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Made of Iron: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:zoroblood.jpg|link=One Piece|
{{quote|''"It'll take more than being tied to a lit keg of explosives and tossed into a pit of acid filled with mutant, acid-resistant flying piranhas equipped with flamethrowers and battle axes while venomous, mechanical, missile-launching [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking|Morris dancers]] armed with liquid hydrogen harpoon guns are overhead; riding giant rabid killer bees with side-mounted death rays to kill Othar Tryggvassen!"''|'''[http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date{{=}}20090617 Othar Tryggvassen, GENTLEMAN ADVENTURER!]''', ''[[Girl Genius]]''}}
Simply put, damage is done to characters that really, really should hurt them but is easily shaken off. Nobody ever breaks a rib or other bones unless [[Chekhov's Gun|that specific broken bone becomes important later on]]. Note, this isn't [[Super Toughness]] or [[Nigh Invulnerability]], where the character actually ''is'' supernaturally protected from harm.
By extension, blunt damage, [[Hard Head|concussions]], and other side effects of "non-lethal" fights or a [[Tap on the Head]] never have unintended fatal
This trope also allows our hero to take a bullet in some critical area (chest, shoulder, etc) and [[Just a Flesh Wound|continue to fight as though nothing had happened]], even if they should be [[Overdrawn At the Blood Bank]]. It also makes you wonder why, for all the supposed beatings they have received themselves over the course of a show, the hero/heroine never suffers any long-term scarring or lasting physical injury. See [[Hollywood Healing]] and [[Only a Flesh Wound]].
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Modern special effects are somewhat to blame for this, as they make it all look more dramatic. This sometimes approaches cartoon-esque extremes, such as smashing through concrete or walls. Being [[Punched Across the Room]], for example, doesn't do as much as you might think.
Between them, Made of Iron and [[Hollywood Healing]] cover the two main varieties of action
One especially tenacious example is the lack of punch drunkenness, with Nancy Drew and Jimmy Olsen getting knocked out several times in each of any of hundreds of adventures with no long-term brain damage to show for it. Indeed, unrealistic lack of damage from head injuries is the widely prevalent subtrope [[Hard Head]].
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Punch-drunk boxers are the classic real-life example of what happens to someone who takes repeated pummeling damage in many fights year after year. However, the American National Football League presents a better sampling. To survive more than a couple of seasons in the league is a guarantee of a lifetime of painful, lingering damage to battered joints, bones, and connective tissues. That life is also going to be about ten years shorter than that of the average adult American. The heart and body organs build up scar tissue likely to fail when the athlete is in his fifties and sixties. This is known as [[Dented Iron]].
The polar opposite of this is [[Made of Plasticine]]. When the character doesn't just shrug off extreme damage but doesn't sustain any damage at all is [[Made of Diamond]], a subset of [[Nigh Invulnerability]]. Characters who are Made of Iron, if they die at all, often die [[Rasputinian Death
A character who is Made of Iron isn't necessarily literally [[Chrome Champion|made]] of [[Animated Armor|iron]].
If a person has this kind of durability as a superpower, it's [[Super Toughness]]. See also, [[Normally I Would Be Dead Now]].
{{examples}}▼
▲{{examples}}
== [[Anime]]
* Russia from ''[[Axis Powers Hetalia]]''. England who is greatly annoyed with America {{spoiler|decides to take a Busby's Chair (a chair cursed to give whoever sits in it a quick and painful death which has also sent at least 60 men to death) and put it so that America may sit in it and die, however Russia shows up and accidentally sits in the chair, however instead of dying the spell rebounds off Russia and the chair is broken with a disappointed England taping it back together. It's implied that Russia being TOO evil for the chair had something to do with it}}
** The Nations in general can be described as this trope, though Sealand in particular takes the cake for being ''literally''
* ''[[Hellsing]]''
** Towards the end of the manga, Integra gets {{spoiler|''shot in the eye'', nearly point blank}}. She barely even falters and moves forward to finish her task. She also got shot in the shoulder when she was twelve and it barely seemed to bother her. She was even able to pick up a gun and shoot it.
** [[Badass Normal|Pip]] [[Good
* ''[[Mazinger Z]]'': [[Butt Monkey]] and [[Lethal Joke Character]] Boss had to be to endure the punishment he received and come out of alive.
** ''[[Great Mazinger]]'': [[The Hero]] Tetsuya Tsurugi, withstood an incredible punishment throughout the series, being wounded and harmed constantly, and still pushing himself beyond his limits and forcing himself to battle even if the pain was tearing him apart. Several times his adoptive father -[[The Professor]] Kenzo Kabuto- had to command him to go back to the [[Home Base]]. In the first episode one of the [[Bridge Bunnies]] marvel at his physical endurance, and Kenzo states it is his strong and sturdy body what lets him pilot Great Mazinger.
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* Subverted with Kazuma of ''[[S-Cry-ed]]'': his right side is unusable outside of battle, and his glove is always on just to hide the scarring from using his Alter.
* ''[[Trigun]]''
** Vash the Stampede always shoots only to cause [[Only a Flesh Wound|flesh wounds]]. The trope was subverted at one point, however, when he inflicted just such a wound... and then panicked and rushed to stop the
** Not to mention Vash himself has taken ungodly amounts of damage, presumably due to his reluctance to kill aggressors. In two separate episodes, we are given a look at Vash's upper body, and he is patchwork of scars and metal.
* Almost every character in ''[[Chaosic Rune]]'' can count. Each character fights with creatures that give them sympathy damage of equal magnitude whenever harmed. Since the battles between the creatures usually involve dismemberment, crushing, eating, and acid attacks, most fights end with the characters covered in the most terrifying wounds ever seen in a manga. Since the winner of the battle gets fully healed afterward, the damage usually doesn't stick, though they still have to feel ''all of the pain every time it happens''. The loser usually leaves a horrifying corpse, if they leave one at all. Oddly enough, crosses over with [[Made of Plasticine]].
* Spike Spiegel from ''[[Cowboy Bebop]]''. Over the course of the series, he's taken considerable amounts of pain, among other things he was thrown out of the tower window of an old-style cathedral after a gutshot and then stabbed through the shoulder with a sword. In fact, this, coupled with the demonstrated and implied effectiveness of futuristic medicine in the series, is one of the reasons why some fans believe {{spoiler|he survived the final episode}}.
* Most of the cast of ''[[Ranma ½
** Ranma Saotome, specifically, hovers somewhere on the border between this and [[Nigh Invulnerable]]. He has survived massive [[Kamehame Hadoken]] [[Ki Attacks]], falls from fantastic heights, being blown up, and enough general physical abuse to turn a battleship into worthless scrap metal, and always manages to shrug it off and keep on
** When he first enters the series, Ryôga doesn't really seem to be much tougher then Ranma (though he does evidently have more stamina, courtesy of always having to spend days doing nothing but walk to [[No Sense of Direction|get to the fight]]), but then he learns the [[Nigh Invulnerable|Bakusai Tenketsu technique]]... in his first battle with it, Ranma's strongest punches have no effect on him, and it takes a focused burst of [[Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs]] to be able to hurt him at all. Though Ranma does subsequently train himself to be able to punch hard enough to get through Ryôga's defense, he remains the hardest opponent for Ranma to lay out with physical attacks afterward.
** It does not, however, explain [[Kid Samurai|Tatewaki]] [[Lord Error-Prone|Kunô]].
* ''[[Black Lagoon]]''. One of the main characters takes an RPG at point blank (not the ''explosion'', but getting hit by the physical object) and escapes with lightly burned skin and a concussion. At a later date, another character survives getting shot in the gut, falling from a second story window and then having the building she fell from collapse on top of her ''while it's on fire'', though she admits that the injuries are more or less fatal and she was lucky to be alive long enough for help to show up. And then there's [[Implacable Man|Roberta]], who isn't Made of Iron so much as [[Nigh Invulnerable|diamond on a solid titanium-tungsten alloy base]].
* Every character from ''[[One Piece]]''; characters seem only to die in flashbacks (or if you watch the [[4Kids! Entertainment|4Kids]] [[Macekre|dub]], [[Never Say "Die"|never]]).
** One can mention Luffy, who was gored with a hook, thrown into a pit of quicksand and buried there for hours, but was still able to fight Sir Crocodile the next day. Only to have all the water in his body
** Let's not forget Zoro. He's taken a giant sword-slash to the chest, tried to ''cut off his own feet to escape some chains'', and, during Thriller Bark, {{spoiler|shows his badassery by taking all of Luffy's pain in attack form}}- with the bloody result shown in the page picture (not shown is the blood covered ground spread out several feet around him). Although all he needs to do to recover is put on a few bandages and take a nap. {{spoiler|This is averted after the aforementioned incident with Luffy's pain as Zoro still suffered from those injuries for several battles following it. }}
*** Spoofed in [http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=226 this strip] of the [[Web Comic]] ''VG Cats''.
** Early on, Luffy tells Zoro not to pick up a heavy cage when injured because, according to Luffy, Zoro's guts would spill out. Zoro merely says that he'll stuff them back in. Later on, there's a fight where the opponent keeps going for Zoro's wound. Zoro decides to cut HIMSELF there when he gets tired of this. No wonder Nami won't let Luffy wake up Zoro later on, when he's resting after this fight. Face it, if there weren't laws against death in ''One Piece'', and if Zoro weren't made of iron, he'd be the deadest thing in the universe.
