Immortality/Sandbox

• Main
• Analysis
• Laconic
• Quotes
• All Subpages
  • Sandbox
• Create New

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying. —Woody Allen

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.

Not really clear if it fits:

• The "Undying" of the Horseclans series are of this type (not, as one might think, type 2). They're vulnerable to suffocation and subject to the Immortal Procreation Clause.

TYPE IV: Resurrective

• Touhou: Kaguya Houraisan and Fujiwara no Mokou are immortals who drank the Hourai Elixir (the legendary Elixir of Immortality), which makes the drinker absolutely immortal by effectively removing their death. Kaguya and her "rival" Mokou (and possibly Eirin herself) are the only characters known to have drunk it, and as a result have lived for almost two millennia (and counting) and are impossible to kill. While it's possible to inflict "mortal" wounds on them, they don't actually die and will quickly regenerate to full health. When fighting Mokou, a character with the explicit ability to kill anything wasn't able to kill her, and in the end she only stops fighting because of the pain (she can get hurt but not a single part of her is capable of dying).
  • Of course, Kaguya and Mokou absolutely despise one another, and have killed each other repeatedly and futilely for centuries.
  • Fairies respawn too, but are also said to have "a very short lifespan". What this means is unclear.

Healing Factor or From a Single Cell?

TYPE VII: External

Not sure where it goes:

• 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.
• What It's Like to Be a God has Tyranus, who has been given type II immortality by Thor, on the condition that he makes sure that Rajah is fine.
• Paradox from Ben 10 Alien Force gained his immortality by existing outside of time for a hundred thousand years.
• The Animorphs (minus Jake) get temporary invulnerability at one point due to a deal made between the Ellimist and Crayak to recover the Time Matrix; Crayak demanded that one Animorph die in the ordeal, and the Ellimist insisted that it be only one. And Jake's death doesn't even stick, thanks to time travel weirdness.

TYPE IX: Parasitic

Body Backup Drive:

• Anu from Empire From the Ashes has 6000 unwilling/unreliable accomplices in cryogenic stasis, and whenever his current body (or those of his subordinates) is getting old, has himself brain-transplanted into another. The subordinates have to make do with abducted humans, though. The displaced brains are incinerated.
• In Jeff Long's novel The Descent, the leader of the hadals (an ancient race of subterranean hominids) has this ability, and is apparently so old that he was the original inspiration for the concept of Satan.
• Sirleck of El Goonish Shive is a former human who achieved this kind of immortality.

Type XI: Projected Avatar

• In the PPC, canon characters cannot be genuinely killed by fanfic. They can be made to think they're dead, but only their original author has the power of life and death over them. (Luckily this doesn't apply to fan-created characters, or the PPC's job would be much harder.) This has led to such unpleasantnesses as Snowball II surviving being crushed by a car, Thranduil surviving being boiled alive, disembowelled and beheaded, and Redtooth surviving having a spear forced an impressive distance into his lower intestinal tract.
• Nagato from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is a "data entity" and she can directly manipulate the physical matter of her body. She is able, for instance, to perfect her eyesight when Kyon suggests she's prettier without her glasses.
• Xellos from the anime/manga/novel "Slayers" only exists truly on the astral plain. His body can be repaired with a thought. Subverted somewhat by the fact that a sufficiently powerful magic spell or weapon can hurt his astral form which tends to transfer to his physical form. There is, in fact, an entire class of spells made specifically to hurt and kill astral beings.
• Gods in Exalted work this way, though there are ways to keep them from re-forming.
• The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man is actually listed as a Class 7 Projected Avatar of Gozer in Tobin's Spirit Guide in the video game. Whenever it enters a new plane of existence, Gozer is given a new form and Mode Locked into it, but it cannot be totally destroyed, only removed from the plane.
• The Maiar (Sauron, Gandalf, Saruman) residing in Middle-Earth in The Lord of the Rings can create material bodies for themselves, but when these are destroyed they can normally just make a new one, given enough time. That Saruman and Sauron can't is partly a result of the psychological degeneration that comes with a fall from grace.
• The Avatar is like this, as each life is a reincarnation of the Avatar Spirit.
• Junior Warrant Oficcer Schrödinger from Hellsing. His powers and name deriving from the though experiment designed by the physic of the same name. As he is a self observing Schrödinger's cat he's everywhere and nowhere at the same time, being his body the manifestation of his self-consciusness.
• Raziel from the Legacy of Kain series. The exact handwave used to sustain his spiritual existence varies from game to game, but in all cases, his primary existence is as a wraith. In the Soul Reaver games, to act in the material realm, he gathers matter around the focal point of a special "portal"; in Defiance, denied that route, he instead learns to occupy corpses and shape them into an image of himself. The Hylden already know how to do it, and use this route to pursue him in the physical realm.
• Cyborg, Hank Henshaw, from Superman. His real form is indestructible energy (he has survived being thrown into a black hole and the explosive death of the Anti Monitor, much to his chagrin). His can rebuild his trademark cybernetic kryptonian form ad infinitum.

