Immortality/Sandbox: Difference between revisions

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.

 

 

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

 

Not sure where it goes:

* Kakuzu from (again) ''[[Naruto]]'' steals people's hearts and replaces them as they wear out.

* The White and The Voices from "The Age of Five" trilogy by [[Trudi Canavan]] fall into this category, as they have immortality bestowed upon them by their gods.

* In ''[[Wild Cards]]'', an entire arc revolves around Jumpers: people who have an ability to switch souls around. Some people only jump themselves, some only switch others, some can do both, et cetera (one minor character gets an ability to bestow the power on others via sex, but can't jump or be jumped himself). Apart from using that for immortality, some rich Jokers (hideously deformed monstrosities, 9% of those who caught the Wild card virus) hire jumpers to switch with someone attractive.

* In Lupin III: The Secret of Mamo, {{spoiler|Mamo's method of immortality is making clones of himself; since he cloned his own mind perfectly, he always thought to carry on this operation. His plan hits a snag, though, as every clone is lacking in some way or another, and so eventually a newly made clone would be left with no value of life at all. In one dub Mamo even states: "The price is high for eternal life..." }}

* In Jeff Long's novel ''The Descent'', the leader of the hadals (an ancient race of [[Beneath the Earth|subterranean]] hominids) has this ability, and is apparently so old that he was the original inspiration for the concept of Satan.

* [http://egscomics.com/index.php?arcid=77 Sirleck] of ''[[El Goonish Shive (Webcomic)|El Goonish Shive]]'' is a former human who achieved this kind of immortality.

* The [[Bob and George]] webcomic has the two characters mention several times that they can't die because they're [[No Fourth Wall|title characters]].

* Any villain of a [[Villain Based Franchise]] (especially a [[Slasher Film]] franchise) will not stay dead no matter how many times he's killed at the end of the previous movie.

* Rincewind in ''[[Discworld (Literature)|Discworld]]'', maybe.

** No, as in "The Colour of Magic" it is openly written that the gods of Discworld, who played their strategic board game (where the board was Discworld itself and their figures were the well known Heroes of Discworld) were controlling these heroes, and basically everything, to such an extent that even Rincewind himself realised by the end of the book that someone or something 'must be keeping them alive'; well played, since the happenings were just the descriptions of the gods Lady and Fate battling the longest in the game. When Rincewind and company literally flies out of the disc of the Discworld it is an established fact that Lady, who was a notorious cheater, succeeded in not letting Fate win over her in the game.

=== Non-Specific Examples ===

 

* Some applications of the [[Twinmaker]] trope.

* [[Tamora Pierce]] uses several different types of immortals for her books: the Lesser Immortals are Type II; the Animal Gods are Type IV; and the Great Gods are Type I.

* Alucard from ''[[Hellsing]]''. Being a vampire, he is type V and X; Is immortality takes form of a healing factor, making him a type III and; After {{spoiler|Absorbing Schrödinger's soul}}, he is no longer a type X (as he no longer depends on the souls of his victims) becoming a Type XI instead, as he is now "Everywhere and nowhere".

* ''[[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...

** 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; [[Back From the Dead|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. {{spoiler|He gets better.}}

** Olive is the same.

* Ganon from ''[[The Legend of Zelda (Video Game)|The Legend of Zelda]]'' is both Type VII External and Type I Perfect (In addition to his obvious Joker Immunity), as he can't be killed as long as he holds the Triforce of Power (though he has shown a few signs of slow aging, before he turned from a human to a [[Pig Man]] form). There are also several incarnations of fellow Triforce bearers Link and Princess Zelda, definite cases of [[Legacy Character]] and [[Generation Xerox]] at least, and a few [[Epileptic Trees]] extend this into Type IV Reincarnation Immortality (which would also be Type VII External), but the series has never gone into the details.

* Marvel Comics' [[Agents of Atlas (Comic Book)|Gorilla Man]] is a combination of Types II and VII: whoever kills him will become immortal, never aging, never getting sick. They can, however, be killed by someone else. The catch? {{spoiler|Whoever kills Gorilla Man ''becomes'' the next Gorilla Man, and will have to put up with all the ''other'' people hunting down Gorilla Man for their shot at immortality - making this a variant Type VIII as well.}}

* {{spoiler|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 {{spoiler|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 {{spoiler|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}}.

** 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. {{spoiler|She too is the victim of a botched summoning--only in her case, only the spirit but not the body came across.}}