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** In ''[[Pokémon Special]]'', Criminal agents see the Dex Holders and Gym Leaders as giant crosshairs during battle, so they're expected to take some huge attacks, but Gold earns the medal here. After taking loads of abuse from the Mask of Ice throughout the GSC arc, you'd think the kid would back down at some point, but no. He gets piss drunk on [[Heroic Resolve]], goes right back in, and takes some more. The kid takes punishment that would ''kill'' a normal human every time and just comes back for another helping. He may be an [[Idiot Hero]], but brute force isn't going to cure him any time soon.
** Amazingly enough, a ''villain'' beats Gold in this department. Sird took an explosion to the face, causing her to fall thousands of feet to the ground, crawled from somewhere around Viridian to Vermillion, and got her leg frozen by Lorelei's ice shackles. Despite all this and being battered and bleeding, she somehow manages to stay on her feet, break free of Lorelei's ice shackles on her own, {{spoiler|and turn five Dex Holders [[Taken for Granite|to stone]]}}. '''Damn'''.
* ''[[Pretty Cure]]'' in all forms. Enemy attacks are always treated as a serious threat (so it's ''probably'' not [[Nigh Invulnerability]]), and yet somehow nobody ever has any injuries after getting thoroughly pummeled. (Heck, even the aforementioned enemies [[Critical Existence Failure|are perfectly fine until they eventually die]].) You can tell the [[Magical Girl
* ''[[Fist of the North Star]]'' largely seems to be written about [[Made of Plasticine|entirely unhealthy deformation of flesh and bones]] or the lack thereof, so it's not that surprising that its main characters are more than a little sturdy. Hero Kenshiro weathers attacks that can effortlessly shear solid steel with superficial cuts to show for it. The antagonist, Raoh, completely ignores the same, and at one point, basically strangles a suicide fire-bomber AFTER he ignited himself, without being burned.
** In one of the first story arcs, one of the antagonists had the power to literally turn his skin into ''iron''. He could have stayed made of flesh for all what that worked against Kenshiro, though.
* Randel Orland from ''[[Pumpkin Scissors]]''. Slightly subverted in that while he can ignore injuries that would incapacitate a normal man, he often ends up bedridden in the hospital after the fight's over. (But he's almost always back on duty in time for the next episode.)
* Given the amount of [[
* Heero Yuy of ''[[Gundam Wing]]'' is most definitely made of iron. Among his greater feats are self-detonating his Gundam ''while standing just outside the cockpit'' and surviving, and falling down a cliff just to get up once he reached the ground. If memory serves, he actually broke his leg in the latter, but only had to push the bone back into place afterward.
** In an early episode, a doctor observing Heero comments that he has over 200 bruises and broken bones and yet was still walking around as a normal person would. (It should be noted that this was the same episode where he later fell down that cliff.)
** It should be noted that in ''[[Super Robot Wars Alpha]]'', Heero is also apparently one of the few people in the universe capable of remaining conscious after one of Kushua Mizuha's [[Gargle Blaster|Health Drinks]], which has been known to knock out ''androids''.
* The mages of ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha (anime)|Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]]'' evoke this appearance since they're frequently smashed through walls and perform [[It's Raining Men|hard drops from helicopters]]. However, they wear Barrier Jackets which, while appearing to be made of cloth, give off magical fields for protection. The one time that a non-[[Artificial Human]] character's Barrier Jacket was completely penetrated, it resulted with said character being hospitalized for nearly a year. The reason she was hospitalized for so long was due to both the injury and the fact that she had overstressed her magic.
* ''[[Berserk]]''. Guts is superhumanly tough, able to survive being impaled, carried off several hundred feet into the air, flown at the speed of sound without any protection, than falling hundreds of feet and still be able to fight. And given what he [[The Legions of Hell|has]] [[Eldritch Abomination|to]] [[The Juggernaut|face]], you better believe the guy needs it.
* Quite a few characters in ''[[Rurouni Kenshin]]'' can take inhuman amounts abuse with relatively little effect.
** [[Big Bad]] Makoto Shishio is without a doubt, the most over the top example. During the final battle against him, he, despite having been shot in the head and burned alive, proves capable of, among other things, blocking the blows of the other superhumanly powerful swordsmen with his ''fingers'', taking a direct punch to the face from [[Charles Atlas Superpower|superhuman]] [[Badass Normal]] Sanosuke with no effect (''Sanosuke's'' hand shatters though), shrugging off a string of sword strikes from the main character, Kenshin that ends up shooting him through a brick wall, and taking a direct blow from Kenshin's ultimate attack (and probably the most powerful attack in the series) and still being able to stand. In the end, it is not these attacks that kill him but his own inhumanly high blood temperature, which causes him to spontaneously combust when he fights for too long. The other characters even assume that he is immortal from all the abuse he takes, although the ''iron plate'' in his head may have something to do with surviving a lot of [[Hard Head|cranial abuse.]]
** Jinchu arc [[Big Bad]] Yukishiro Enishi is also an extreme example. The characters remark that he's in such an advanced state of mind over matter that his brain doesn't even recognize pain anymore, to the point where he can even inflict massive pain upon himself and still get up for more.
* Everybody in ''[[Zettai Karen Children]]'' seems to be made of iron, since Kaoru likes to throw people around as if there's no tomorrow, causing massive craters everywhere, without considerably hurting anyone.
* ''[[Gunsmith Cats]]''
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* In ''[[Katekyo Hitman Reborn]]'', Tsuna takes an inhuman amount of punishment at the hands of Reborn and his guardians - [[Comedic Sociopathy|especially in the beginning]]. As the series goes on and gets more serious, the damage Tsuna takes tends to be taken a bit more seriously (though, considering that he's just a human, it's still friggin' amazing that his body can easily take heat that ''melts metal'').
* Parodied in ''[[Detroit Metal City]]'', where the manager of the eponymous band is tough enough to stub out cigarettes on her own tongue.
* The title character in ''[[Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple|Kenichi the Mightiest Disciple]]'' could easily be the poster boy for this trope. In almost every major fight he's in, he not only takes far more damage than any normal human could even survive, but he often (though not always) goes on to win! His masters even lampshade this, stating that while he may not have any talent for martial arts, he's a genius at taking punishment. It seems to be an in-series joke that Kenichi is ''literally'' made of iron, as whenever he is lifted or thrown, it is noted that he's heavier than you'd expect of someone so short.
* In ''[[Airmaster]]'' there's Maki. You'd think taking a literal ''bear killing'' punch to the jaw or falling from several stories onto concrete would leave you at least out of commission for a while, but she's back like nothing happened next episode. Credit must be given to the minor characters too though for being able to take a drop kick from a 6' tall muscular girl jumping off a building.
* ''[[Read or Die]]'''s Drake Anderson isn't supposed to have any superpowers, but getting sliced to ribbons by the paper users doesn't do anything except make him grit his teeth.
* Partially justified for Seiichirou Kitano in ''[[Angel Densetsu]]''. His inhumane reflexes allow him to move in the same direction of the blows he's receiving, considerably lessening the damage. Played straight with his father who's [[The Juggernaut]] on top of that.
* [[Sengoku Basara|"Oyakata-sama, most people *die* from a]] [[Megaton Punch|punch]] [[Sengoku Basara|like that."]] Not Yukimura,
* ''[[Great Teacher Onizuka]]'' can easily survive falling off a building or getting hit by cars with minimal injury. Perhaps the most extreme case is when he was shot three times rescuing someone from being kidnapped (and before that ran his scouter into their car when it suddenly stopped), but managed to ''walk'' all the way back to school and spend an hour taking an exam before he passed out from blood loss and went into a coma which he got out of in ''days''.
* Jack Rakan from ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'' Some of the names he earned included "The Man Who Cannot Die", "The Immortal Fool" and "That damn guy who you can stab with swords all you like and it won't do a damn thing, damnit!" That's a direct quote. He takes the attacks of the title character which were shown to vaporize a 100-m-thick block of solid stone without so much to show for it as a BURN MARK. Even [[Badass in a Nice Suit|the tuxedo he's wearing]] is totally unharmed. {{spoiler|He does eventually get killed, but it took an opponent who was literally capable of [[Rewriting Reality]] to do it, and even then he put up one hell of a fight. And then came back temporarily 'cause he felt like it.}} {{spoiler|Given some extra time he gets better on his own. Asked by others he just notes that there is nothing impossible when one has strong willpower (proving it applies even to being removed from existence).}}
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* In the second ''[[Kino's Journey]]'' movie, Land of Sickness, Kino is kicked '''hard''' [[Groin Attack|directly in the breasts]] by a guy wearing combat boots and sent flying across the room. He then steps on her wrist to prevent her reaching her gun, and with little more than a grimace, she [[Badass Adorable|still fights him off]] with one of her legs.