TYPE ZERO: Non Diegetic

• Max Allan Collins, second writer on Dick Tracy, once said that it's true Tracy himself would never die, by virtue of being the main character, but all of the other characters were mortal. It is worth noting that both Collins, and the strip's originator Chester Gould, were never afraid of injuring the living daylights out of poor Dick, though.
• Some fan authors treat the prophecy at the center of the Harry Potter books this way, making it impossible for either Harry or Voldemort to die unless directly struck down by the other.

Non-Specific Examples

Examples of Immortality/Sandbox include:

• 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.
• The idea of the Wandering Jew tends to fluctuate; at least one story puts him as a Type III or IV, but others show him as Type VI.
• Many MUDs and MMORPGs have means of ensuring that even if your character dies, the game isn't over—and most ignore aging as well. Some of the most blatant examples basically boil down to Type IV Immortality with penalties such as lost experience points, lost money, and being teleported back to a town.
  • The SWR codebase for MUDs is a bit of an exception. You usually need to buy a clone, which generally isn't cheap. Some codebases will give low-level players a free clone (or just have auto-cloning) but more often you have to buy one regardless of level. If you don't have a clone, death becomes quite permanent. Of course, cloning is hardly true immortality...
• The Status of Immortal in The Twelve Kingdoms is a mix of Type II and Type VII: Immortality is given by certain authorities, and once you have it you stop aging and eventually recover of any injuries at the same rate that normal people do (some do have some form of Healing Phlebotinium, though), to the point that you could be completely deprived of food and water and remain living (albeit weakened) for years. However, immortals can die if they are beheaded, and if its Immortality is revoked they return to age normally.
• In Eternity Row by S.L. Viel, the entire population of a planet develops a nasty case of Type VI, as the result of a dietary deficiency. The titular Eternity Row is the area of a city containing hospitals full of horribly wounded people who cannot die.
• Liches often combine Types V and VII. Their skeletal bodies are quite difficult to destroy, but they use a Soul Jar, known as a phylactery in case of their destruction. They were popularized by Dungeons and Dragons, but have since shown up in the Warcraft series, among other places.
  • They also have a slight part of Type I and heavily on Type IV, since they have a very sturdy damage resistance overcome by a mixed combination of damage types in D&D (bludgeon and magic) and if killed they resurrect close to their Phylactery.
    • Demi-liches (at least in 2nd. ed.) can actually be hurt by magic... That is, one or two very particular magic spells.
  • Demi-Liches of the D&D also have the Type I at being Nigh-Invulnerable. They have a really high damage resistance, are completely impervious to magic and can fully heal (or mostly, based on DVs) at will.
• Keith Richards ages at a normal rate, but cannot be killed via conventional methods.
  • Who's commonly compared with similarly-aged Lemmy, who scarcely even aged despite an almost equally prodigious drug intake history.
    • Granted, Lemmy's always looked like an old fart, and sounded like one too.
• In Terry Pratchett's Discworld, History Monks "Sweeper" Lu Tze and the Abbot are both mentioned as being effectively immortal by two different means. The Abbot is continually reincarnated, transferring his memories to a younger body. But Lu Tze just seems to stay as a wiry old man forever.
  • Some of the Monks (including Lu-Tze) have the ability of 'circular aging'.
• 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 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...
  • 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.
• 3×3 Eyes has the Wu, who are technicaly undead, but act as Type VII with the Sanjiyan who revived them as a Soul Jar. The Sanjiyan themself fall under Type III but their magic has the side effect of making them vulnerable for several mintues after using it hence the need for immortal bodyguards with a strong interest in keeping them alive.
• 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.
• Real Life example: Turritopsis nutricula is a species of jellyfish that can revert back to its polyp stage once it becomes sexually mature - it can continually reverse its life cycle, making it technically immortal. In a way similar to Merlin Sickness
• Another Real Life example: some American Aspen (Populus tremuloides) tree stands (groves) are type II immortal. Aspen forms stands of genetically identical trunks with interconnected roots; some trunks die of old age but the stand itself is type II immortal.
  • Olive is the same.
• Ganon from 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.
  • The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword has dropped some hints. It's suggested that Link and Zelda do have Reincarnation Immortality, though it's not caused by the Triforce; instead the Demon King Demise cursed them into an endless cycle of conflict. In addition, Zelda is the mortal reincarnation of the goddess Hylia and Ganon is the manifestation of the hatred of Demise.
• Marvel Comics' 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? 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.
• 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.
• Dr. Bright of the SCP Foundation is bound to an amulet that makes him a cocktail of Types IV, VII, and IX.
  • SCP Foundation-682 Hard To Kill Lizard. They can contain it only by keeping it in a badly damaged state. The Foundation is actively trying to find a way to kill it, including using other SCPs, which actually results in more than one Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny, as anything lethal will sooner or later be sent against it. At this point they've tried:
    • Using a statue that will kill anybody who looks at it. 682 faked being dead and tried to escape.
    • Cutting it in half with a laser. The two parts started moving independently and tried to escape.
    • An omnipotent butler capable of doing anything admitted he cannot kill 682 and can stop it only for a short amount of time. Another omnipotent entity, when asked what it wants in exchange for killing 682, said that the Foundation couldn't afford it.
    • A toothbrush capable of disintegrating any inorganic material it comes in contact with. Not only did it not work, we also got this:

Theory: 682 is not bound to base Earth biological chemistry and can adapt itself to be 'organic' or 'inorganic' as necessary. Some of the boys on the lab are arguing whether we can even classify it as 'living', at least as we understand life. This worries me, because an unliving, undying intelligent monster… well, that's where you start getting sacrifices in your name. — Dr. Zara

• • • One of the researchers wrote a 12-page short story called The Generally Nice, Friendly Thing That Can And Will Kill SCP-682 Permanently if it So Much As Spots That Damn Lizard, put it between a pair of bookends that sends anybody who is in the same room with them into the world of the book they contain, and herded 682 into the room. 682 escaped, the short story having turned into a 209-page novel describing an epic battle between two monsters, titled The Generally Nice, Friendly Thing That Tried To Kill SCP-682 Permanently But Failed.
    • A camera that disintegrates any living being that comes in its lens' view. 682 was teleported to a different location.
    • Living doll that kills anything that stops looking at it. It damaged 682, but was too small to kill it.
    • Hurl It Into the Sun. It came back on fire.
    • Someone suggested using a Nuclear Weapon, but it was denied:

One would think that putting SCP-682 in the epicenter of an explosion that can cause third-degree burns at a distance of 300 km is a good idea, but as long as there are odds of survival we simply cannot go through with it. Yes, it's a goddamn nuke, but if 682 survives and adapts we'd be boned beyond belief.

• • • God. He couldn't even detect 682's presence, and when informed later that it was SCP-682 they'd tried to get him to destroy, he replied "He's not one of mine. Deal with him yourself."
• 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.
• On Jimmy Two-Shoes, the Heinous family seems to have some form of immortality, being stand ins for Satan, though it's never clear which. Every member has given themselves a Klingon Promotion by freezing the previous one, rather than killing them outright, suggesting they are Type II. Adding to this is that Lucius VII seems afraid of dying in some episodes. Lucius looks to by in his early twenties despite being at least four hundred years old, yet his father looks to be an old man, even in flashbacks. Since the show takes place in what amounts to Hell, it might be Type V.
  • Interestingly, Edward Kay has suggested this for Heloise as well.
• Vampires in Castlevania, especially Dracula, have a mixture of Type III and Type X. They can drink the blood of mortals to regain strength and youth, but vampires also seems to have the common trait of being able to automatically resurrect. For Dracula himself, it generally takes 100 years or so, but he also is often resurrected by outside forces loyal to him. This is basically why the Belmonts and the other good guys have to kill him over and over again... Well, until 1999, when the good guys finally had the opportunity to kill him off for good, and thanks to Julius Belmont, they succeeded. However, Dracula still managed to reincarnate, thankfully, as a good guy, this time.
• 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.
• Sephiran/Lehran in Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn is a technical type II who works primarily as a type I. This is because he has been granted invulnerability that can be broken by attacking him with weapons blessed by Yune.
• Mutants and Masterminds has all eleven types, and all of them can be purchased on a starting character's points budget. Admittedly, some of the types are very expensive, and Game masters are encouraged to restrict player characters to the less game breaking types.
• The Whateley Universe has most of these types. Sara Waite's father Gothmog is a Type I, since he is a true demon and the child of a Great Old One. Fey is believed to be a Type II, and Tennyo and Carmilla are believed to be Type III, even if these are Wild Mass Guessing. The supervillains Deicide and Deathmaiden have been mentioned, and seem like they would count as Type IV's, but we don't know enough to tell as yet. The New Olympians may be Type XI's since they are physical forms of the classical Greek Gods.
• 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
• GURPS has three levels of Unkillable:
  • Level 1: You don't die until your body is completely destroyed.
  • Level 2: Your body can't be completely destroyed; e.g. your skeleton will remain and in time you'll regenerate. (Good luck if it gets buried six feet under or thrown into the lava [etc.], but once the skeleton is removed from these hazards, it will again regenerate.)
  • Level 3: Your regeneration is not linked to your body; if the body were to be destroyed, your spirit will abandon it and eventually, you'll regenerate into a new body elsewhere.