Made of Indestructium

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
This Game Boy was recovered from a bombed out barracks during the Persian Gulf War, and is currently on display at Nintendo World in New York City. Why?

Because it still runs.

Obi-Wan: Terribly convenient how it survived an explosion that big...
R2-D2: It's the primary quest object of the entire campaign. Of course it's going to be indestructible.
GM: Stop metagaming.
R2-D2: Well how else could it possibly have survived?

GM: ...You fly over and grab it.

Are your world-domination tools not durable enough? Pesky do-gooders keep cracking your power crystals and popping your Soul Jar's freshness seal? Then try our latest in our fine line of world domination products. With our Indestructium alloy, your superweapon or Cosmic Keystone is completely safe from anything the forces of good can throw at it.[1]

This is where the MacGuffin, usually the object required for the Big Bad to succeed in his master plan to Take Over the World, cannot be destroyed by conventional means, if at all. Maybe it's made of Unobtainium? A Wizard Did It? Whatever the case, the point is that this object, usually some kind of Applied Phlebotinum that helps the villain achieve his goals, cannot be destroyed easily and may only be able to be destroyed in a specific manner that usually involves rare and obscure means. This can often be used to justify why the heroes are carrying around such a dangerous object instead of destroying it.

The logical opposite of Made of Explodium. A step above Nigh Invulnerable. See Reinforce Field for the effects that toughen up various objects that weren't durable enough on their own.

Compare Tonka Tough. See also Made of Iron.

Examples of Made of Indestructium include:

Anime & Manga

  • The Book of Darkness of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's may fit, considering it has regenerative powers and can come back again and again even if completely obliterated. Basically the only theoretical way to stop it forever is to freeze it.
  • In Fullmetal Alchemist, the antique armor that Al's soul was put into can somehow routinely completely deflect bullets without getting scratched and even the little tail ornament on his head could jam Buccaneer's Alligator arm which was starting to shred up Ed's entire automail arm. Although Winry whacking him with her wrench seems to do the trick, dramatically he was only ever damaged by attacks in some way based on alchemy.
  • The titular objects in Dragon Ball qualify for this. The four-star-ball once saved Goku's life when it blocked Tao Pai Pai's Dodonpa from piercing his heart.
    • The balls yes, but unfortunately not the dragon part.
    • Katchin/ Klangtite, the hardest metal in the universe. Snapped the Z Sword like a twig.
  • The Hogyoku in Bleach, which is why Urahara was forced to seal it in Rukia's soul instead of destroying it.
  • In One Piece, the only reason the Government Conspiracy haven't completely erased all traces of the "Void Century" already is that the history is recorded on things called Poneglyphs, which are indestructible.
  • In Lupin III, Goemon's sword was forged by a secret process and is essentially indestructible (it actually broke in The Secret Of Twilight Gemini with no comment, but that was probably Did Not Do the Research on the writer's part and can be safely ignored).
  • Gundams are usually Made of Indestructium for one reason or another, but exactly how invulnerable they are depends on the series. Compare Gundam Wing, in which a grand total of two Gundams get destroyed involuntarily (the rest self-destruct), to Mobile Suit Gundam 00, which sees the destruction of more than a dozen Gundams in battle.
  • In Digimon, Mega-level Digimon often have armor or weapons made of something called Chrome Digizoid. It's rare to see it damaged by something other than a weapon made from the same stuff, though it can be done.
  • Mazinger Z is an early Anime example. The Humongous Mecha titular is made with Alloy Z, an alloy made of Japanium, a rare metal can be found only in Japan. Dr. Kabuto discovered the metal and built Mazinger Z with it, thinking Mazinger would become indestructible. Throughout the series, the mecha got hit by giant monsters, missiles, bombs, got burned and electrocuted, got dumped in lava and doused in acid... and even though it got damaged every so often, the Alloy Z endured all of that until the last chapter, and kept Kouji alive. Several times Dr. Hell and his dragons would try and get their hands on a sample of Alloy Z to build his Robeasts with it because Mazinger's armor was too tough to break it, shatter it or dissolve it easily. The concept of chogokin ("Super Alloy") became so pervasive and widespread all Super Robots followed Mazinger were made of chogokin, and it baptised one whole toy line.
    • Great Mazinger was also made of Japanium, but the alloy it was made with was even sturdier.
    • On the other hand, UFO Robo Grendizer was made with Gren, an incredibly tough metal. Nevertheless, it could not be found on Earth, so when Grendizer got damadeg, he was reapired with Alloy z.
    • Finally, Mazinkaiser took that concept and RAN WITH IT. Nothing seems being capable to even scratch it. This video should show it convincingly: [1]


