How Much More Can He Take?

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

In fighting Anime, Superhero comics, and kung fu movies, characters are often stronger and tougher than any normal person has the right to be. This makes for more interesting concepts, because it automatically limits the field of people who can deal with a particular problem, forcing our heroes into the fray. But when this concept is taken to its logical extreme, you end up with a new problem:

You have no clue who is winning.

When two supercharged beings hit each other with enough force to shatter a brick wall, but can take it because they are Nigh Invulnerable, we have no way of knowing if the blow was significant or not. The character may reel, but after a moment he's back in the fight as if it had never happened. This is easy to accept at first, but if the fight goes on too long, you start getting lost, and the end of the fight becomes somewhat anti-climactic, since—unless the writer finds an elegant way to make the fight's conclusion clearly decisive—it's just an exchange of blows until one of them randomly takes a blow seemingly no different than any other and collapses. This can be especially damaging to the Willing Suspension of Disbelief when the Sorting Algorithm of Evil is in play: you never get to personally witness the assured growth in potency of the heroes and villains alike.

You know this is occurring when you, J. Random Viewer, have no idea which moves are supposed to be the killer unbeatable finishers and which are just throwaway moves and desperation attacks; or who has the advantage and who's on the ropes. It's almost like the combatants are fighting not to win, but to entertain and impress some invisible audience of spectators. But that would be silly, right?

The visual interpretation of combat in most Video Games follows this trope to a T. In many, characters literally show no signs of weakening (with perhaps the exception of a weakened pose when they drop to a certain number of Hit Points) but this rarely causes any decrease in power. Until you suffer a Critical Existence Failure, you're just as effective as you ever were. This is acceptable in video games because it allows for a lot of combat in the game without having the hero party mend their wounds for a week after each fight, lest they become increasingly ineffective against a large supply of monsters that are only ever encountered with full hitpoints. Plus video games usually have a visible health bar so you know what attacks are doing the most damage and how much more the hero can take.

Obviously, the breaking point on this can be a bit subjective.

When one side is getting all the damage and you still are wondering (slightly nauseated) how much more he can take, the trope is No-Holds-Barred Beatdown.

See also My Kung Fu Is Stronger Than Yours and Rasputinian Death.

Examples of How Much More Can He Take? include:


