Iron Butt Monkey/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A Butt Monkey immune to harm.

  • Straight: Bob gets electrocuted, but he is unharmed.
  • Exaggerated: Bob then gets hit by a rocket launcher and is just very singed.
  • Downplayed: Bob is trampled by a Thundering Herd, but doesn't get as much as a broken bone.
  • Justified: It's Bob's Nigh Invulnerability that lets him take the damage.
    • Bob has an incredibly high Healing Factor, and thus doesn't shy away from activities or places that could harm him.
  • Inverted: Looks unharmed, but is really good at hiding pain
  • Subverted: After looking fine from being electrocuted, he falls over dead.
  • Double Subverted: but is mysteriously revived in the next episode.
  • Parodied: Bob's is actually moonlighting as a stunt double, as practice to become a real actor (it turns out he can quote Shakespeare while dodging pianos).
  • Deconstructed: If Bob is a child, people will wonder how he gets such frequent injuries, and due to the existence of Abusive Parents, they may jump to the wrong conclusions.
  • Reconstructed: Perhaps Bob is immune to every form of attack, except for one Weaksauce Weakness.
  • Zig Zagged: Bob seems at first to do this all the time. But actually, it depends on his mood. If he's in a crummy one, just touching him wrong will knock him out cold. The rules are inconsistent about this though.
  • Averted: Bob is not immune to harm.
  • Enforced: The show is a Sadist Show.
  • Lampshaded: "Bob, it seems like you get up from just about anything."
  • Invoked: Bob thinks he'd be able to bounce back, so he insists on entering the trapped room first to disarm things.
    • Exploited: It works, and he comes back more or less intact, to fetch his friends.
  • Defied: It seems like Bob is going to yet again have something horrendous happen to him, but instead, it's a romance scene.
  • Untwisted: The audience expects Bob to not survive, because it's a realistic style movie. But for some reason, it's played this way without explanation.
  • Discussed: "Normally, guys named Bob are subject to getting back on their feet after stuff like that, but you couldn't, could you Bob?"
  • Conversed: "I've always seen these shows where this happens to people, and they get back up."
  • Played For Laughs: Bob is continuously subjected to a series of Amusing Injuries, all without taking harm or complaining.
  • Played For Drama: Iron Woobie

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