Comic Books

  • Adamantium functions as this in the Marvel 'verse.
    • Possibly best known as the substance that coats Wolverine's bones, making them nigh-unbreakable.
    • The Marvel Universe also has Vibranium, which is functionally indestructible. There's also Carbonadium, a cheaper form of adamantium which is functionally indestructible as well. In terms of true and utter indestructibility, even adamantium is vulnerable.
    • Captain America (comics)'s shield, The Mighty Thor's hammer and Silver Surfer's Power Cosmic enhanced board are indestructible in most stories.[2] The shield is also an example of Unobtainium. It's made of a vibranium-iron alloy with a mystery catalyst that no one can identify. The guy running the experiment fell asleep when it was added and couldn't duplicate the results.
      • In fact it was attempts at duplicating this process that led to the creation of the slightly less indestructible adamantium
      • In the Fear Itself story arc, Cap's shield finally meets its match and gets torn in half by the big bad. Flash forward to the end where Ironman reforged it - with Uru (the metal Thor's hammer is made of.) It's probably even MORE indestructible now.
    • Adamantium serves a similar role in the Ultimate universe as well. It's not entirely indestructible there either; the Hulk was able to break an adamantium needle once.
    • In X-Men: Wolverine's rage, Lady Deathstrike tries building a weapon that will melt adamantium.
    • Vibranium (or certain variants) actually acts as anti-Indestructium. Due to its Vibroweapon nature it can cut through other metals like butter, even adamantium.
      • Attempts to artificially replicate vibranium in labs have given birth to Antarctic Vibranium whose main characteristic is to melt any metal in the near vicinity.
  • Inertron serves this role in the Legion of Super-Heroes comics.
  • Sonic the Comic had Metagal, an alloy Dr. Robotnik commissioned for his badniks. The first of these resisted its brainwashing and promptly joined the fight against him, while the second attempted to seize power for itself. The third (and final) version was actually a relative success.
    • Metagal was only shown to be damaged three times: once by a combination of laser fire to weaken it and an attack by Sonic, once by a corrosive acid, and once by Freeze Ray to make it brittle.
  • Back in the Silver Age of comics, anything from Krypton was effectively made of indestructium while on Earth.
  • In Pre Crisis DC Comics at least, the most indestructible metal (aside from the 30th century's inertron) was probably either Supermanium (a metal created by Superman that he made the door to his Fortress of Solitude out of) or Amazonium (the metal Wonder Woman's bracelets were made from).
  • Interesting justification in the French comics Papyrus. Pharaoh's soldiers encounter enemies who have swords made of indestructium. They capture the princess, but the soldiers manage to take an indestructium dagger. The author explains it in footnote: that's just iron, which may as well be indestructium against the Egyptian bronze swords!
    • This is a serious case of Did Not Do the Research, though. The reason people stopped using bronze for weapons and switched to iron was that the prices of tin increased substantially due to decreased supply. Iron is not a very good material for weapons, so in the Bronze Age, bronze weapons were superior to iron weapons. Yes, iron was a cheap substitute for bronze once people figured out how to forge iron weapons. This changed only after people learned how to fiddle with carbon content in iron (i.e. when they started making and perfecting steel).