Anime and Manga

  • Heroic Age is essentially about super-huge reptilian monster things called Nodos that can (and do) destroy small moons with a single attack. This overwhelming power really makes itself apparent when two Nodos are engaged in battle for over 300 hours. That's nearly two weeks of pummeling each other over and over again with enough force to rend a small celestial body in half. And near the climax of the fight, neither one seems any worse for the wear.
  • Nearly all fights in Dragon Ball Z from Frieza on. Dragonball itself generally ended the fights shortly before it got to this level.
    • The fight at the end of the Saiyan saga actually showed what Goku and Vegeta's limits were; getting stepped or landed on by a 50 tall ape is apperently too much.
    • Vegeta is the "king" of this trope. No matter what anyone throws at him, he just wont stay down. Heck he and Frieza are the only canon characters that have ever stood up after being hit by the Spirit Bomb!
    • Justified with Majin Buu, since he's basically a giant wad of chewing gum.
  • Naruto normally does a decent job of avoiding this since most characters focus more on avoiding hits than taking them and even the strongest enemy can't just sit there and take things like knives without flinching, but several fights stand out, particularly the conflict between Naruto and Sasuke right before the Filler. It's pretty much a fight to see who can get up more times from a rock-shattering blow.
    • The majority of that was just added to the anime, though (6-Tails Naruto vs. Pain was even worse in that aspect). What was really the indication of who was winning was who had to rely on their Super-Powered Evil Side first, with the whole fight escalating until they were both using all that they could. Then it ended after one attack.
      • Well, keep in mind that the fight was 6-Tails Naruto vs Pain...'s last animated corpse. So we've got a monster made mainly of chakra with a human body somewhere in the middle versus a guy fighting from miles away using a dead body as a glorified puppet. It makes sense that neither one would really SHOW a lot of damage being taken since the two guys fighting aren't even on the front lines.
  • It's a good thing people watch Bobobo-Bo Bo-bobo for the humor, because the bizarre fighting styles make it almost impossible to tell what moves are supposed to be powerful enough to finish off an opponent. (In early episodes, it was usually by following up a particularly confusing sequence with a direct nose hair attack.)
  • Sort of used with Lampshade Hanging in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's. Both combatants think that they're losing and wonder if they will to be forced to use their ultimate weapon.
  • Basically the default form of combat in Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. It demonstrates how well video-game-style fights translate to a non-video-game medium: Not well.
    • This is averted Advent Children Complete. Many scenes were revised, and fights now show battle damage.
  • This is played painfully straight in Devil Hunter Yohko: each of the demons is assuredly stronger than its predecessor, but when they're functionally identically sacks of muscle and claw, this is only apparent to the viewer when the protagonists give up earlier than before after going through a Strictly Formula battle scene before the My Name Is Inigo Montoya moment.
  • Ultimate Muscle. Sure, that "Ultimate Muscle" power can account for a sudden comeback, and the protagonist's sheer Heroic Resolve probably counts for something... but somewhere around the third time he gets thrashed until he can barely stand up, only to start fighting back a few minutes later with renewed energy, it just gets ridiculous.
    • Hell, that's nothing. In the original Kinnikuma's tag-team arc, Terryman gets impaled by floor tiles decorated with swords twice. The first time is painful, but the second time is bad enough to kill him. He gets better.
  • Rurouni Kenshin, the battle between Sanosuke and Monk Anji has the two trading Futai no Kiwami blows, each supposed to be able to pulverize rocks into dust. The final blow? Sano develops the sucession move to the Futai no Kiwami on the spot.
    • Kenshin does acknowledge that neither fighter should be on their feet and that it is their will and not their bodies keeping them on their feet. After Sano wins the fight, he is the one in need of medical attention and is out of commission for some time because the repeated blows almost killed him.
    • This happens a little later in Kenshin's final battle with Shishioh, after taking multiple hits from Kenshin's ultimate technique and being struck directly in the face by a Futai no Kiwami. Eventually it ends with Shishio helpless on the ground, being protected by Yumi whom he takes advantage of by stabbing her to seriously wound Kenshin. With both of them on the ground, various members of the team states that the first one to get up will win easily, as the other will be helpless. Kenshin totally collapses, bleeding out, and Shishio manages to stand, maniacally cackling as he thinks he's won before bursting into flames (his body heat became so intense that it caused the fats and oils in his blood to ignite, as he has no sweat glands). Holy shit.
  • Pretty much the only way to tell if a blow is a 'finishing' one in the One Piece manga if it is a two-page spread that shows the person actively getting pummeled. People may still get up after this, but you know those moves meant something. The most severe example of this would have to be the fight between Luffy and Rob Lucci; by the end, Luffy was unable to even move and Lucci was in a coma.
    • One Piece has fallen into this recently thanks to its "Whitebeard pirates VS marines" battle: when a large quantity of characters have been shot, stabbed and still getup, and each of these characters have unique superpowers you need to pay attention to it's really difficult to decide which side is winning.
  • In Yu Yu Hakusho, Yusuke and Chu have one. This is after spending all their spirit energy on various attacks and utterly pulverizing each other with energy attacks and such, and they can't even use their spirit attacks anymore. There's also a catch: Not only can they not move at all or they agree to forfeit, but their back heel is resting against a knife. Every hit that they each take knocks their foot into the knife, causing immense pain. Eventually Yusuke wins after Chu tries to finish him with a mammoth headbutt. Yusuke intentionally just takes the attack and Chu is knocked out.