* '''Brutally''' averted in ''[[The Lucifer and Biscuit Hammer]]''. It doesn't matter how much [[I Know Karate|Kung-Fu a character knows]] getting punched by a golem ''will'' [[Chunky Salsa Rule|liquify their internal organs]].
* [[Playing with Fire|Natsu]], [[An Ice Person|Gray]], and all the other [[
* University headmaster Grant Oldman from ''[[Battle Athletes Victory]]'' qualifies. After a botched hijacking attempt means a space shuttle carrying new students is going to crash into the University (it's in space) he simply orders the main training field cleared, steps out onto it, then catches the incoming shuttle and forces it to stop. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26UXoprWTD8 See this video] at the about 4:30 mark.
* In ''[[Naruto]]'' the characters fall off cliffs, are slammed into rock faces so hard they crack them, land on their heads after falling or getting throw dozens of feet, and even getting hit in the face by a punch '''that made a 10 foot wide crater when it hit ground''' without getting visibly injured, even if they're not using any ability to give them superhuman durability besides [[Charles Atlas Superpower]].
** Taken [[Up to Eleven]] with the Third and Fourth Raikage. Mabui can only use her ability on inanimate objects and the Raikages because it will tear apart and kill anyone else.
* Characters in the ''[[Blame]]''-[[Verse]] suffer massive physical trauma on a regular basis, then opt to walk it off. Justified since a vast majority of the cast are ancient, hyper-advanced cyborgs [[Feel No Pain|who view lost limbs with the same nonchalance we would a paper cut]].
* ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh (anime)|Yu-Gi-Oh]]''
** [[Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's|Yusei Fudo]] has survived the most non-duel beatings, including being bombarded with scrap metal, numerous electrocutions, having shrapnel the size of a dinner plate lodged into his gut, surviving an explosion followed by a 10 plus story drop down a chasm, and just getting up and walking away. And if you see all of his crashes, [[Badass Longcoat|Jack's]] a close second in this Title Race.
** Joey/Jonouchi from the original series also counts, as he once managed to recover from a horrible beating and [[Electric Torture]] (before card games became the series focus). Also, he LITERALLY DIED as a result of his duel against Marik, but he recovered surprisingly quickly.
* ''[[Durarara!!]]''
** Shizuo Heiwajima. {{spoiler|The man gets stabbed in both legs and remarks "Doesn't even hurt." Later, he is shot in the leg and side and ''thinks he slipped in the rain'' until he sees the blood. Afterwards he simply walks to Shinra's house, and is still unfazed by his normally life-threatening wounds.}} Shizuo's apparent superhuman endurance is acknowledged in canon: [[Back-Alley Doctor|Shinra]] ''hates'' treating Shizuo, because he never leaves an operation without destroying at least one of his best scalpels in the process. Shizuo's body isn't Made of Iron: ''it's harder than it''.
** Also the three kidnappers from the first episode. Celty hits one of them with her motorcycle and smashes another's face into a wall which leaves behind a huge mess, yet they show up later on no worse for wear. Plus anyone who [[Super Strength|Shizuo]] hits, throws, or punches. Special mention goes to Rokujo Chikage, who takes four steel-crushing punches to the face, [[Defiant to the End|yet still has the energy to taunt Shizuo about his lacking sex life]]. Mention must also be given to [[Magnificent Bastard|Izaya]] [[Knowledge Broker|Orihara]] who is the regular target of Shizuo's inhuman rage. In their first on-screen confrontation, Shizuo [[Freud Was Right|nails Izaya]] by chucking and hitting him ''in the head'' with a vending machine so hard Izaya is thrown several feet. The [[Fur and Loathing|snazzily-dressed]] [[Knife Nut]] just ''gets up like nothing happened.''
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* ''[[Yaiba]]'': The title character too is quite resilient for his age. Though usually he rarely gets slashed in vital parts, he has also suffered many vicious wounds and he always managed to survive.
* ''[[Inazuma Eleven]]'' watchers may wonder why the hell isn't the freaking goal net destroyed as many of the shooting moves are at least half powerful as those in ''[[Dragonball Z]]''.
* [[Deconstructed]] in ''[[Puella Magi Madoka Magica]]''. {{spoiler|The reason why magical girls are made of iron is because they are really [[Empty Shell
* ''[[
* ''[[Hayate the Combat Butler]]''
** Hinagiku hasn't been shown to be able to withstand things like some of the others on this page, but she was described by one of her friends as a Gundam, and there's no evidence to counter this belief, given that she has the strength and endurance to knock out title character Hayate, continually, who himself doesn't qualify for this trope because of [[Charles Atlas Superpower]].
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* Here's a fun [[Drinking Game]] for those up for it: Watch ''[[Guilty Crown]]'' and take a shot every time a character is inside the 'near-miss' zone (i.e. about five feet away from the impact site) of an explosion and comes out of it untouched. You'll be drunk after five minutes. You'll be pickled after two hours if you marathon episodes. At one point, someone ({{spoiler|it's Shuu, for those interested}}) gets their arm severed at the elbow without medical attention and doesn't even start bleeding, much less bleed out.
== [[Comic Books]] ==▼
▲== Comic Books ==
* It's actually pretty common that when comic book characters fight, characters with superpowers take superpowered hits without serious injury, ''even though their superpowers have nothing to do with superhuman strength or endurance''. I.E. a character whose ability is to shoot [[Eye Beams]] can be punched through a concrete wall, pick themselves back up, and continue fighting as though nothing happened.
* In one of the earlier issues of ''[[Superman]]'', Superman literally ''punches'' [[Lex Luthor]] through a ''three-foot thick brick wall''. Lex's only reply? "You can hit!" He was electrically charged at the time, so he had superhuman attributes (though not to the extent of Superman).
* Many characters in [[Frank Miller]]'s ''[[Sin City]]'' exhibit this trait to an incredible degree. Made of Iron is probably Miller's all-time favorite character trope for male protagonists. He just loves guys who can take an appalling level of punishment from vastly superior opponents through force of will, strength of character, or just innate badassery.
** Two characters who seem particularly adept at shrugging off damage are Manute and Marv, who require really extreme trauma to {{spoiler|be eventually killed: Manute in a hail of bullets courtesy of an army of prostitutes; Marv by being electrocuted in the electric chair - although notably, Marv doesn't die until the ''second time in a row'' he's electrocuted.}}
{{quote|
** The animalistic Kevin is so good at ''avoiding'' damage that he doesn't get a chance to display his durability much, but the fact that he can survive being {{spoiler|dismembered, eaten alive by a wolf, and eventually disemboweled, without even making a sound, until he's finally killed by decapitation}} indicates that he's got a lot of iron in him as well.
* [[Batman]]
** This is sometimes subverted, as several older incarnations (''[[The Dark Knight Returns]]'', ''[[Kingdom Come]]'', ''[[Batman Beyond]]'') are noticeably battered by the years of combat. ''Kingdom's'' Bats must use a full-body exoskeleton just to get around.
** The more recent comic books (i.e. ''Hush'') tend to show Batman's upper body as pretty much a mass of scar tissue by this point.
** Cassandra Cain is at least as bad about this. She usually gets out of the way, but when obliged to take a bullet she can do so and not even flinch. It's mainly [[Training
{{quote|
'''Batgirl:''' I... grew. }}
* Subverted to tragic effect in an issue of ''[[Elf Quest]]'', where a couple of boys from a human tribe throw a stone from a sling to knock an elf off of a high tree branch, believing that elves are indestructible. They're not. The elf breaks his back. {{spoiler|The elves ''do'' have magical healers, but the injured elf is found and killed by the boys' grown-up relatives.}} [[It Gets Worse|And that's not all.]]
* [[Daredevil]]. One of the more memorable examples would be the time when he not only survives taking casual slaps from the [[There Is No Kill Like Overkill|Hulk]], but [[Up to Eleven|keeps getting back up to confront the not-so-jolly-green giant again]]. Not surprisingly, this trait was one of the things that Frank Miller left as his legacy with the character.
* Often prominent with ''[[The Punisher]]'', particularly as written by [[Garth Ennis]].
** At one point, the title character was seen walking upright with a stabbed liver. The irony of this is that Ennis claims to hate powered superheroes, while constantly [[Badass Normal|playing up all-human characters]] with [[Charles Atlas Superpower|superhuman feats]].
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* ''[[X-Men (Comic Book)|X-Men]]'' subteam ''[[New Mutants|The New Mutants]]''. Roberto DaCosta has super-strength, but not super-durability. He's explicitly just as vulnerable as any Joe SixPack... but somehow still survives nonsense like getting tackled through a brick wall. A degree of superhuman durability is pretty much a [[Required Secondary Power]] for any character possessing superhuman strength, as super-durable muscle fibers would necessarily result in super-durable muscle tissue, protecting most everything but the eyes.
* In both the comic and movie versions of ''[[V for Vendetta]]'' this trope enables V to pull off a subversion of the [[Instant Death Bullet]] and a [[Crowning Moment of Awesome]], no less:
{{quote|
* Tallulah Black from ''[[Jonah Hex]]'' has survived things like being shot in the head, being horribly mutilated, and {{spoiler|having a baby cut out of her}}. And of course, Hex himself has gone through all of the above (except the last bit) and more ''many'' times, and with only 19th century frontier medicine (sometimes!) available to bring him back.