Live-Action TV

  • The original Star Trek series had "The Doomsday Machine", which was made of solid neutronium and could only be destroyed by blowing up a starship inside it. However, even this rather extreme method only managed to disable it by damaging the sensitive equipment inside. The outside was entirely unscathed.
    • The Borg are sometimes presented as this (for example, in the first episode of Deep Space Nine, when Federation weapons don't even scratch the Borg cube) when they have adapted to your weapons.
  • The craft from Quatermass and The Pit.
  • The Stargates are very nearly indestructible (excluding the ones in Stargate Universe, anyways), especially when active. They've survived direct hits from meteors, swallowed up by lava, nuclear explosions, dropped into suns (although that one had an energy shield to bolster it)... often, not only do they survive these ordeals, but they keep functioning perfectly. That's not to say they never get destroyed; the Earth military eventually does make a bomb capable of it: the Mark IX "Gatebuster" Naquadriah-enhanced nuke. Stated at one point to have a blast radius of well over 1,000 km. The Gatebuster's blast is also enhanced by the Stargate itself.
  • Many robots of all kinds (though usually the humanoid, kill-everyone variant) can be considered part of this. Here it's usually not the robot itself that is indestructible, but the electronics inside. Cut off its head, punch a hole in its stomach, it will just keep going for you as if nothing happened. Guess all the important parts are in the toes.


Literature

  • The Lord of the Rings: The One Ring qualifies as this since Gandalf confirms that nothing that Middle-earth possesses can even damage it. He gets rather specific as to the methods that could be attempted and specifically mentions that not even Dragonfire (which had destroyed three of the Seven Rings of Power given to the Dwarves), from the most powerful Dragon no less, would've been able to so much as singe it. In the end the only way to destroy it is to throw it into Mt. Doom, where it was made.
    • Also, the walls of Orthanc and Minas Tirith are invulnerable to all known weapons and projectiles.
    • Mithril isn't indestructible, but it's close.
  • In Larry Niven's Known Space stories, the hulls of General Products ships were advertised to be invulnerable to harm. In one story it was revealed that they could be destroyed by contact with Antimatter; they can also be destroyed by turning off the effect that's holding the hull together. However, anything enclosed in a stasis field reflects all forms of energy and is completely indestructible—except perhaps by being dropped into a black hole.
  • In the Perry Rhodan universe the Molkex fall into this. The substance is created by chaosworm and is linked to an alternate universe. All standard energy weapon and nuclear bomb can't destroy it.
  • Densecris and carbonex serve as this in Steve Perry's Matador series. It's mentioned that a few centimeters of densecris are enough to protect from a direct missile hit, and that a bunker with carbonex plating is 'going to take a long time to dig through'.
  • Nara is treated this way in the Myst franchise: made from fusion-compounded rock, the D'ni used Nara when it absolutely, positively had to last the ages. Which led to it suffering from a rare architectural version of The Worf Effect when it was shown not to be earthquake-resistant; furthermore, Myst IV: Revelation demonstrated that it can be shattered with the right sound frequencies. Deletheni, a lighter material used in the hazard suits employed by the Guild of Maintainers, is similarly nigh-indestructible but less so; this does not stop such a hazard suit from protecting its wearer from a supernova.
  • Jedi Academy Trilogy: whatever the Sun Crusher is made of, it counts. It can take out a capital ship by flying through it and remain completely unharmed; similarly, it's still in perfect condition after sitting in the heart of a gas giant. Oh, and it's a superweapon the size of a starfighter. If Spaceship Sue was a trope, the Sun Crusher would be the picture at the top. The Sun Crusher does possess two weaknesses. Its conventional weapons are externally mounted, in its first battle the Imperial forces they were fighting just blasted the crusher until all its cannons were slag, cue the ramming.
  • In Deltora Quest, the gems of the Belt of Deltora can not be destroyed. Supposedly, the belt can not be destroyed either as long as the heir to the throne of Deltora lives, although this is entirely unsubstantiated in the book The Belt of Deltora, as Lief realises when he believes the royal line may be dead after all.
  • In Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series, cuendillar is "an indestructible substance created during the Age of Legends. Any known force used in an attempt to break it is absorbed, making it stronger." However, this doesn't stop the Dark One's seals from breaking
  • In Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, Goblin metal is clearly stated as being Indestructium. And if you imbue it with poison, a sword made of this is poisoned forever.
    • It's not specifically stated as being indestructible, but it does reject harmful things (i.e., doesn't get dusty, doesn't rust), and imbues things that strengthen it (such as the aforementioned poison). But there's no actual proof that the metal can't be destroyed.
  • Critically subverted in the fourth-generation Tom Swift novel Mind Games, where Tom surprises everyone during the Galaxy Masters game by destroying one of the two Memory Cubes, locking Dedstorm out of victory while still allowing the heroes to accomplish their goal. The game's designer himself notes that he's effectively broken the game. It's not the last time he does so.
  • The character Monkey, from Journey to the West, is a living being Made of Indestructium. It's probable that the fact his mother was a mountain impregnated by the cosmic forces of the universe made him tough to begin with (he is described repeatedly as a "stone monkey"), but after he got into Heaven, he gorged himself on both Peaches of Immortality, Wine of Heaven and Elixir of Long Life. And even before he got to Heaven, he had caused trouble by beating up all of the gods and demons of the Underworld and crossing his name out of the Register of the Dead, meaning that his soul couldn't pass on to the afterlife if he died anyway. And then, after he ate all that immortality-granting foodstuff, he was finally captured and spent 49 days being cooked inside Lao Tzu's crucible, which should have been enough to kill even another god, but which only cooked him even harder then before... and he was thrown in the crucible in the first place because even the strongest god in Heaven couldn't scratch him with his sharpest sword!
  • Subverted in the Wing Commander novel Fleet Action. The Kilrathi launch a fleet of heavily armored super-carriers, designed to be able to fight their way deep into Confederation space despite the best efforts of a (recently downsized) Confederation Navy. The solution? Space Marines board the carriers, and plant nuclear warheads as deep inside the ships as they can fight their way to. The very same armor that made the carriers immune to outside attack doom them as they prove equally capable at concentrating the destructive force of anything set off inside of them.
  • The Two-Faced Ring in Septimus Heap will make its wearer indestructible. Subverted with the Ring itself, as it is targeted for destruction at the end of Darke.
  • Keill Randor, protagonist of the Last Legionary, starts out with his bones full of deadly radiation that's slowly killing him. The Overseers replace his entire skeleton with an unbreakable organic alloy.