    • The knife had two purposes: the aforementioned resting of the heel against the blade, and if one of the fighters did step back, the other would take the knife that was now between them and stab him with it (more or less just a guarantee that no one would be retreating, as by that point Chu liked Yusuke well enough to not kill him and it's doubtful Yusuke would kill Chu even if they weren't friendly as he didn't see Chu as being either evil or a threat to his friends).
  • In The Prince of Tennis, Kabaji and Kawamura's match in the Hyoutei arc is literally like this. And it WAS a part of Kawamura's Batman Gambit, who since the beginning wanted to force Kabaji into a draw. To some degree, also Kawamura's match against Gin Ishida. And it worked too... but pretty much by fluke.
  • A beatdown of this sort happens between the two Rival Protagonists in the last few minutes of the final episode of the anime S-Cry-ed. It winds up being far more brutal than anything the villains ever put them through, -- almost offputtingly so.
  • The Dio Brando-versus-Joutarou Kujou Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure part 3 is perhaps one of the most overlooked examples (WRYYYYYYYY and the steamroller eclipse it, but are aspects of it). The sequence danced gleefully into this territory (STEAMROLLER) and never left until the battle was over. Not only do you get Jojo and Dio trying to out-beatdown one another, you get then trying to outsmart, and eventually out-TIMESTOP one another, culminating in a simultaneous-punches-connect-simultaneously that holds off the conclusion JUST LONG ENOUGH...
  • Happens between Shirou and Kotomine Kirei in the finale of the Heaven's Feel route of Fate/stay night, while both of them are virtually dead, nonetheless - Kirei's heart was destroyed by Sakura two days ago, and Shirou is all but overtaken/corrupted by Archer's arm, which is quite literally turning his body into swords because he used its projection capacities. The fight is basically two walking corpses brutally beating each other to death. Shirou wins, but only because Kirei's time runs out first, just as he's about to kill him. Shirou (possibly) follows suit under a minute later, though, and the Tear Jerker ending expands on this concept...
    • And a route before that in Unlimited Blade Works, we have Shirou vs. Archer. Outclassed in skill and power, has a broken arm, a broken leg, shattered fingers, is bleeding profusely, and is much to his opponent's surprise, still able to parry and attack.
  • Don't even try guessing who is winning on Hellsing. Even if someone has been decapitated, shot in the head, impaled a bajillion times and stuck to the wall, they've still got it under control. Really.
      • Alucard is winning. I mean, come on, he's practically a God Mode Sue.
    • The fact that everyone in the series has From a Single Cell regeneration and are Nigh Invulnerable to boot makes it difficult, but there is a rule of thumb- has Alucard done something so far beyond badass it comes out the other side and ends up being silly yet? He's probably losing. But he'll win in the end.
    • Except for his final battle, which is so far beyond weaksauce it comes out the other side and ends up being deeply compelling.
  • Mahou Sensei Negima has normally made sure to emphasize the character's mortality during combat (such as things like sharpened stone spears being fatal like they should be). Then the match between Negi & Kotaro against Kagetaro & Rakan came about and threw all that out the window. The match started with Raken being pummled by magically-enforced punches moving at over lightning speed, being driven into the ground with a concentrated blast of tropical squall-level winds, then culminating in being at the center of an explosion of lightning with enough heat to vapourize small mountains. He got back up. Then proceeded to beat the person who did it to him with punches of enough strength to kill high-level dragons and shatter large sections of earth. Repeatedly (supposedly by this point his organs should've been turned to mush; a High Pressure Blood From The Mouth was in order). On Kotaro's end, he was stabbed through his arms, legs, and torso, then later got slashed at several key points on his body by a [a lot ofBFSs, ultimately being impaled through his back-to-chest with a sword larger than his head (at the time this was saying something). His answer? Really good Healing Factor. The person who stabbed him? Currently pinned to a wall by magic-canceling BFS. This battle is still going. And The Hero still has one more trumpcard. Always one more trumpcard. Of course, Rakan is essentially physics and logic defying power distilled into human form, so this kind of thing is really to be expected from him. From Negi, however...
    • The fight is now over. Both parties ended up running out of magic before they took down the other guy, so they ended up engaging in Good Old Fisticuffs. At that point, they both fainted from exhaustion.
  • In Black Lagoon, Revy and Roberta end up settling their differences in a fistfight that ends up being a very good example of this trope. The end result is draw by Cross Counter (although Roberta isn't knocked out, which technically makes her the winner).
    • Not really, since it was shown that they both were extremely exhausted just before the finale blown. Revy was just slightly more tired than her rival.
  • ANY fight in Bleach involving Kenpachi is one of these, especially the one between him and Nnoitra. Hell, any fight in Bleach that isn't a Curb Stomp Battle.
  • Pretty much every one of Kenichi's major opponents is astounded by his ridiculous ability to get up time after time.
  • Clannad After Story has a fight that lasts from dawn until after dark in episode 8.
  • Ippo is notable for three things, strength (he punches way above his weight class), stamina, and an iron will. In a long bout, this trope is very much in evidence, as Ippo just never gives up, and can take a lot of punishment. The scariest thing for his opponents, after the intensity in his eyes, is that his punches just don't die.
  • In chapter 87 of Claymore, we see a claymore who is seemingly curbstomping Isley : she cuts him with a BFS, nearly destroy half of his body without being injured... then we see her thought and realise that the situation is exactly the opposite, it's Isley who is winning this battle.