* [[Sgt
* [[Taskmaster]]. Neither getting rammed by a speeding car, nor shot repeatedly, nor being kicked in the face by an enraged [[Spider-Man]] so hard that his body punches an economy-sized hole through the (in all likelihood heavily armoured) wall of the armoury in his hideout/gym will do more than slow him down momentarily.
* In ''Cruelty'', Reis Northcotte is bloodied by a punch and [[Groin Attack|kneed in the groin]], but shows no pain. {{spoiler|This tips off the school nurse that Reis is [[Functional Addict|drugged to the gills.]]}}
== [[Fan Works]] ==
* Because of how the author of ''[[Drunkard's Walk]]'' chose to translate the mechanics of ''[[Villains and Vigilantes]]'' into a text narrative, its main character Doug Sangnoir is basically this. [[All There in the Manual|Supplementary material]] shows that Doug has nearly a hundred hit points in a game system where normals generally have no more than four or five, but at the same time has no invulnerability or other powers that make him hard to injure (in fact, he wears body armor for this very reason). At one point in one of the stories, Doug notes that being shot by a handgun would "hurt like hell" but not seriously inconvenience him.
==
* Kent Mansley of ''[[The Iron Giant]]'' is always getting bashed into things but manages to pop back up again. Maybe he's just that serious about stopping the robot.
* Jack Skellington of ''[[The Nightmare Before Christmas]]'' manages to get shot down by ''anti-aircraft flak guns'' without being blown to pieces. This could be justified, however, by the coffin sleigh taking most of the blow. However, this does not explain how at least a ''mile-high fall onto a stone angel'' didn't break any of his bones (the impact from the fall ''did'' seem to be strong enough to knock off his jawbone, however). This all still could be justified by the fact that Jack's undead, so he would not feel pain, if it weren't for an earlier scene where [[Stalker with a Crush|Sally]] accidentally pokes Jack's finger with a needle, and he yelps in pain. [[Mind Screw|It's a little confusing]].
== Films -- Live-Action ==▼
* [[Indiana Jones]]. [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=nuke%20the%20fridge Frigidaire should use him as a celebrity spokesman].
* {{spoiler|Luz}} from ''[[Machete]]''.
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* The ''[[Die Hard]]'' movies:
** John McClane fits the get-badly-hurt type to a tee. In the fourth film, he keeps taking enough damage to kill a man 3 or 4 times, yet he still wipes out an entire assault squad occupying a building, destroys a chopper with a police cruiser and a ramp, kills an enemy [[Action Girl]] with a Ford Explorer and an elevator pit, takes out a fighter plane with a big truck and an elevated highway, and {{spoiler|shoots himself in the shoulder to kill the [[Big Bad]] that was holding a gun against him}}. And all he needs to get patched up after all this is a calm ride in the ambulance.
** The [[Action Girl]] is also absurdly Made of
** Although the first film was mainly designed as a subversion of the trope (so... [[Sequelitis|yeah]]), and got a lot of attention for how unlike a lot of popular action movies at the time, the hero picked up several injuries over the course of the film and looked like he'd been through a warzone at the end.
* Subversion: Matt Murdock in ''[[Daredevil (film)|Daredevil]]'' is shown spitting out a broken/dislodged tooth after his first on-screen fight, and it might take less time to show how much of his body ''isn't'' scarred. His medicine cabinet is also shown to be absolutely stuffed full of painkillers like Percocet and Vicodin, suggesting that he could teach Dr. [[House (TV series)|House]] a thing or two about living with pain.
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* ''[[James Bond (film)|James Bond]]''
** Mild [[Lampshade Hanging]] in the film ''[[Never Say Never Again]]''. Bond visits a health spa in the opening of the film and a doctor notes that his body "seems to be mainly scar tissue".
** Much of the plot of ''[[
** The Bond villain Jaws is an even better example, taking massive amounts of punishment in his appearances in ''[[The Spy Who Loved Me]]'' and ''[[Moonraker]]'' and still surviving. (His ''teeth'' are literally made of iron.)
** In ''[[
* While the blows sustained by Peter Parker/Spider-Man in the ''[[Spider-Man (film)|Spider-Man]]'' films may be explained by his newly acquired superpowers, no such explanation is given for how Doctor
* In ''[[Wild Wild West (film)|Wild Wild West]]'', [[Will Smith]]'s character climbs up the antagonist's giant robotic spider, only to be shot point blank in the chest with a flintlock pistol. It is explained how he survives the
* ''[[Rocky (film)|Rocky]]''
** The worst offender may be ''Rocky II'', where in their climactic rematch, Apollo Creed gives him twenty consecutive, unanswered shots to the face. More than once.
** The sound of blows landing in ''Rocky III'' is dubbed in astonishingly loud, more akin to shotgun blasts than to fists; during their climactic fight, Rocky and Clubber Lang trade punches that seem like they would decapitate a normal human being.
** ''Rocky IV'':
{{quote|
** Fun fact: in that last one, [[Dolph Lundgren]] actually broke a couple of [[Sylvester Stallone|Sly's]] ribs.
* [[Authority Equals Asskicking|Crime lord]] Bill takes this to ridiculous extremes in the film ''Beauty Investigators''. After being shot in the heart, he still manages to beat a ninja in a fight. Later, his leg is broken almost to the point of a compound fracture, and not five minutes later he's walking with a slight limp.
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* The ''[[Evil Dead]]'' series. Ash is a normal human, but takes enough punishment from the dead and from the sets, {{spoiler|at one point even cutting off his own hand}}, to put anyone into shock. However, this is mildly subverted in that he seems vulnerable to wood.
* [[Jason Statham]] as Chev Cellios in ''[[Crank]]''. The original film was already well within [[Refuge in Audacity]] territory. [[Sequel Escalation|the sequel even more so]]! (With a healthy dose of [[What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs?]])
* ''[[Halloween (film)|Halloween]]'': Michael Myers started out Made of Iron, but it was later [[
* ''[[Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen]]''. Sam Witwicky gets dropped a few stories, tossed around by giant robots, caught in the middle of friendly
* The heroes in ''[[Watchmen (film)|Watchmen]]'' don't have any superpowers, with the exception of Dr. Manhattan. Still, in the movie, they take (and deal) some kicks and punches that ought to break bones and somehow don't, unless they're fighting mooks, [[Made of Plasticine|which tend to snap much easier]].
* ''[[Charlie's Angels|Charlies Angels]]: Full Throttle'' is full of these moments. The [[Demi Moore]] character is thrown from a car moving 40 or
* ''[[Urban Legend (film)|Urban Legend]]'': {{spoiler|Brenda Bates}} is shot in a shoulder, then in the chest, falling from a third-story window. Then, she tries to axe down the good guys, only to fly through the windscreen and falling off a bridge. Seconds after, she's shown in another college, telling THE tale.
* ''[[Three Stooges]]'' Curly is famous for his harder-than-average head. In various shorts, Moe would use a saw or a pickaxe on Curly's cranium, only to find that the points of said tools bent afterward.
* Captain Kirk in the [[Star Trek (film)|new movie]] takes some pretty serious beatings: in approximately a single day, he gets the everliving crap beaten out of him by Romulans before Sulu saves his butt, nearly falls to his death on Vulcan trying to save Sulu's butt, nearly eaten by two monsters on an ice planet, Spock kicks his ass and nearly strangles him to death, then the Romulans beat the everliving crap out of him yet again. And yet he's still standing.
** One might hand-wave this away with some off-screen future medical tech (which conveniently leaves the rugged bruises and abrasions alone).
* [[No Name Given|The Narrator]] in ''The Perfect Sleep''. Although he does get sliced and shot, mostly he just gets punched...''a lot'': He gets beaten to a bloody pulp five times during the course of one night by five different groups of highly motivated thugs, yet somehow remains functional enough to kill most of them and make it to the [[Final Battle]] with [[The Don|Nikolai]]. In the [[Shirtless Scene]], we see he has hundreds of horrific scars from years of
{{quote|
* The titular ''[[Darkman]]'', who gets caught in an explosion and loses all sense of touch. His body overproduces adrenaline as a result, giving him [[Super Strength]] and super-endurance as side effects. He ''can'' get hurt, but he tends to ignore it most of the time.
* [[Colonel Badass|Colonel Quaritch]] from ''[[Avatar (film)|Avatar]]'', obviously.
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* Marv from ''[[Sin City]]''. Hit several times by a speeding car without a single broken bone.
** Hartigan also qualifies, [[Beat Still My Heart|except for a detail]].
{{quote|
* Implied with Eric in ''[[Mystery Team]]'', who tells {{spoiler|Jason}} to shrug off a bullet wound, stating he had been shot three times. Keep in mind that Eric is seven.
* In Act III of ''[[Con Air]]'', Cameron Poe doesn't even flinch after getting shot clean through the bicep; instead, Poe effortlessly disarms the shooter and knocks him out. The wound is adequately dressed with a very thin strip of fabric, and Poe's arm retains full mobility through the rest of the movie.
