido, which consists of breaking your opponent's equipment with your head before he breaks your head with his equipment. He also gets stabbed a lot, and once broke through the Armoire of Invincibility with his head ([[Justified Trope|However]], it ''was'' just the cheap, particle board base, but it still should have been ''invincible'' particle board). In some cases, getting hit/stabbed/shot in the head has made Fighter ''smarter''.

* Very much [[Deconstructed]] in [http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=207 this] ''[[VG Cats]]'' comic.

* Shelly of ''[[Wapsi Square]]'' turns out fine after [http://wapsisquare.com/comic/04222005/ taking a bowling ball to the head.] However, the injury is treated as potentially serious, and she is taken to the hospital. The doctors find nothing unusual save for [http://wapsisquare.com/comic/05022005/ an abnormally thick skull.]

* ''[[Precocious (Webcomic)|Precocious]]'': [http://www.precociouscomic.com/archive/comic/2009/10/21 You must have a pretty hard head]

* In ''[[Endstone]]'', [http://endstone.net/2010/01/21/issue-3-webpage-11/ Cole seems unfazed by a serious blow to the head, and Herrik comments on it.]

== Western Animation ==

* Brought up in ''[[The Simpsons]]'', where an episode reveals that Homer has thick layer of fluid between his skull and brain that give him enormous resistance to cranial damage. Known as 'Homer Simpson Sydrome' Homer: "Oh, why me?!"

* In ''[[Code Lyoko]]'', the kids get smashed in the head all the time, but it doesn't seem to have much effect on their fighting. The frequent [[Reset Button|Returns to the Past]] certainly help staving off any long-lasting effects.

* While he unsurprisingly has yet to be knocked out by a blow to the head, Hammerhead from ''[[The Spectacular Spider-Man]]'' has used his to smash through brick walls without ill effects.

** Well, he's not called Hammerhead for stubbornness; he has a metal plate implanted in his skull.

* Lampshaded in ''[[Archer]]'': When the title character knocks out a colleague in order to take his place on a mission, he advises, "Try not to stay unconscious too long. It's like, super bad for you."

** Others later comment on how he could have serious head injuries and he agrees about that and already has a medical appointment to make sure there's no permanent damage.