Invincible Hero: Difference between revisions

Contrast with [[Failure Hero]], who never wins at anything.

 

 

[[Sub Trope]] of [[The Good Guys Always Win]].

 

{{examples|Examples: Spoilers Ahoy}}

 

* ''[[The Prince of Tennis]]'s'' Ryoma Echizen has almost yet to lose a match.

** A match that counted for something. He has lost before to the captain of team, who he had never previously played, [[Pride Before a Fall|to knock him down a peg and keep him from getting over confident]].

** Early on, he actually reveals that he gets trashed in tennis every day. But he's playing his dad, who is like the strongest player in the world (unofficially).

* Yugi of ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh]]'' has "lost" only five times, and only once 'fairly.'

{{quote| '''Panik''': Why aren't you dead?<br />

'''Yugi''': As I explained earlier, I'm the main character. You, however, can just go right ahead and die. }}

** Batman exemplifies this trope in ''[[Justice League of America]]''. He pretty much has to, since he wouldn't survive his first mistake against a JLA-class menace.

** Somewhat averted in ''[[The Dark Knight Returns]]''. The first time Batman fights the leader of the mutants, he gets whomped by the guy. As the series progresses, he gets more and more injured. {{spoiler|By the end, he even dies...temporarily}}.

* ''[[Mad (Magazine)|Mad]]'' has a character who is basically a [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshading]] of this trope named "Fantabula-man".

* Fletcher Hanks' ''Stardust the Super Wizard'', who has [[Flying Brick|super-strength, flight, invulnerability]] and [[New Powers As the Plot Demands|basically any power that would be useful in a situation]], and [[God Mode Sue|no weaknesses.]] A large part of the entertainment value comes from the utterly bizarre punishments he doles out to evildoers.

* Lampshaded in Robert Kirkman's "Brit" comics. The hero's one power is that he's invincible. What makes him not-boring is his personality and the stuff happening around him. That, and the fact that everyone ELSE isn't invincible.

* Similarly, Kirkman's character "[[Invincible (Comic Book)|Invincible]]", from the same-titled comic, has a main character who's the most powerful person on Earth, because he's the son of that comic universe's answer to Superman (well, sorta). And indeed, he IS pretty invincible... {{spoiler|Until his dad beats him nearly to death.}} While he remains impossible to hurt for most, there're plenty of critters out there more than powerful enough to kill him.

* In ''[[Lucky Luke]]'', this is very much how Luke evolved in the series... An example of [[Tropes Are Not Bad]]: Morris and [[Rene Goscinny]] used this to their advantages, by making the villains (especially the Dalton Cousins) the driving force of many stories. The fun is not watching how Luke will win, but how the villains will lose (and, in the Dalton's case. how will Averell and Joe's interaction doom Joe's plans).

 

== [[Fan Fiction]] ==

* The heroes of any given chivalric romance. ''Amadis of Gaul'' and Sir Tristram are particular offenders. Somewhat inverted with ''Orlando furioso'', though, as Orlando eventually turns into [[The Incredible Hulk]] because [[Love Makes You Evil|Angelica does not love him]], and slaughters hundreds of innocents.

** Roland, from ''[[The Song of Roland (Literature)|The Song of Roland]]''. Although he has to die in order to be the [[Doomed Moral Victor]] (and because the actual Roland died in that battle), most his wounds are somewhat self-inflicted things, like when his temples explode because he's blowing so damn hard on that horn in order to warn Charlemagne's army. Also note that he keeps fighting even when his brains are running out his ears and onto his army.

** {{spoiler|Arguably, becoming this is an integral part of Leto's [[The Plan|plan]] to rid humanity of its desire for messianic figures and leaders, by becoming the most insanely powerful dictator ever. Being invincible means the resistance will have to push so much harder and will be forced to evolve far beyond what they would've otherwise achieved.}}

* Some book reviewer once commented that the protagonists of [[Robert A. Heinlein]]'s later novels never have problems, "only transient difficulties."

** John Carter, at least, is occasionally shown as having some doubts about his ability to get out of his latest scrap... though to return to the "invincible" them, often he's not actually worried about losing, he's just concerned that he may not be able to win fast enough. If it's less than 90% of the way through the book, he probably ''won't'' win fast enough.

* Sun Wukong of ''[[Journey to The West]]'' is a classic example. He's a [[Voluntary Shapeshifting|shapeshifting]], [[Made of Iron|immortal,]] [[Super Strength|super strong]], [[Super Speed|super agile]], [[My Kung Fu Is Stronger Than Yours|kung-fu hero.]] The gods had to put a [[Kid With the Leash|magic circlet on him just to so he wouldn't destroy everything.]] [[Adaptation Expansion|Later variations]] grew wary of this trope and began to tone him down a bit, but the original Monkey King was an unstoppable [[Invincible Hero]].