* Inigo Montoya at the climax of his story in ''[[The Princess Bride (film)|The Princess Bride]]''. He's been hit in the belly with a thrown dagger, which clearly has been embedded up to the hilt. This is a very dangerous wound in modern times, in the setting it's the kind of wound where if you're LUCKY, you bleed to death. (If you're unlucky, you die of the infection. Peritonitis is a VERY unpleasant way to go.) Within a couple of minutes, he's shrugged it off and inflicted a humiliating beat down on the man he's been hunting since he was a boy, followed by an awesome [[Pre-Mortem One-Liner]]:
{{quote|
'''Rugen:''' Anything you want!
'''Inigo:''' ''(stab with sword)'' I want my FATHER BACK, you son of a bitch! }}
* In ''[[Snatch]]'', Boris the Bullet-Dodger doesn't so much dodge bullets as absorb them. He also survives being trapped in a car trunk during an accident and being hit head-on by a van without even being noticeably slowed down.
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* {{spoiler|Wang Fuming}} from ''[[Bodyguards And Assassin]]'' walks is only killed when he gets stabbed several times each by dozens of times by assassins. What really makes this made of iron is that {{spoiler|it happens ''twice'' and he walks away from it the first time}}.
== [[Literature]] ==▼
▲== Literature ==
* In the ''[[Sword of Truth]]'', the hero Richard ''rips out his evil half-brother's spine'', but he's [[You Can Barely Stand|still good for one last fight]]. It's played completely straight, and made even more ridiculous when it's revealed the character had no superhuman or magical abilities (though he did have some kind of funky acupuncture/acupressure technique that he somehow used on himself in order to keep going).
* In Steven Erikson's ''[[Malazan Book of the Fallen]]'', ultra [[Badass]] [[Heroic Sociopath]] Karsa Orlong has one of these. In ''[[The Bonehunters]]'' (book 6), he gets repeatedly mauled, cut, stabbed and bitten by a giant monster, and ultimately walks away with a slight wince and the scowl he always wears. This is somewhat justified by Karsa's being far more than a mortal human.
* In ''[[The Culture|Consider Phlebas]]'' by [[Iain Banks]], the Idirans are revealed to be incredibly resilient to damage. One member of the species is apparently killed, and a fairly [[Genre Savvy|sensible]] member of the protagonist's crew decides to make sure of it by putting the barrel of his laser rifle into the Idiran's eye and torching off a good portion of its head. Turns out that this isn't nearly enough to keep an Idiran down, leading to the book's eventual [[Downer Ending]].
* Quidditch, from ''[[Harry Potter (novel)|Harry Potter]]'', is arguably an example. It's specifically mentioned that the worst injuries players have suffered are broken bones, in a sport that involves heavy iron balls knocking people off broomsticks 50 feet in the air. Of course, some fans have in turn suggested that wizards have a (nonstated) resistance to physical injury. Note that it's the worst that's happened ''at Hogwarts'', according to Oliver Wood. When Harry asks him if anyone's ever died playing Quidditch, Wood responds, "Never at Hogwarts", which seems to imply that fatalities have occurred elsewhere.
** ''Quidditch Through The Ages'' mentions that quidditch's predecessor game, which involved trying to catch dropped boulders with bowls strapped to the tops of players' heads while riding on a broom at speed, was infamous for killing almost every player who attempted to play it. So while wizards may be [[Made of Iron]] there is apparently a sharp upper limit somewhere.
* It's a more minor example than most of these, but the [[Badass Crew|four Aurek Seven]] stormtroopers in ''[[Outbound Flight|Survivor's Quest]]'' should count. Two of them fight for and protect two unarmored officers against a large number of Vagaari armed with blasters and charrics. Their armor is good, the blasters are fifty years old and have a weak charge, and charrics aren't designed to pierce this armor, but there are a ''lot'' of Vagaari. By the time the other two show up it is mentioned that their chestplates aren't white anymore, they're having trouble standing and walking, the nonhuman stormtrooper is forgetting to translate his responses to commands into Basic, and the other isn't responding at all, and yet they're still shooting, still [[Taking the Bullet|taking the blaster bolt]]. That's how Zahn writes stormtroopers. They take a lot of damage, shoot well, and never give up.
* |Harry Dresden of ''[[The Dresden Files
* Woodrow Lowe from ''Man of the Century'' by James Thayer. In the course of the book, Woodrow is whipped raw by dervishes, bloodied by a sadistic lover, knocked off a boat by an incoming boom, kicked by a horse, trampled by a bull, stabbed within an inch of his life more than once, shot multiple times, some very close to the head, has the snot beaten out of him by at least five famous 19th-century prizefighters, and is imprisoned for 368 days in a Chinese torture pit. He is a Dakotan cavalryman, a Rough Rider, an opium trader, the (deposed) ruler of China, an Amazonian sex slave, and the assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. And he lives to tell about it all. [[Cool Old Guy|At the ripe old age of 108]].
* In R.A. Salvatore's novels, the [[Five-Man Band|Companions of the Hall]] sometimes seem to be made of iron. For example, in ''[[The Icewind Dale Trilogy|The Halfling's Gem]]'', the five of them take on an army of wererats, a hydra, get sent to Tartarus where they're swarmed by demons, Drizzt has the fight of his life against an opponent who is his equal... and when it's all said and done they have not only managed to beat all of the bad guys, not only managed to survive, but ''none of them are even seriously injured''. And even though they're kind of tired, you get the sense that they could have kept on fighting for another few hours if they had to.
* ''[[Conan the Barbarian]]''
** In [[Robert E. Howard]]'s story "A Witch Shall Be Born", the witch survives exposure as a baby.
{{quote|
** In the same story, Conan himself not only survives being crucified, but after his cross is chopped down (with him still nailed to it) he helps pull the nails out and rides 10 miles ''before'' his injuries are treated.
* [[Super Strength|Brutes]], Massives and/or people with [[Power Tattoo|kanji]] of durability in ''[[The Grimnoir Chronicles]]'' books.
* Subverted in [[Harald]]. The [[Badass Grandpa]] protagonist is on the run from [[Mooks|The King's Wolves]], and has been playing [[Guile Hero]] to try and avoid fighting them. They catch him while he's fleeing on horseback, he kills several of them, gets hit by a couple [[Annoying Arrows]] and shrugs them off - and then one of them whacks him in the head, he passes out, gets rescued by [[Those Two Guys]] [[Action Girl
* Lampshaded in ''[[Garrett P.I.|Gilded Latten Bones]]'', with Morley Dotes' stab wounds. The healer who treats him is astounded by the fact that none of the attacker's strikes had damaged vital organs or major arteries. Subverted in that Morley is laid up far longer than Garrett anticipated; played straight in that by all logic, he should've been one dead half-elf.
* ''[[Power Rangers]]''
** Commander Doggie "Boss" Kruger in ''[[Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger]]'' was a bit inconsistent with this trope: During his first on-screen brush with death, he was shot in the chest and survived with nary a scratch (though he was wearing a [[Bulletproof Vest]]); much later, he attempts to stop an old friend of his gone mad and was hurt enough (even through his Dekamaster armor) to need a few days in bandaged hospital care. During the season finale, however, he's not only beaten and slashed with swords repeatedly (without his Dekamaster armor on), but ''slammed through at least three walls, one of which he was stuck in for a half-second'', but this only rendered him unconscious for a little while with little more than battle fatigue and a few somewhat minor scrapes.
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** Heck, there are plenty of times when unmorphed Rangers take abuse they shouldn't be able to withstand. For example, in episode 13 of ''[[Power Rangers Wild Force|Wild Force]]'', Taylor gets distracted by Zen-Aku's hold on Princess Shayla, leaving her back unmorphed and unprotected from the motorcycle org. Said org fires two shots at her, which explode very close around her, knocking her to the ground. She's sitting on the ground "injured" for less than five minutes (or until the other Rangers show up), and is then walking around is if she's completely unharmed, only holding her arm in a way one does when they accidentally walk into a door. You're [[Action Girl|awesome]], Taylor, but there's no way you should've healed that quickly.
* ''[[Super Sentai]]'' is of course just as bad, if not worse. Unmorphed Rangers and bystanders are often seen simply sent flying by explosions and landing without a scratch, severe cuts heal far faster than they ought without special healing tech, etc.
* [[Kamen Rider
* ''[[24|Twenty Four]]'': Jack Bauer shouldn't be able to ''walk'' by the halfway point of a typical season, and that's before you take sleep deprivation into account. By the time a season is over it's not uncommon to have seen him bleed from the [[Standard Bleeding Spots|mouth, forehead or arm]] at least once. Here's some of the worst ones. If this doesn't prove how much of a badass Bauer is, then nothing will:
** Day 1: Grazing bullet wound to the gut. Overall it's one of the more minor ones on this list. Also had to contend with [[You Should Know This Already|Nina]] after this.
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** Day 7: Infected by a biological weapon. Quite possibly the worst one.
** Day 8: Superficial knife wound early in the season. Serious stab wound in the final hours. Didn't seem too bad at first but as Jack walks away from the wall he's leaning on there is a very serious bloodstain on the wall. Shot in the final episode and even survives a serious car wreck before the end.