Tabletop Games

  • Up until Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2, artifacts and relics surpass normal mortal magic and could only be destroyed by one of a few very specific methods—much like the One Ring from The Lord of the Rings.
  • Magic: The Gathering features items made of Darksteel, ranging from ingots to giant robots. They are indestructible—as in, the cards literally say, "This is indestructible." [3]
  • Warhammer 40,000 features the ever-bemoaned Necron Monolith, made of a 'living metal' that can physically alter its shape. It was already immune to the tank-killing effects of heat based weapons (melta), targeting weapons (lance), rending weapons, and dedicated tank-hunting specialists, but thanks to a 5th edition rules change and a quirky Rules-as-Written interpretation, it physically cannot be destroyed by glancing hits.
    • The Monolith can be destroyed provided you have a Strength 9 or higher weapon, but that's the only way to destroy it. However, a Strength 9 or 10 (10 is about as high as you can get in a normal game) weapon simply means you have a chance at destroying it. Actually completing the feat means you need 2 consecutive 5's or 6's, not to mention hitting the damn thing first. For most armies, it's just easier to destroy enough necrons to force a Phase Out.
  • The Demon Hunter's Tassels from GURPS: Dungeon Fantasy are an amusingly mundane version of this. Cutting the threads is impossible, even a God must settle for untying them from whatever they are fixed to.
  • One Paranoia module includes a Running Gag with a bunch of Commie propaganda pamphlets that turn out to be this. At one point, they get superglued to the PCs!