No matter how much I sink my blades in his body, no matter much I sliced the bastard up, I don't get the slightest sense that I can defeat him. In fact, the more I drive my blades through his flesh, the surer I felt that his blade will come slicing straight back at my body with still greater force.

Comic Books

  • In one of the later Elf Quest stories there's an entire chapter in which Cutter and Rayek settle their ancient grudge by beating the crap out of each other in the troll caverns. At first they're just using fists and feet, but as the fight goes on it escalates to the point where they're bashing each other with huge chunks of rock. Even when Rayek is half-dead from all the punishment he refuses to give up, telling Cutter that he "hasn't had enough". Actually there's method in his madness - what Rayek means is that Cutter hasn't had enough revenge yet. He knows the only way he can ever settle the quarrel once and for all is by letting Cutter almost kill him.
  • Jango Fett's backstory/tribute comic ends with him and his lifelong archnemesis brutally beating each other down on a spaceship and then on the planet below. This fight mostly refrains from the "two supercharged beings no discernible damage" part of the trope listed above: both of them take a beating and show it (especially after Fett slashes Vizsla's belly open).
  • The Punisher regularly suffers injuries that would render a normal man utterly comatose, if not dead. This is because he is Made of Iron. Once a shotgun blast blew one of his ribs clean out (!) and he kept on fighting.
  • Batman has also suffered phenomenal physical trauma and kept going.
    • Of course he has. He's Batman.
  • Sin City characters are generally hard to put down. Marv is probably the main offender. In his original story, he gets run over with a car mutliple times in a row, gets beaten by a Serial Killer, and is still perfectly healthy enough to fight an entire SWAT team of federal agents... all in the span of one night. Cardinal Roark even mentioned how hard he was to stop.
  • In his long superhero career, Spider-Man has been on the receiving end of beatdowns and suffered a great deal of pain during them, but on the count of his never-give-up spirit, he just keeps on fighting and fighting until he finds a way to win.


Fanfiction

  • In Ultimate Sleepwalker: The New Dreams, the battles between Sleepwalker and Psyko tend to be vicious bloodbaths from which the participants emerge more dead than alive. It's made worse by their ability to warp physical objects, which lead to them flaying each other with sharpened steel spikes, smashing each other through concrete walls, electrocuting each other with high-voltage wires, and catching each other in the middle of exploding sewer pipes and tanker trucks, oftentimes all in the same battle.

Film

  • Superman versus the agents of Zod in Superman 2. Exactly how much does being punched through a skyscraper hurt Superman?
    • This is why the tense moment at the end of that fight when Superman is believed to be dead completely fails to fool the audience. Sure, he got crushed by a bus, but he's Superman, for goodness sake. You'd have a hard time convincing us that that'd even knock the wind out of him.
  • This can even happen in movies about supposedly normal mortals:
    • Bond and Trevelyn's fight at the end of GoldenEye.
    • Rocky tends to fall into this trap, getting worse as time goes on; V is probably the worst offender.
      • Rocky IV is bad, too. Ivan Drago managed to kill Apollo Creed with one of his punches, and Rocky is still able to hold him off for ten minutes screen time before his "come-from-behind" win.
    • Face Off: You would think that getting stabbed by a butterfly knife (and twist to make sure the wound won't close) would end a fight. No? How about a Harpoon to the gut? Still going? These guys didn't even slow down despite receiving wounds that at the very least should have made them limp.
  • The Chronicles of Riddick, in the final duel; except that rather than showing no signs of weakening, Riddick kept seeming to leap back from You Can Barely Stand to full strength. This may be justified, as it happens right after he sees his daughter-figure murdered, and it was established in Pitch Black that things like this make him a little psychotic (like the death of Carolyn.)
  • House of Flying Daggers ends with a battle between Jin and Leo. They keep on fighting even after dozens of wounds (the "splashing blood"-kind), only to stop when they both impale each other simultaneously.


