Immortal Life Is Cheap: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

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

 

{{examples}}

== 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 {{spoiler|ES Members}} in ''[[Kiddy Grade]]'' are commonly sent on suicide missions because GOTT can always resurrect them.

 

== 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.

 

== Fan Works ==

* ''[[Luminosity]]'': {{spoiler|The Volturi}} 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.

** That said, most of the time he can only kill their construct. Harry has only killed a few otherwise-immortal beings {{spoiler|the Summer Lady, Aurora; the entire Red Court (one shot), Corpsetaker's ghost, the Ikk (it was actually in the Nevernever), Shadowman's ghost, a couple of Black Court, and several others.}}

 

** 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 [[Anyone Can Die|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.

* ''[[Sanctuary]]'': [[Nikole Tesla]] is the occasional [[Butt Monkey]], since, being a [[Our Vampires Are Different|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).

 

* 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 Invulnerability|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 Archetype|Trickster]], made an arrow out of mistletoe and tricked Baldur's blind twin brother Hod into shooting Baldur with it, killing him dead.)

 

== Tabletop Games ==

 

== 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.

 

== Web Comics ==

* ''[[Looking for Group]]'': A certain undead warlock has been [[Rasputinian Death|stabbed by twin blades, shot with many arrows, buried under hot lava, nailed to a mast, beheaded]], [[Too Kinky to Torture|stuck with hundreds of knives]] and is still [[Won't Work On Me|completely fine.]] In fact, {{spoiler|he isn't even undead}}.

* In ''[[Buck Godot: Zap Gun for Hire]]'', Buck pits the very dangerous Der Rock the Destroyer against 35 [[Hive Mind|PSmIths]], and doesn't bat an eye when Der Rock kills them all.

 

== 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. [[The Chew Toy|Waspinator]], being nigh unkillable even by Transformer standards, gets it even worse.

* [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]], [[Inverted Trope|inverted]], and played both for [[Played for Laughs|laughs]] and [[Played for Drama|drama]] in [[South Park]] with the super power of Mysterion. Being {{spoiler|Kenny}}, 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 [[H.P. Lovecraft|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.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Laws and Formulas]]

[[Category:Spectacle]]

[[Category:This Index Will Live Forever]]