Toys


Video Games

  • Due to technical and resource limitations, just about everything in videogames tends to be this. Even though a Rocket Launcher is one of the Standard FPS Guns, don't expect to be able to blow out a wall, or dent the ground, or even destroy a car depending on the game, especially prevalent in Linear Games. Although, there are a few aversions.
  • The 'Far Jumper' hyperdrive in Homeworld—even if a ship using it is completely destroyed, in the game it always emerges unscathed. Even a self-destruct with enough power to destroy nearby capital ships can't dent it.
  • The Web Game IndestructoTank features a tank that is made out of a material called indestructanium. Ironically, once the fuel runs out, it's more like Explodium.
  • Touhou Soccer has this soccer ball. What happens in this video is actually a pretty minor punishment compared to some others... Compared to, say... this.
    • It's worth mentioning that Ran's shot does bisect it, but it reforms almost instantly.
  • In Razing Storm, the shield you use to Take Cover withstands not only relatively mundane regular shots, missiles, lasers and plasma, but also ramming from Mini-Mecha or Humongous Mecha, falling building debris and a Wave Motion Gun.
  • The briefcase from Team Fortress 2. While hails of gunfire, flames, explosions and everything else goes on around it, the flag sits exactly where it was left, calmly rotating 6 inches above the surface of the floor. Actually, most anything that isn't directly used by the classes themselves seems to be effectively indestructible.
  • The Shinra building in the Final Fantasy VII Compilation appears to fit the trope. This is what it looks like after Diamond Weapon, Meteor, the Lifestream, Sephiroth, Cloud, Chaos and Omega all threw everything they had at it.
  • In Dwarf Fortress, artifact items are apparently invulnerable to everything including being thrown down a volcano (they just sit around at the bottom). Furthermore, artifacts made of wood CAN catch on fire, but they take no damage from it and just keep burning forever.
    • Constructions, no matter the material. All constructions can be dismantled by hand or destroyed by fall if they don't have a support. A cave-in or water freezing that happens on the construction's tile destroys it - except wall, as it prevents everything from entering its tile in the first place. Other than this, nothing affects constructions. Building Destroyer creatures don't break them. A natural ice wall will melt in warm weather or from magma flowing nearby, but if you dig that ice out and build of ice bricks a wall or ramp, it will not melt even in contact with magma. Wood and soap will not burn away, either.
  • In Nethack, "artifact" items are the only things that can be put in a player's inventory that can't be destroyed. Not all of them, though. The Amulet of Yendor, in particular, is the only item that cannot even be removed from the game by transference into the higher planes.
  • Mass Relays in Mass Effect are composed of an unknown yet incredible resilient material, are equipped with self cleaning and maintenance cycles and internal power generation, and can emit powerful mass effect stasis fields in response to threats, preserving the relay's structural integrity at a quantum level and preventing even state-of-the-art laser drilling from extracting pieces for analysis. (It also helps that Mass Relays, which are natural choke points, are extensively guarded and patrolled, and Council species very heavily frown on anyone interfering with them.) It's revealed during the Arrival mission in Mass Effect 2 that Relays can be destroyed, although it requires a colossal force to do so.
  • The Scrin Threshold Towers in the Command & Conquer verse are made of a Tiberium composite material whose exact contents are never revealed. While incomplete, blasting a Threshold once with an ion cannon will topple it but once it finishes construction, the material partially phases out of reality and renders the whole tower invulnerable to everything up to and including nuclear detonations, cometary impacts and low-yield stellar events.
  • In Assassin's Creed and its sequels, the pieces of eden are said to be indestructable (admittedly this was determined in the 12th and 17th centuries). The conspiracy files of subject 16 in AC2 claim that Nikola Tesla did manage to destroy one... and a sizable chunk of the surrounding landscape.
  • Professor E. Gadd notes that his Poltergust 3000 is almost indestructible in Luigi's Mansion
  • Certain buildings in the Fallout universe, considering what they had to have survived. During the development of Fallout 3, Bethesda ran simulations to see what buildings in the D.C. area would survive a nuclear holocaust in Real Life. The answer: none of them. So they fudged it.
  • Bedrock in Minecraft is immune to explosions of every size and cannot be mined with any tool. Only in Creative mode can it be removed in any way. Obsidian, too, is immune to explosions and can only be removed with a diamond pick.
  • Porky's Absolutely Safe Capsule in Mother 3 is just that, Absolutely Safe. Nothing the main characters do can damage it, and the battle is declared over after two turns. And additionally, not even Porky himself can do anything to the capsule, or even exit it for that matter. In other words, he's stuck in it forever.
  • Played for laughs in Pokémon Black and White. Bianca accidentally destroys everything in your bedroom the first time you battle her. Your Nintendo Wii isn't even scratched.