* The City Watch of the ''[[Discworld]]'' books has been threating to turn into a collective version of this for some time: the Watch is now so large, powerful and influential - many of its personnel are serious [[Badass|Badasses]] in their own right that very few plausible threats are much of a threat to it anymore. Noticably since ''Jingo'' most storylines have involved either actual wars or seperating Sam Vimes and the other main characters from their vast resources via distance (''Snuff'') or time (''Night Watch'') with the bulk of the Watch functioning as [[The Cavalry]].

** In the Discworld series as a whole, Vetinari's plans ''never'' fail. '''''Never'''''. If Vetinari is involved with the main character of the book in some way, their schemes will turn out successful (even if not in the way the main character expects).

* Sportacus from ''[[Lazy Town]]''. He has no character flaws, never fails at anything he tries and is hero-worshiped by everyone (except Robbie Rotten). The ''only'' thing that keeps him from being a [[Mary Sue]] is that he's as naive as everyone else in the show (except, again, Robbie) to the point where it becomes [[Adorkable]].

* Has come close to killing ''[[Survivor]]'' a few times. Often, one tribe comes into the merge so down on numbers that the members only have a shot at winning if the other tribe breaks. More recent seasons have added extra means of immunity to counteract this.

* Shawn Spencer in ''[[Psych]]'', others might one up him once or twice an episode but it's pretty much always Shawn (except maybe for [[A Day in The Limelight]] episodes) who makes the final break and solves the case. He's [[Smug Super|so damn smug]] about it, you find yourself wishing he'd lose in his own arena at least ''once''.

* Peter Petrelli and Hiro Nakamura in ''[[Heroes (TV)|Heroes]]''. Peter could gain any other superhero's ability simply by standing near them. Hiro could stop time, teleport, and travel through time, making him nearly impossible to defeat in battle. However, the problem with these heroes was that they were given too many opportunities to solve all the problems of the plot too quickly. This meant that they had to clutch an [[Idiot Ball]] in order to keep the plot moving, leading to many [[Kill Him Already]] moments among fans. Even the writers realized this and had both characters significantly weakened for a time.

== [[Newspaper Comics]] ==

* God-Man in the ''[[Tom the Dancing Bug]]'' strip by Ruben Bolling is this, taken to the ultimate conclusion. God-Man is omnipotent and omniscient and foils supervillain schemes by [[Reality Warper|casually rearranging the universe]]. The character is mostly used to criticizes organized religion rather than ridiculous comic-book tropes, but there is a large overlap.

 

 

 

== [[Web Comics]] ==

* In the dozen plus years ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'' has been around, there have only been a handful of characters who aren't horribly outclassed when facing [[Killer Rabbit|Bun-Bun]], and only three who have ever actually beaten him in one-on-one combat: {{spoiler|Aylee's [[Evil Twin|evil clone]], Blacksoul (who is actually Bun-Bun [[Never the Selves Shall Meet|from the future]]), and Oasis (who had to [[New Powers As the Plot Demands|suddenly unveil]] [[Playing With Fire|pyrokinetic abilities]] to pull that off).}} Of course, Bun-Bun only ''barely'' qualifies as a hero.

** An alternative view is that Bun-Bun works as a way to establish an enemy as 'top tier', and the rarity of beating him is so it keeps its credibility and doesn't suffer from [[The Worf Effect]].

** Actually, Bugs lost more often than other [[Looney Tunes]] protagonists like Tweety or Speedy.

*** Somewhat justified in that Tweety and Speedy were more or less fighting for their lives all the time, whereas the occasions where Bugs lost were either him being a [[Jerkass]] or a situation that he had no control over. Tweety and Speedy never fought minor battles, so they never had minor losses.

* [[Captain Planet and The Planeteers]]. The show becomes somewhat better since the Planeteers are the main stars, but the Cap himself often feels more like some sort of [[Deus Ex Machina]] who can just fix ''anything.'' Some episodes have him immobilized by pollution (or [[Adolf Hitler|hate]]), forcing the Planeteers to help him, but usually he's just called within the last five minutes to easily defeat the villain and magically repair whatever damage has been done.

** Made slightly more interesting whenever he is forced to fight his evil twin, and gets his ass handed to him.

** In one episode, Nancy was trapped in The Underworld and Shazzan couldn't just teleport her back. In another, the kids were trapped behind a forcefield that Shazzan couldn't affect. That was about it.

** [[Wonder Twin Powers|Chuck and Nancy need to put their rings together and say 'Shazzan' for him to appear]] so most of the conflicts involved them being separated or the rings being stolen.

** A bit rich [[Joker Immunity|coming from him]]

* Lampshaded -- or should it be Mirrored Disco Balled? -- in ''[[Batman the Brave And The Bold (Animation)|Batman the Brave And The Bold]]'' with the [[Ear Worm]] "Drives Us Bats", in which the Music Meister --and eventually the entire DC Universe -- expresses hilariously the frustrations of dealing with the omnipotent god-dammed Batman.

[[Category:Sturgeons Tropes]]

[[Category:Invincible Hero]]