Literature

  • The climax of Max Barry's Machine Man. Man in the Machine Dr. Charles Neumann vs. the crazed Cyborg Carl the ex-security guard. Both take quite a beating (that does no small amount of property damage) with no sign of who's winning before Neumann blasts Carl to smithereens with his BFG Arm Cannon.
  • Generally averted in the Dresden Files for humans. Harry can put out a hell of a lot of damage, but is human underneath it. Played straight with most of the big, supernatural enemies that Harry faces, as well as Cowl, who's currently one of the biggest bads in the series.
  • Metalcrafters and the Vord Queen are this in the Codex Alera.
    • In a more Nightmare Fuel sort of way, so are the Taken and the Kalaran slave legions.


Live Action TV

  • Angel vs. Spike in "Destiny", anyone? And for that matter, Buffy vs. Faith in "Graduation Day - Part 1".
    • It should be noted both fights end in a climatic way - Spike beats Angel after stabbing him on the shoulder with a stake and Buffy beats Faith after stabbing her in the stomach with a knife.
    • Spike in general has a tendency to do this. He starts off being beaten around by virtually everything, then wins the fight in a short space of time. E.G., fighting against that fire-fisted demon to regain his soul, he was being destroyed before suddenly gaining the upper hand and snapping the guys neck.


Tabletop Games

  • Fudge is one of few tabletop RPGs that actually weakens people as they get beat up, using a wound track (boxes under wound categories that get filled in), with hurt and very hurt wound boxes. A hurt is a significant penalty, and it will be obvious, a very hurt is a huge penalty, and will be just absurdly obvious.
  • Mutants and Masterminds does the same thing. It seems that in the games where systems other than hit points are used this is extremely prevalent.
    • Although, in the default implementation, wounds and bruises only affected your ability to take further damage. An optional rule (usually invoked for Iron Age games) stipulates that all rolls suffer a penalty. Taking a significant enough blow can leave you stunned, staggered, unconscious, disabled, or dying (specific states that hamper your actions).
  • Champions uses two stats; Body and Stun. An attack that inflicts Body damage has actually injured the character; enough injury results in the character's death. Stun damage can leave the character dazed (lose an action) or result in the character becoming unconscious.
  • Shadowrun uses a two stat wound tracking system - lethal and nonlethal damage. Characters accumulate ever greater penalties to all actions as those tracks fill up.
    • The old Alternity system had four stats for wound tracking. Damage in some of them came with associated penalties to all actions; damage in others didn't.
  • The World of Darkness games track "health levels", with descriptions of what each means (Bruised is the first level of damage, for example). The more damage you take, the greater the penalties to your rolls; once you're down to one level left, you can barely walk.
  • Exalted, which uses a similar system, does have this problem with high-powered exalts fighting. Since raising your damage is much easier than raising your resistance to damage, and perfect dodges and parries are cheap and reliable, most fights between non-lunar celestials are utterly bloodless until one runs out of juice and is summarily splattered all over by the opponent's Ultimate Doom-combo. This is even worse since you don't necessarily know how much juice your opponent has left.
  • Interestingly, in the PDQ system this is the only way damage is tracked at all - damage is taken directly off of your skills and you lose the fight when you have none left.
  • GURPS notes shock penalties for each hit (pain from being struck), crippling damage (broken bones or joints) and has penalties causing by losing too much HP.
  • Dungeons & Dragons has a rarely-used optional rule: The Clobbered rule. Taking half your hit points in physical (non-magical) damage, total, in a single round, reduces your ability to act in the next round. However, since no-one uses that rule, most of the time D&D uses the traditional Critical Existence Failure rule.
    • The D&D Miniatures game follows the RPG's lead. Most creatures have to make a morale roll after losing half their Hit Points, or run off the battlefield. Otherwise, there's no difference between being at full HP or nearly dead. By contrast, games like Hero Clix or Mage Knight have characters get progressively weaker (and lose special abilities) as they take damage.
  • Star Wars Saga edition battles can either follow or avert this trope depending on how much damage is being dealt per attack. Lots of weak attacks can bleed off hp without any noticeable effect until you suddenly drop dead from being hit with a toothpick but powerful attacks will move your character down a condition track, making you suffer penalties to everything until you've recovered.
  • The almost unknown RPG "AMMO" (only published in Italy) uses 16 different stats for a character. Half of this are used both as normal stats (like Strength for damage, or Agility for dodges) and as life points: damages are randomly distributed amongst stats, reducing them. A very wounded character is highly inefficient, expect for magic users that have little use for physical stats anyway.
  • Burning Wheel has a wound meter, but rather than filling up with damage, you just mark each hit under how much incapacitation it inflicts. It's actually very difficult to land a killing blow; most combat ends when one fighter's will breaks and he flees or surrenders, but between strong-willed fighters, they can keep going until one is so penalized by wounds that he can't move.