Webcomics

  • Abraham from El Goonish Shive claims this is why he hasn't just destroyed the Dewitchery Diamond. Though apparently he never considered using a volcano. Also, it was not really a diamond. When it finally was destroyed (by overloading), it turned out to be more or less a crystal of pure magic solidified around something palm-sized that seems to be a dragon scale, and nothing but the latter remained — scattered fragments lost stability and evaporated in seconds.
  • Lampshaded in this Darths and Droids.
  • Girl Genius has some impressive stuff, thanks to all the Mad Science, but what Storm King's crown was made of? His armor survived everything that was done to him until a hit with fun-sized death ray, but the crown was through all this, and remained intact after most of his armor was melted off his smoking skeleton.
    • Then there's the Queen's Henge, which Albia have built soon upon her "second awakening" many millennia ago, plus all the strange paraphernalia behind it, but it probably was maintained — and not fired upon at all.

Web Originals

  • In the SCP Foundation, a good portion of the objects are indestructable. To the point where the rules for submissions specifically point this out as a Dead Horse Trope.
    • The specific reasons here are two, one meta and one in-universe. The Foundation, in-universe, does not make it its mission to destroy SCPs. (That C? It stands for "Contain", as in "Secure, Contain, Protect". SCPs are Secured and Contained to Protect...well, everyone in the world.) You want to try the Global Occult Coalition for that. (There are exceptions, such as SCP-682, but 682 is...a special case.) The meta reason is that Decomissions do not happen anymore - bad SCPs don't get killed off in flashy ways, the article is simply removed if it falls under a certain rating (-8, usually), therefore reasonless indestructibility is pointless, because nothing can save an SCP from the site mods.
  • Magmatter from Orion's Arm is effectively impossible to damage. Not only does it have an incredibly high a binding energy but normal matter will pass right through it.
  • This trope is brought up in Freeman's Mind. Gordon goes ballistic (no pun intended) when he realizes the glass in all the doors is bulletproof for no apparent reason. He also comments on the seemingly random mixing of crowbar-proof and non-crowbar-proof grates. Oddly enough, he doesn't seem to consider it odd that the rocket test-fire blows up the crates of explosives but the two grenades that were sitting on top of them are still in one piece.


Western Animation

  • Averted in Futurama: The Beast With a Billion Backs, in which Farnsworth and Wernstrom both brag about their "indestructible" inventions: diamondium and diamondillium. Both are useless against Yivo. Played straight in that Yivo is made of electro-matter, which is impervious to anything from our universe.


