Immortality/Sandbox

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One of the oldest of human desires is to counteract the fleeting nature of our short human existence. Eternal life is ingrained in the collective human consciousness, having been present in literature and myths for as long as they've been around.

Of course, having been around for so long, Our Immortality Is Different, and comes in several flavours. These categories are not mutually exclusive; there's plenty of room for overlap.

Contrast Immortality Immorality, Who Wants to Live Forever?, and Immortality Begins At Twenty.

Compare Back From the Dead, Death Is Cheap, and Really Seven Hundred Years Old.

See also the Sorting Algorithm of Deadness, Immortality Hurts, Immortal Life Is Cheap, Living Forever Is Awesome, Perpetual Motion Monster and Sliding Scale of Undead Regeneration.

For immortality for an out-of-universe reason, see Joker Immunity, especially its trope namer.



TYPE III: Regenerative

Complete Immortality?

  • Star Trek's Q. Specifically Qs seem totally invulnerable but when the Q continuum descends into a civil war they do figure out ways to kill one another.

Non-Specific Examples

Examples of Immortality/Sandbox include:
  • Tsukihime: Considering all the vampires, of course there's Type X (vampiric) and Type V (undead), though with their cannon-fodder status, calling the latter "immortal" would be pushing it. Any vampire of note is a Type III, but to be more specific...
    • Arc—the last True Ancestor vampire—manages to survive being cut into pieces by Shiki's attack on her "lines of death". Usually, anything cut along those lines cannot be rejoined, and she would have eventually died anyway. But Arcueid has the extremely rare "Marble Phantasm" ability (also known as "Realization of Imagination"). By temporarily sacrificing most of her power, she rebuilds her body (or at least, the places where she was cut) from scratch on the molecular level. However, even this ability would be useless if Shiki struck her "point of absolute death".
    • At the end of Arc's route (and the anime), Arc disintegrates all but the feet of Big Bad vampire Roa in a single attack; moments later, Roa comments that if it hadn't been a full moon he would have been toast... Not that would have mattered in the long run, though, as Roa is also an imperfect Type IV. If his body is killed, his soul simply transfers to his next host. However, his actual mind and persona have long since decayed and as such merely transfers memory and knowledge, which usually bend their host into a form similar to how he was in life.
    • Roa also gives Shiki a case of Type VII in one route of the game, possessing him after his earlier body is destroyed and turning him into a vampire. He gets better.
    • Ciel is an extreme case of Type III. The World considers her and Roa to be the same person for some reason (she was his previous host); her dying while Roa is still in his reincarnation cycle would consequently cause a time paradox, so any harm to her person is immediately undone. The Church put this to extensive test. Unlike Arc, though, Ciel is fully vulnerable to the effects of Shiki's eyes, as one Bad End in her route demonstrates.
    • Ultimately, though, one of the lessons of the TYPE-MOON universe is that there is no such thing as true immortality, just a lot of shortcuts that come ridiculously close (but still can be vanquished) and a lot of creatures that are terribly difficult to destroy (but still can be destroyed). Even Gaia dies.

as is stated several times in-game, no one is really immortal, as the whole point of Shiki's "Mystic Eyes of Death Perception" are that anything can be killed. The only known exception is Arcueid during a full moon.