* A humorous example would be Tim Taylor from ''[[Home Improvement (TV series)|Home Improvement]]'', who despite his tendency for stupidity and [[Lampshade Hanging]] about being notorious at the local hospital, never receives scars or injuries of any severity.
* The companions on ''[[Doctor Who]]'', almost all of whom are human, are put through the physical and emotional wringer nearly every single time they step out of the TARDIS, yet are perfectly fine the moment they step back in. The Doctor himself partially justifies this by being a [[Sufficiently Advanced Alien]], but considering the things he's been through, it's amazing he can still walk.
** The End of Time. {{spoiler|Never mind the fatal radiation poisoning, the fall from the Vinvocci ship should have had him ready for his next regeneration.}}
** Jack Harkness, who keeps dying and getting better. Whatever keeps him tethered to life is Made of Iron.
* ''[[Firefly (TV series)|Firefly]]'
* ''[[Farscape]]''
** The series has an entire ''race'' of Made of Iron's, the Scarrans. To drop just one takes [[More Dakka|a whole lot of firepower]]: God help you if you run into more than one of them.
** Ditto [[Magnificent Bastard|Scorpius]]: not only is he half-Scarran, but he also wears body armour for anything his body can't deal with. Add to that his own impressive willpower, and he's damn near unstoppable. And even if it looks like you've somehow managed to kill him, well, chances are he [[Crazy Prepared|planned ahead]] enough to be back again in a fortnight. Although there is [[Achilles' Heel|his coolant system]], which has been attacked by both Crichton (who sabotaged it) and Emperor Staleek (who tore the whole mechanism out of Scorpy's skull with his bare hands). To their mutual annoyance, Scorpius survived both.
* The pilot episode of ''[[The Adventures of Brisco County Jr]]'' features a comic relief [[Mook]] named Pete, who ends up getting shot. The producers liked the actor's performance so much that they brought him back, explaining that he had recovered after getting hit in the gut. Then they decided to just go with it and had him survive the likes of Chinese throwing star and pitchfork attacks.
* Ricky has been repeatedly shot on ''[[Trailer Park Boys]]'', often by accident, although always in a non-vital area. The worst damage he usually suffers is to his pride.
* The main characters on ''[[Married... with Children]]'' demonstrate this: Marcy has been electrocuted, Kelly been bitten by deadly poisonous insects, Bud suffered various injuries in his futile attempts at romance, and Al suffering everything from electrocution to shooting himself in the foot to setting himself on fire to industrial accidents while trying to build a workbench with Jefferson to [[Crowning Moment of Funny|repeatedly falling off the roof with Jefferson and his other buddies while trying to install a satellite dish on the roof]].
* Freddie on ''[[
* ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]'': In "Born Under a Bad Sign", Dean got pistol-whipped, shot in the shoulder (and later had a thumb digging into his bullet wound. Ouch), nearly got beaten to death and was left to drown in icy water. And after all that, he still manages to drive? The boy is super-human!
* After the events of "House's Head"/"Wilson's Heart" especially, [[House (TV series)|House]] should be either be dead or suffering serious brain damage by now.
* A very common trope in ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]''. Justified for Buffy, Faith, and the assorted vampires and demons and other beasties, who are supernaturally tough and can take insane amounts of punishment without blinking. However, Xander, Willow, and especially Giles should be quadriplegics several times over by now.
* Played somewhat inconsistently in ''[[Dollhouse]]''. Sometimes, people go down really fast. Other times, well, watch the fight between Boyd and Ballard (particularly the part where one bashes the other's head with a rock).
* In several occasions in ''[[Star Trek:
* Rick in ''[[The Walking Dead (TV series)|The Walking Dead]]'' has ''feet'' Made of Iron. He hobbles out of a hospital loading dock down metal mesh work stairs, wanders around a city, and rides a bike (pedals have some pretty big protrusions and ridges for traction) all completely barefoot. Granted, he probably has other things on his mind, but still... ow.
* Averted in ''[[NCIS: Los Angeles]]'' in the episode "Personal", Marty Deeks {{spoiler|is shot at the beginning of the ep and while he does manage to struggle out of his hospital bed near the end, he's bleeding through his bandages, and collapses once the danger is past}}.
* ''[[Fringe]]'': If there's anything that will take Olivia Dunham down for more than about half an episode, some very determined people haven't found it yet. Although when she was in a car accident caused by {{spoiler|William Bell pulling her into the Alternate Universe}}, she did take a few episodes to recover fully, even needing to walk with a cane for awhile.
* In one episode of ''[[Criminal Minds]]'', Aaron Hotchner ''gets blown up'' and is still together enough to attempt first aid on a severely wounded colleague and help get her to hospital even though no first responders will help him for fear of being the target of a second wave of attacks; he collapses briefly at the hospital, but is soon heard from fretfully demanding his clothes, after which he goes with the rest of his team to hunt down the bombers, even though he's still half-deaf from the first blast. The Reaper should have done a little research: if a bomb couldn't slow Hotch down for long, severe exhaustion plus a dozen or so stab wounds were never going to do more than keep him in bed for a few days...
* Every single character on ''[[Smallville]]'' who isn't [[Superman|Clark]] suffers from this, easily recovering from beatings, gunshot wounds, and [[Hard Head|blows to the head]]. Jason Teague, [[The Dragon]] from Season 4 might be the best example though. He's shot by Lionel Luthor and falls off of a cliff and into a waterfall. [[Not Quite Dead|He somehow recovers enough to arrive at the Kent farmhouse, take them hostage, and then doesn't go down until he's been ''hit by a meteor''.]] Who'd he think he was, ''the Terminator''?
== [[Newspaper Comics]] ==▼
▲== Newspaper Comics ==
* Because he personifies most bruiser tropes, it's no surprise that [[Popeye (comic strip)|Popeye]] was Made of Iron back when he got his start on ''Thimble Theatre''. In his first few story arcs, Popeye takes some brutal beatings and manages to come out on top. When in one fight he takes several handgun rounds in the gut, he manages to still win the fight before passing out. In the hospital, in addition to the bullets that put him there, knife blades, tips of pool cues and many, many other indications that you should see the other guy.
*
▲== Pro Wrestling ==
▲* [[Professional Wrestling]] can wander into this when things go wrong and sometimes even when they go right, generally missed completely by the tendency for people to think "knowing how to fall" equates to "falls don't hurt." See [http://youtube.com/watch?v=0qFWaCoe78k Hell in the Cell,] where [[Mick Foley]] suffered a concussion, broken ribs, and a ''dislocated shoulder'' after falling from a twenty-foot height ''twice,'' and still finished the match.
* Another great example is [[Kurt Angle]]. For the uninitiated, he was in the summer Olympics with a broken neck. No, he didn't get it during the wrestling tournament, he had it before the tryouts. Not only did he convince them to let him compete, he won the gold medal. While he's at times injury prone, his neck at least is made of titanium. This is an understandably large point of pride both for his character and in real life.
{{quote|
* Japanese female wrestlers can take piledrivers, powerbombs, and DDT's from the top rope onto steel chairs and tables, ''several times in the same match''.
* [[The Undertaker]]. At Elimination Chamber 2010, Taker was making his way to the ring in his usual grand fashion (Smoke, fireballs, really slow walk, etc.). Undertaker did his usual pause at the top of the ramp, and was engulfed in flames by an errant fireball. Playing it off as being [[Incredibly Lame Pun|fired up]], he ran to the ring, and proceeded to wrestle an entire Elimination Chamber match. He then lost his World Heavyweight Championship to [[Chris Jericho]], but nobody's perfect.
* [[Kayfabe]] example: [[Stone Cold Steve Austin]] uses a forklift to drop a car with [[Triple H]] inside from a great height to end Survivor Series 2000. Triple H returns the next week with a bandage.
* Wouldn't you believe it but Zack Ryder has become one. In the month of January 2012, he's been assaulted by Kane in ways that other wrestlers his size would be dead by now. He's been dropped from ten feet in the air, had three powerbombs on his cracked ribs, got chokeslammed through the stage before ''finally'' having to be put away with a Tombstone Piledriver by Kane at the Royal Rumble before he has to be put out for a while.
* [[Chris Jericho]] has only suffered two serious injuries to his body in his entire life. One was a broken arm caused by his own stupidity (practicing dives without a mat). The second was a herniated disk, which he suffered training during ''[[Dancing With the Stars]]''. Keep in mind he's been in more Elimination Chambers than anyone else, been in more than a few brutal TLC matches, worked for several promotions that specialized in [[Garbage Wrestling]], and works a hard-hitting, high-risk style in which several peers have destroyed their own bodies.
