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.

* 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.

** Accordingly, {{spoiler|Isaac and Miria}} avert this, as during the entire anime {{spoiler|Isaac}} was only injured one or two times, and {{spoiler|Miria}} 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 [[Yandere|Mao]] decided he was going to "[[Chainsaw Good|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.

* ''[[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 [[Unwanted Harem|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.

* Hakamada from ''[[Aphorism]]''. Used as scapegoat once by his friend to dodge an attack.

 

== Comic Books ==

** 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.

** 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 (Comic Book)|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.

 

== 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 [[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. {{spoiler|Children, free to take backups of their personality, play war with real weapons. Additionally, they keep software copies running at faster-than-real-time to grow up and watch over them.}}

** 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.

* ''[[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.

* ''[[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 {{spoiler|Nathan Young}} week after week in ways so gory and painful that it [[Crosses the Line Twice|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 [[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).

 

 

== 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.

* In ''[[Arkham City]]'', Batman follows his usual [[Thou Shalt Not Kill|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 {{spoiler|leave the immortal Paladin Elh inside Lemures while he takes on Tartaros}}. 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 {{spoiler|Baion wiped out the rest of the Paladins and}} her form of immortality is just "never ages but can be killed", he's right to worry.

 

== Web Comics ==

* 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.

* 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.

* Subverted in ''Sorcery 101''; Danny casually shoots Brad in the heart to demonstrate how [[Our Werewolves Are Different|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... {{spoiler|except for the first one}}

 

== 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]]