Real Life

  • Glock firearms standard test: build the prototype, drop it (unloaded) 3 stories, pick up gun, load, fire. If it fails to fire, redesign.
  • AK-47
    • In fact all its good points are due to one aspect - its simplicity. Because it's simple, it's easy to take apart and clean (if you ever need to anyways), it has large tolerances meaning you could hide one in a mud pile and come back for it 40 years later and it would still be usable.
      • Caveat: While the AK-47 is practically impossible to destroy with lack of maintenance, due to the stamped metal construction used through most of its production run its not quite as physically sturdy as some other weapons. You can run over the average M-16 with a tank and the receiver will still function even if the barrel and stock need replacing; the same treatment given to the average AK-47 will turn it into scrap metal.
    • On a similar note, the Russian counterpart of the American M4 Sherman, the T-34 tank. One was used by fleeing Nazis and driven into an Estonian bog, then abandoned. Discovered decades later and found with no corrosion, no leaks, and with a little bit of work (and mopping up the inside) it started. Russia takes this trope seriously.
  • The classic Zippo lighter's basic design hasn't changed in almost eighty years, and it hasn't had to. Sure, torch-style butane lighters may look nifty, but leave one of those babies in your jacket and spin it through the wash or bounce it off a concrete floor and you'll have a nifty-looking paperweight. Zippo? Still works like new. The only thing the company won't guarantee is the finish, but they're so confident in the lighter's construction that everything else is covered by a perpetual warranty, regardless of how many owners its had or what caused the damage.
  • There is a reason why the Tonka Tough trope is named after the Tonka Mighty Dumptruck. They once had an elephant step on one, and the truck held the elephant's foot just fine, thanks.
  • It's become a Dead Horse Trope joke that if airliners were made out of the same thing flight recorders are made out of, they'd survive crashes. Of course this isn't really true, but people still think of 'Black Boxes' as being impossible to destroy. They're just steel: their strength is from their compact design more than material, and they're tucked away at the back where they're unlikely to take the brunt of a crash.
  • Design requirements for nuclear waste containers are impressive. They must survive a derailed train running into them and many other extreme scenarios. Good thing too, given this is cancer in a box.[4]
    • Flasks designed to carry used nuclear fuel for reprocessing are most definitely made of indestructium.
    • Western nuclear reactors are clearly intended to be as close to this trope as humanly possible. For example, they are designed to be able to survive someone flying an airliner into them.
  • Dave Barry believes that modern cars should be made out of the same material as Fisher-Price cars, as they are apparently unaffected by the destructive behavior of a four-year-old.
  • Nintendo's video game systems, particularly the Game Boy. There are a lot stories of them surviving being thrown from apartment windows, run over by cars, flushed in toilets, and—in one famous case—getting hit by a military air strike, as seen through the (still functional) Game Boy in the image.. They must be made from Nintendium.
    • Nintendo's early testing included throwing Game Boys from a three story building.
    • Nintendo of Japan finally stopped repairing the Famicom after 20 years. In other words, they expected the console to last 20 years.
    • The Nintendo GameCube, that goofy purple lunchbox. The top of the disk case is a weak point, but with the open button taped down the system will survive most anything.
    • The Game Boy Advance SP has an equally strong reputation for being impossible to destroy, the only weak point being the hinges. Nintendo was apparently using a prime lode of Nintendium for that generation.
    • According to legend, one player lit his Game Cube on fire in a fit of rage. Mario Kart kept going for five minutes.
    • X-Play once took this claim to task by attempting to destroy a PlayStation 2, an Xbox, and a GameCube. They performed three destructive stunts: dropping a weight on each system, hitting each console with a sledgehammer, and dropping each system from a height. After each stunt, the systems were tested to see if they still worked. The winner—as in, the only one to still boot up properly after all three tests? Take a guess.
      • The show references this further when it mentioned the next Death Star will be made of the hardest material known to man: used Gameboy Advances.
    • On an episode of Mind of Mencia, a midget was smashing old electronics with a sledgehammer. Everything was smashed to bits in one go, save for a Nintendo 64, which took 3 hits before the casing began to dent.
    • The Nintendo 64 once took a shotgun blast at point-blank range. There's a big gap in the casing but it works just fine.
    • This is referenced in Pokémon Black and White, when the player character's room gets trashed by holding a battle in it but the Wii is specifically noted as not being damaged.
    • Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime explains - in a manner that suggests that he can't decide if he's Billy Mays or the Power Thirst announcer - the hard work and dedication that goes into making Nintendo products so durable in this video.
    • The Nintendo DS is no exception to this rule either, it can be stomped, dropped, washed, and come out fine. The DS Lite does have a weakness, however: the joint just below the R button can weaken and snap very easily, leaving a broken R button (which most games use as a major button) or a free swinging top screen. Then, it only takes one clumsy drop just right for the screen to snap out of the right side and the wires on the left to be strained enough to render the top screen almost unusable.
  • Nerf Brand foam is impervious to nearly all blunt attacks, and can't even be torn apart by hand, so it's really only vulnerable to some sort of cutting technique.
  • For most of human history, diamond has been effectively indestructible under the cutting tools available. No wonder that one of its oldest names, adamant, is the root for the names of some of fiction's most indestructible metals. On the other hand, that's a measure of its hardness, or the difficulty of scratching it. It's much easier to destroy through blunt impact, being fairly brittle.
  • The Top Gear crew tested the supposed indestructible qualities of the Toyota Hilux, as seen here. It lived up to the hype.
  • Panasonic's Toughbook laptops have a indestructium casing (aka “magnesium alloy”) and also make for good bulletproofing.
  • A company called Pelican makes padded and very sturdy containers for various uses. One of their ads tells how a US Special Forces team in Iraq blew up a damaged helicopter to keep its contents from falling into enemy hands. They used two Maverick missiles, which can be tank-killers. A few days later, the team went back to the helicopter and found their Pelican-made case intact with only minor burns and a broken latch. Its contents (lots of sensitive electronics and a block of C-4 explosive) were unharmed. The ad sums up: "Frankly, we don't want to know what it would take." Also, Pelican's slogan is apparently, "You break it, we replace it...forever."
  • Ozzy Osbourne is almost perfectly healthy nowadays (as well as Immune to Drugs) because of a mutation in his genes that makes them this trope.
  • There seems to be a general consensus amongst guitarists that most Fender instruments and amplifiers will be around after the nuclear holocaust. From Keith Richards using one to defend Mick Jagger (Mind you both these men are probably also made of Indestructium.), To Pete Townshend, a man who's career has revolved around smashing guitars, not being able to consistently destroy them. How did the company founder go about showing how reliable his first guitar was in the 50's? He went to a trade show, placed it across two chairs, and proceeded to jump on a piece of wood about an inch and a half wide multiple times, repeatedly putting the full weight of a grown man on that tiny part. Then he picked it up, and it was in-tune. Hell, most of them even today have a completely user-dismantleable design so in the off chance you toss it in a volcano and something does break, it's an easy fix.
  • Apple achieved this with the iPod Touch. People have even shot them at point blank, and the screen worked everywhere except for the bullet hole. And maybe even there.
  • Nokia phones are notoriously tough to break, and have in fact done significant damage to anything they're thrown at without showing much more than a few scratches. They have achieved meme status as a result.
  • Original CorningWare dishes. Made from a glass-ceramic compound called "Pyroceram" derived from materials originally developed for the United States ballistic missile program, pretty much nothing in a housewife's (or professional chef's) kitchen could damage it. It was so indestructible that there was virtually no market for replacement pieces; once you had a complete set of CorningWare, you'd always have a complete set of CorningWare—unless you gave or threw it away. The result? By the 1990s, everyone who wanted CorningWare had CorningWare, and Corning ran out of people to sell it to. So they stopped making it and sold the brand names to an outfit that started selling inferior (which is to say, perfectly breakable) dishware under them. However, devotees of the True CorningWare need not despair—in 2009 Corning started making pyroceram dishware again for the outfit with the trademarks. Unfortunately for American and European fans of indestructible dishes, it's only available in the Asia-Pacific market.
  1. Warning: warranty void if dropped in a volcano, sun or black hole.
  2. The exception here is The Molecule Man who has absolute control over chemical bonds. The Beyonder and Thor when Odinforce empowered are also exceptions.
  3. This does not however, prevent them from being Exiled from the game, rendered incapable of doing anything, sacrificed, or killed by being reduced to 0 toughness via Wither or other weakening effects. Magic gives you a wide range of alternatives.
  4. However, they may not survive extremely high temperature fires. Let's hope they are wrong about this. One thing they can't survive is time. The best designs might last 10,000 years if kept in a perfect environment, but that isn't even half way through the first half-life of most of the forms of waste they hold