Video Games

  • In Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, the final fight between Ocelot and Snake is this. Both beat eachother down time after time after time and yet both of them keep getting back on their feet.
    • This is also sort of a callback to Metal Gear Solid (the first with the word "Solid" in the title), where Liquid Snake, who Liquid Ocelot is a doppleganger of, simply won't die. You actually fight him a total of four times - five if you're counting both halves of the REX battle.
  • Dissidia features leads and antagonists of most of the Final Fantasy series duking it out with Brave attacks (that merely strengthen the attacker's next attack and weaken the opponent's) and HP ones (that actually deal damage), both featuring sharp weaponry and explosive magic. While all of the characters involved are inhumanly tough, strong and agile, there is no in-game explanation why one kind of a seemingly deadly charging slash can wound, while another just discourages the enemy.
  • In Digital Devil Saga 2, by the end of the scene with Cielo's death, he's singlehandedly taken out 3 jets and missiles, all while having his limbs torn off and blood pouring out. In fact, after the first jet was destroyed, he shouldn't have been able to fly anymore...
    • Those wings should not have let him fly to begin with since he never flaps them for flight; he just uses his magic flight to go through. The wings are likely just for steering.
  • Heavy Rain averts this to the point that quite a few of the injuries the 4 heroes receive last the entire game. It's quite obvious when the player is failing too many QTEs.
  • The Mortal Kombat series has been notorious for this, however Mortal Kombat 9 takes it Up to Eleven. Since the character models have been designed with painstaking detail to show the damage inflicted on their bodies, both external and internal, expect to see a lot of fighters look like they've packed up for a trip to the morgue before the end of the first round. Particularly nasty are the characters who break their backs, crack open their skulls or lose an eyelid when busted up. Yes, their eye is just barely hanging there completely exposed.
  • In World of Warcraft and other MMORPG's the main tank is often required to be hit by enemies so powerful, a single blow would likely slay almost any other player. The tank is required to endure these colossal hits by the hundred and is only able to do so by being extremely powerful and the subject of his own personal battery of healing spellcasters. The result of this can be that if a healer mistimes a spell or runs out of Mana, a tank can be suddenly killed by an attack which previously appeared inconsequential.


Web Comics

  • Averted in Order of the Stick: the amount of damage that a character has taken can be told rather precisely from her visible wounds.
    • But still, they are equally strong until slain or poisoned. Wounds are just a cosmetic issue.
      • This is deliberate, as the whole premise of the comic is "people living in a world that works like the D&D rules"; Therefore, while they are getting wounded (losing HP) it doesn't actually impair them - just like it doesn't in D&D.
  • Lampshaded by Eight Bit Theater in this comic.

Thief: He was remarkably spry for being so close to defeat.
Red Mage: This is why we should really play by the grim and gritty rules. Rather, our opponents should. Like hell I'm not gonna use my AC.