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==▼
* ''[[Dungeons
* Olympic skier Hermann Maier's [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yu2kexdW3a8 spectacular crash] at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. High winds caused an unintentional ski jump. He flew through the air, hit the ground headfirst at 70 miles per hour, bounced, tumbled, and smashed through two wire-and-slat fences before coming to a stop. And then ''he picked himself up and walked back up the hill'', rubbing his shoulder (he also had a minor leg injury). A few days later, he won gold medals in two events. [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sports/longterm/olympics1998/sport/alpine/articles/wilbon14.htm A news article about the event] began with the words, "The Tough Man contest is over. Forever. The winner is Hermann Maier." And he almost lost his leg after a traffic accident but continues to win -- his nickname "Herminator" is well deserved.▼
* Hockey player Gordie Howe was said to get a goal, an assist, and a fight in every game. He continued playing in the NHL into his fifties, even through its notoriously violent era, long enough to play with his grown sons. After his retirement, he even suited up for a charity game in the minors, whereupon a local radio DJ offered a large cash prize to any player on the opposing team who fought Howe, by then in his seventies. No-one was stupid enough to take up the offer.▼
* In a similar vein, Toronto Maple Leaf Bobby Baun scored the game winning goal of game six of the 1963-1964 Stanley Cup finals after sustaining a broken ankle earlier in the game.▼
* [http://www.classicalfencing.com/articles/bloody.php This classical fencing article] discusses how unreliable a sword-inflicted wound could be in ending a duel.▼
* Jake Brown, 2007 X Games skateboard contender, lost control of his board and fell 45 feet to the deck below (clip is [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Q3PNj3tRW4 here]). After a dazed few minutes, he ''got up'' and was able to walk out under his own power.▼
* George Chuvalo, a former heavyweight boxer, was known to have one of the toughest chins in history. He faced some of the most devastating punchers in history and was never knocked down as a professional in 93 fights (his two technical knockout losses came when the referee stopped the fights). In fact in his fight against George Foreman (a man whose punch normally [[Megaton Punch|sends mere mortals to the moon]]), Chuvalo complained to the referee after the fight was stopped.▼
* Though both have become more vulnerable as they've aged, [[wikipedia:Mark Hunt|Mark Hunt]] and [[wikipedia:Antônio Rodrigo Nogueira|Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira]] were each known for this. Hunt was known for shrugging off life-threatening strikes as mere annoyances, while Nogueira was known for taking immense amounts of punishment, but still somehow managing to not only survive, but to ''win''.▼
* Bert Trautmann, football (soccer) goalkeeper active in the 1950s. During the 1956 FA Cup Final, he was injured in a collision with an opponent. With 17 minutes to go, and no substitutes allowed, he shook off the injury and continued. He saved several goals, preserving his team's lead and helping to win the match. The injury? Merely a broken neck.▼
* Jack Youngblood played the entire 1979 playoffs and Super Bowl, AND the meaningless Pro Bowl game with a broken tibula. Because of this, he was called “the John Wayne of football”.▼
* Steve Yzerman played on essentially on one leg due to having a blown out right knee during the 2002 Stanley Cup playoffs.▼
* Donovan McNabb played on a broken ankle for most of a 2002 regular season game.▼
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtFvR7QRmow Fedor Emilianenko vs. Kevin Randleman]. Fedor got hit with possibly the most perfect suplex in history, impacting the mat with all of his own weight plus all of Randleman's weight directly onto his spinal column. He calmly turned around and made Randleman tap out.▼
▲== Tabletop Games ==
▲* ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'' can be intensely silly about this. Due to the highly ambiguous definition of [[Hit Points]], the characters therein can shrug off being shot, struck by lightning, or even terminal velocity impacts with no adverse effects but the loss of HP.
** How do you know you're Made of Iron in ''D&D''? When it becomes literally impossible for orbital reentry to kill you, you're a little bit too tough to exist. If you can then fly back out of the atmosphere and do it again for kicks? Now you've reached the level of absurdity. Some of the meanest things in the game can literally do this all day long, while on fire and immersed in acid.
** Specifically to avert this, 2nd Edition introduced a rule that required a saving roll to be made if a character took more than a certain (admittedly, quite high) amount of damage in a single attack.
* ''[[Traveller]]: The New Era'', especially compared to the more realistic wound rules in previous and subsequent editions. When you can take a blast from an [[
* Some units and characters in ''[[Warhammer
** Units aligned to the [[Cosmic Horror|Chaos]] [[God of Evil]] [[Plaguemaster|Nurgle]] almost invariably have this rule. [[Blessed with Suck|Blight]] [[Space Marine|Marines]], for example, who are already superhuman killing machines with [[Hyperactive Metabolism|basic regenerative powers]] that would make ''clerics'' jealous, are so bloated and disease-ravaged by their various maladies that not much can hurt them further. Also, they don't feel pain. At all.
** The fifth edition introduced a new special rule called "Eternal Warrior." An Eternal Warrior laughs at your Strength 10 attacks, taking a mere wound if he fails any applicable saves.
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** Honorary mention to Captain Cortez of the Crimson Fists. If he was to tread on a land mine, that might fracture the last two remaining bones in his body that have never been broken. He once disarmed an Ork Warboss by trapping the weapon in his own ribcage, and has also fought for six weeks without supplies and led charges into the breach with a broken back. Even the Apothecaries of the Fists maintain that he's breaking the rules when it comes to how much damage a Space Marine can sustain. He's currently missing presumed dead, but they [[Never Found the Body]] and his Chapter Master flatly refuses to accept him being dead until such time as an actual corpse turns up.
* ''[[Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay]]'' 1st edition warrior characters (assuming that they survive their [[Made of Plasticine|squishy]] and [[You Suck|pathetic]] earlier careers) can acquire a condition that the fanbase [[Fan Nickname|used to call]] [[Fan Disservice|Naked]] [[Squick|Dwarf]] Syndrome, which is essentially the idea that a Dwarf [[Death Seeker|Giant Slayer]] or similarly high level character, even if he is [[Full-Frontal Assault|totally naked]], can take repeated [[Guns Are Worthless|gunshots]], [[Annoying Arrows|arrows]] and [[Almost-Lethal Weapons|sword strokes]] from [[Mooks|average combatants]] without ever taking a single point of damage due to his high Toughness characteristic.
* The ''[[Warhammer
* ''[[GURPS]]'' suggests a lot of Ablative Damage Reduction to replicate this. Basically it acts just like [[Hit Points]] except that you won't flinch, won't bleed and won't be "really" hurt until it has been worn away by, say, getting hit by a truck and then shot several times.
* The ''[[Serenity Role Playing Game]]''
* ''[[Rifts]]'' Aftermath reintroduces readers to the character of Julian the First, the leader of the infamous ''Juicer Uprising'', some five years back. This is at least ''four'' years since Julian's body was ''supposed'' to have literally burnt out to a flaming (ultimately ''exploding'') skeleton as a side effect of the [[Psycho Serum]] he enhanced it with. True, his body is nowhere near his peak condition, but the sheer fact that he is still alive in the first place is nothing short of miraculous.
* Any character in ''[[Villains and Vigilantes]]'' with more than a normal's basic three to five hit points, while lacking any kind of invulnerability or regeneration: they can simply tank damage that would kill a normal. See the ''Fan Works'' section for a ''V&V'' character translated to text.
== [[Video Games]] ==▼
▲== Video Games ==
* This can happen in many games due to glitches or unexpected game engine behavior, for example falling from a great height, but glancing off a vertical surface so the fall distance resets and the drop counts as much shorter.
* ''[[Final Fantasy]]''
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** The trend continues in the movie sequel and remake ''Advent Children'' and ''Advent Children Complete'' when two Turks get captured and tortured by the villains (but still live to make an appearance near the end). Meanwhile the two remaining Turks (Reno and Rude) get beaten by the big bad, hit in the face by a metal rod, being pummeled by the henchmen (which included being thrown from the top of a building) and {{spoiler|falling a great distance from a crashing helicopter onto pavement}} but being appearing perfectly fine in the next scene to attempt a near-kamikaze moment with dynamite (which they also survive and appear at the end of the movie unharmed). The most injuries seen on the Turks were a few bandages, a small cut and a bloody nose (the two latter which were gone a few scenes later).
** Cloud Strife, the main protagonist can also be seen as made from iron seeing how he can survive several deadly falls with nothing more than skinned knees. {{spoiler|Not to mention being stabbed through the chest by Sephiroth.}}
** Basch fon Ronsenburg in ''[[Final Fantasy XII]]''. He's betrayed and locked in a dungeon for two years, hanging from his scaffolding by his arms. After he's rescued by the other characters, Basch is visibly tortured - the bruises and red marks on his shoulders are absolutely horrifying to look at. He finds a corpse and loots its clothes, ties his hair back, finds his former friends and gets to ''work''.
** Galuf from ''[[Final Fantasy V]]'', especially during his one-on-one with the Big Bad. Bring his HP to zero? Eh, 'tis merely a flesh wound, he fights on undaunted. {{spoiler|Until the adrenaline rush wears off, anyway, at which point the injuries catch up with him and he suffers a [[Critical Existence Failure]]}}.
* ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]''
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** The Gamecube port, ''The Twin Snakes'', steps this up. After Liquid {{spoiler|seemingly dies from FOXDIE, he picks himself up and ''tries to fight the virus off'' whilst attempting to grab Snake ''twice'', then gets up on his feet to have ''a staredown'' with him.}} ''Then'' he {{spoiler|succumbs to the FOXDIE.}}
** The part about Liquid possessing Ocelot is because {{spoiler|Ocelot inherited his father's psychic abilities}}. It remains to be seen if the sheer [[Badass|Bad Assitude]] is part of the transfer, but considering the ''Metal Gear'' aaga's tendency for thematic mirroring (Big Boss killing The Boss, Snake killing Big Boss, Raiden killing Solidus Big Boss killing Gene, Snake killing Liquid) it's not unthinkable.