      • According to some materials, ORT does not have a form of death that Shiki can percieve and attack. It can still be destroyed, but it won't quite die as we understand it.
  • China from Axis Powers Hetalia is listed in the author's blog as 4000 years old and immortal. He's the only nation listed as such, and the only character to look the same age throughout, from the discovery of Japan (his earliest appearance) to modern day. He's a natural and non-parasitic immortal, but he lacks the invulnerability of a Type I, the conditional clause of the Type II, and the aging and suckiness factor of Type VI. It's considerably less noticable than immortality tends to be, due to the strips' Anachronic Order and the rest of the cast being Really Seven Hundred Years Old.
    • This also extends, to a degree, to the other Nations. In addition to being Really Seven Hundred Years Old, it's implied that they're regenerative to a point.
  • The Split At Birth halves of the Yorae Dragon from Breath of Fire IV would likely be a Type I had the god in question NOT been split in half via a botched summoning. (In fact, it's pretty explicitly proven this is the case in the Bad End when Infini destroys your party.) Instead, Fou-lu and Ryu end up as (functionally) Type III until in the Good End Ryu separates the worlds of gods and mortals and thus they become mortal, or in the Bad End the two merge as the Infini Dragon and thus become Type I.
    • Fou-lu in particular is arguably a Type III/Type XI in that he is a literal God-Emperor whom ultimately exhausted himself, went into torpor for 600 years as the Fou Empire's King in the Mountain, and (upon awakening and discovering that The Empire he'd founded considered his "resurrection" to be an Unwanted Revival) survived multiple assassination attempts by the sitting emperor (including, at one point, being at ground zero of a Fantastic Nuke powered by his own girlfriend as the "warhead"). These attacks usually result in serious injury to Fou-lu that he ultimately recovers from.
    • The recently-completed Comic Book Adaptation pretty much explicitly defines Fou-lu (and by extension, Ryu) as a Type III especially during the Sonne arc.
    • The same game (and manga adaptation) also have Deis as a Type IV/Type XI immortal. She too is the victim of a botched summoning--only in her case, only the spirit but not the body came across.
    • For that matter, all Endless can in fact be considered Type VII immortals as well. It is stated in the game that the Endless are pulled from another world--often not voluntarily--and in essence are granted immortality by the process of becoming a Physical God via summoning.
  • You can find at least one of the various immortals of the Global Guardians PBEM Universe in each of the categories. Among others, these include: The Golden Avenger, a Flying Brick who originally fought crime in the 1940s and stopped aging when he gained his powers, has Perfect Immortality. Master Mist, the immortal sorcerer who now rules Liberia as a benevolent dictator, is Undying. Splatterman is Regenerative. Mister Easter is Resurrective. The Black Lion is an Undead knight. Abyss is an example of Immortality Only. The Emperor is an External immortal. Major Liberty is the tenth hero of that name, but the general public thinks he's been the same person all along. The Bodysnatcher has Parasitic immortality, being able to switch from body to body whenever she needs a new one. Vivian von Klause is a Projected Avatar; she grows old and dies (or can be killed) like normal, but is reborn shortly thereafter. Category Zero is the exception; no characters in the GGU fit into Category Zero.
  • Immortals from El Goonish Shive are essentially type I but incorporate type IV in the sense that they choose to die whenever they think they have become too powerful in order to counteract With Great Power Comes Great Insanity. When they do this they pretty much start life again from scratch with only their basic nature, base power and their previous life's memories rendered as mere second hand knowledge.
    • Aberrations on the other hand are magic users who went the type IX or type X route intentionally through magic in order to achieve immortality.
    • Magus is a special case in that he is effectively type XI except he is stuck on the spiritual plane and can interact only with immortals and aberrations in a meaningful way although he can amplify the emotions of mortals.
    • Notably, according to Word of God, there are no and never will be type Vs in the EGS multiverse.
  • The Warcraft III custom campaign, To the Bitter End features a number of immortals displaying a number of different types of immortality. Indeed, one of the main plot points is that the villain believes immortals are the only beings with the necessary long-term thinking and longevity to effectively rule over mortals.
    • Type III immortality seems the most common, with Soul Reaver, Morganem, the insectoid Kherek, Maelstrom, his lover Kathryn and the Necromancer Kaine Shariven among others all displaying this. And all immortals in the game seem to have a Healing Factor.
    • Type V immortality is found amongst the Undead Dustwalker (and his minions).
    • The Undying display a limited form of Type IV immortality to go with their Type V, being able to resurrect themselves infinitely unless killed twice in quick succession.
    • Eryion Xanatha has his incorporeal soul suspended inside a nigh-indestructible suit of magical armour, making him Type VII.
    • Fei Serumen, being an Ancient Vampire Lord, falls into Type X