Web Original

  • Mounty Oum's Haloid had somewhat realistic levels of combat, given that the two combatants were wearing armor that would rival a 50-ton tank. However, his follow up series Dead Fantasy has characters taking insane amounts of damage and just getting up for more. In addition to the random pummeling and slashing, the most notable moments so far were Kasumi taking a bullet to the chest and just getting knocked down for a bit and Tifa taking an axe to her exposed midriff and not even flinching (although she did get knocked back about twenty feet).
  • Of course, seeing as it's based off Dragonball Z, Super Mario Bros Z is a big offender. The worst was probably the Team Mario/Axem Koopa Bros melee. Can anyone truly say that Axem Yellow's hammer attack he performed on Sonic, should have left Sonic with no problem? That still does not stop the fights from being FREAKING AWESOME.
    • What about Axem Red slashing the shit out of Mario with his axe (doing seemingly little damage, if any at all) while both Green and Black were killed by a single axe swipe later? Not to mention Mecha Sonic being able to soak up a ton of attacks from various sources, yet being knocked out of his Nigh Invulnerable Super Mode by Collision Damage Mario and Sonic sharing a star?
  • Tennyo vs. the Arch-Fiend, in the story Boston Brawl of the Whateley Universe. It just keeps escalating, and they just keep healing up, all the way until a building falls on them. They both get up from it but the Arch-Fiend is out of energy, and Tennyo is just pissed off.
    • Averted with Sara, who has similar regeneration abilities. Getting cut in half meant she was pretty much doomed, and needed to eat FAST. Fortunately, some minions are nearby.
    • It bears mentioning with the above fight that Tennyo is an intentional God Mode Sue; the writer attempts a Deconstruction.


Western Animation

  • Superman versus Captain Marvel in Justice League Unlimited. Superman eventually won by forcing Captain Marvel to revert to his eight-year-old form.
    • Taken to the extreme in the Grand Finale, where the fight between Superman and Darkseid goes on for far too long, and is mostly Darkseid smacking the crap out of Superman, with several blows that look like they should be devastating - one looks like it'd break Superman's back! - but don't noticeably affect his ability to fight in any way. What makes this even crazier is that it seems like Batman - yes, Batman - tries to mix it up with Darkseid, and because of this trope, it seems like his jump-kick is about as effective as Superman. And after enduring this horrific, brutal abuse from a stronger-than-ever Darkseid for the entire episode, Superman gets up, shrugs it off, comes up with the World of Cardboard Speech and a Crowning Moment of Awesome...but the comeback doesn't even last as long as it took him to get through the speech, when he's interrupted by a device that puts him in as much pain as is physically possible, and that ends the fight.
    • On the other hand, decently averted in the episode "Flash Point", in a brawl between Captain Atom and Superman - the two of them (particularly the Captain) visibly take damage and slow down as the fight goes on.
    • On a similar note: Superman: Doomsday. The titular characters go at it in Metropolis, relentlessly beating on each other, though Superman seems to get the worst of it until the end.
  • How Family Guy's Peter vs. Giant Chicken fights tend to go, although they accumulate at least cosmetic injuries over the course of the fight. It helps that they're all played for laughs and pretty much happening for no reason anyway.
  • Transformers often faces this problem and Beast Wars especially: the Predacons (most commonly Waspinator) are frequently blown into pieces, and often survive without even going into the "safety lock" emergency state, yet Dinobot died while largely intact. The shows offers the (surprisingly consistent) justification that it doesn't matter how much they're torn apart, as long as their Spark has energon supplied to it they can be put back together. Thus Dinobot died not from injuries, but because he kept fighting long after his system told him to shut-down.
    • Waspinator's spark is also located within his head, allowing him to survive attacks and mishaps that blow him to pieces. This spark placement is meant to be very unusual.
  • The Spectacular Spider-Man's fights, while indeed fitting the "spectacular" label, tend to fall into this - Spidey will get thrashed around for most of the battle, and only finally start to visibly slow down when it's time for the climax.


Real Life

  • Matthew Saad Muhammad, a Hall of Fame boxer, was the walking, breathing example of this trope. Nearly all of his significant fights resulted in him taking massive amounts of punishment while never going down, then proceeding to turn the fight around shortly after and recuperating from the damage to win, usually in the most spectacular fashion possible. His nickname was Miracle Matthew for a reason.
    • Another boxing example: Arturo Gatti and Micky Ward beat the everloving bejesus out of each other, both sustaining incredible amounts of punishment. They ended up fighting three times, producing much of the same excitement. (A writer for the Boston Globe described all three fights as "like a Popeye cartoon, only more eventful.")
  • According to That Other Wiki, the Thrilla In Manila fight between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier turned into one of these. Frazier's trainer decided to throw in the towel to keep Smokin' Joe from getting hurt even more badly than he already was, while Ali later said that this fight was the closest he'd ever come to dying.
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