** Not to mention in ''[[Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots]]'', {{spoiler|Raiden again. Dear God.}}
** All the playable characters are made of iron, though to a lesser extent than Liquid. Despite electroshock torture, repeated head trauma, poison gas exposure, and a scene where he's '''clearly shot through the chest prior to the second Sniper Wolf battle''', Snake manages to get through ''Metal Gear Solid''. Raiden gets knocked around a lot as well in part 2, and the abuse heaped upon Naked Snake in ''3'' is pretty ridiculous. In part 4 it's even mentioned that given all the abuse the now old Snake has endured, he shouldn't be able to stand, let alone save the world.
* Protagonist Nathan Drake of ''[[Uncharted]]'', master of Selective Gravity. In a freak twist, our leading man gleefully and frequently endures up to twelve cartridges of automatic ammo per hour (not to mention a grenade or missile here or there), always coming out on top through a simple tactic: ducking for cover to regenerate [[From a Single Cell]].
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** The eleventh official expansion to the MMORPG added a new powerset, Willpower, specifically designed to let players create characters who are Made of Iron.
** That ability existed all along with Invulnerability, Stone Armor, etc... Willpower just gave another way to do it that seems more believable for the "Natural" Origin character. Willpower is a mix of defense, resistance, and regeneration rather than offering only 1 or 2 of those 3 like the other powers in the game do.
** To a lesser extent, ''every'' PC in ''City of Heroes'' qualifies for
** A game mechanic that has been active for awhile, but frequently misses notice, is that players are protected against dying from most one-hit kills when at full health. It prevents certain annoying situations and cheap deaths. The result is that although not every hero or villain can leap skyscrapers, they can all survive falling off of one, even at level 1 with no defensive abilities, merely dropping down to a single hit point. Of course actual enemies don't stop after just one attack.
* While it takes a bit of [[Fridge Logic]] to see it, since he isn't the toughest fellow around combat-wise, but the ''[[Prince of Persia]]'' in the ''Sands of Time'' trilogy probably counts. No "normal" person should be able to keep pulling off his brand of Babylonian Ninja [[Le Parkour]] without at least getting bruises.
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* Dr. Wily's ''[[Mega Man Battle Network]]'' incarnation defies imminent death at the end of each game in which he appears. He was at the center of a large explosion in the first game. In the third, he had his mind drained by a machine that promptly self-destructed with an explosion large enough to sink the entire island on which Wily's base was stationed. He somehow regained his mind and reappeared in the fifth game, in which he walks into a (exploding) computer room based [[Convection, Schmonvection|crater of a currently-erupting volcano]] and actually uses the computer while it is in the process of exploding. In the sixth and final game of the franchise, Wily stands in the center of an explosion that levels a large portion of town, yet is said in the epilogue to have survived with only a few scratches.
** Being Made of Iron seems to be hereditary, as Wily's son, {{spoiler|Dr. Regal, manages to survive high-voltage electrocution and subsequent fall off of a very high roof}}. He goes on to survive the same explosion and eruption that Wily survived after having his mind and memories completely drained.
* Everything that ever lived in any ''[[Tomb Raider]]'' game. In the first games you have to shoot any human being for minutes for it to die, not because they are hard to hit. Every. Single. Shot. Is a hit. Count the amounts of bullets you have to put through each enemy (taking into account the player uses tow pistols at the same time. You'll be surprised how much stronger than 50 cent each little monkey in the jungle is.
* Almost every [[First-Person Shooter]] player character falls into this by default, able to soak up gunfire like a sponge. This is more [[Rule of Fun]] than anything,
** Perhaps the best example is also the first example, the one and only [[Doom
*** On the subject of Doom, there's the Cyberdemon in the original games.
* Averted in First Person Shooters at the "realistic" end of [[Fackler Scale of FPS Realism|the scale]]
* Not strictly an example, but: in Yuri and Estelle's [[Friendship Moment]] the night before the final battle in ''[[Tales of Vesperia]]'', Estelle comments on how she's surprised that he can't sleep, and he replies "You say that like I'm made of iron or something." In a meta way, it's probably fair to say he is, in every sense of the word: both as a character and as a force in battle [[Game Breaker|(being one of the most broken playable characters]] in the ''[[Tales (series)]]'').
* Captain Cross from ''[[Prototype (video game)|Prototype]]'', supposedly an unpowered [[Badass Normal]] with only weapons and skills to call his own, soaks up damage that would otherwise do a number on tanks and the explicitly superpowered [[Super Soldier
* Every [[Fighting Game]] ever. ''[[Street Fighter]]''? Just as one example, the piledriver is capable of breaking necks in the real world when done in the somewhat controlled environment of [[Professional Wrestling]]; Zangief can perform one from effectively 20' in the air, and the victim can get up. Then there's ''[[Samurai Shodown]]'' and ''[[Soul Series|Soul Calibur]]'', where you can shrug off a sword aimed through the chest. Somewhat needed, though, otherwise these games could be very, very short.
** For the aversion, see ''[[Bushido Blade]]'': weapon-based fighter like the two above, but one clean hit kills you automatically.
*** There are other aversions, but in general, these are games where the [[One-Hit Kill]] is [[Game Breaker|much too easy]]. Exhibit A: ''[[Time Killers]]''.
** There are some ''ridiculous'' stage effects in the ''[[Dead or Alive]]'' series that can range from being thrown into explosive containers to literally dropping over 10 stories below. Worst that happens is a KO and otherwise everyone just gets up like nothing even happened.
* In ''[[Super Smash Bros.]]'' the characters are more likely made of [[Living Toys|plastic.]]
* An interesting example in ''[[Modern Warfare]]''. Most of the time in game, especially on Veteran and online this trope is averted; while you can take one to three shots standing without much issue, any more than that and you'll have just as much a chance of standing as the card tower you're trying to build before the hurricane hits, metaphorically. However, in the Campaign, this trope is played [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|awesomely straight]] when {{spoiler|your character, Soap, survives, in order, falling off of a waterfall, having his head bashed into the roof of a car, being stabbed in the chest, crawling to a gun with said knife in chest, being stomped on the face with a boot, and finally pulling the knife out of his chest and tossing it into the face of General Shepherd. ''Damn.''}}
* The hillbillies of Point Lookout in ''[[Fallout 3]]'', who despite being dressed in overalls take ''much'' more damage than the [[Powered Armor]]-clad stormtroopers of the Enclave, and also dish out more damage, despite the Enclave mooks wielding high-tech energy weapons, and the hillbillies wielding axes and breech-loading shotguns.
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** This is somewhat applicable to several high-end baddies added in the expansions, the probable reason being that by the end of the vanilla game the Lone Wanderer can deal IMMENSE amounts of damage, Sneak attack critical + sniper rifle + headshot = dead almost anything from the vanilla game.
** Also applicable to some of your followers in Broken Steel, namely Dogmeat, Fawkes, and Seargent RL-3. When the ability to level up companions was added, there was a glitch that made these three gain ''hundreds'' of hitpoints per level. By level 30, they couldn't be killed by anything less than three shots from the Mysterious Stranger's .44 Magnum, a gun you can only get by cheating that does over ''9,000 damage per shot!''
* Joshua Graham of ''[[Fallout: New Vegas]]''. This is a man who was set on fire and thrown down the Grand Canyon [[You Have Failed Me...|for losing a battle]], and ''managed to drag himself to Northern Utah after that''. In-game, he has a Damage Threshold of 50 (not counting the DT from his kevlar vest), which is more than the best Power Armor. If asked, Graham merely states that for him it was a mix of [[Heroic Resolve]] and [[Badass Preacher|faith]].
* ''[[Kikokugai]]'': Subverted by Gong Taoluo, even more so considering his specialized techniques do him lots of pain when he uses them too much.
* Steel-types in ''[[Pokémon]]'' are a literal example of this trope, with some of them (like Steelix) also living up to it.
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* For a murder game, ''[[Ace Attorney]]'' characters seem to be surprisingly resistant to bullets not taken to the head or heart. {{spoiler|Manfred von Karma was shot in the shoulder and carried the bullet around for ''ten years'' just so nobody would find out about it}} and {{spoiler|Lang gets shot in the leg while protecting Shih-na and just keeps walking around afterwards without so much as a limp.}}
** {{spoiler|Wocky Kitaki}} ''does'' get shot in the heart, and survives for over six months!
** [[Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney|Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney]] himself seems to be borderline invincible:
*** He ate a poisoned ''glass'' necklace (and even mentions ''chewing'' it) without suffering any visible pain.
*** He was electrocuted by a stun gun and stood up again just a minute later, unharmed (whereas Maya still felt the aftereffects a day later).
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* From the same people, ''[[Ghost Trick]]'' has several characters who stretch the limits of survivability, even without the player character's death-reversing powers.
* In ''[[Ace Combat]] Zero'', the ADFX-02 Morgan certainly doesn't look or perform like the properly armoured A-10 Warthog/Thunderbolt II, but can take at least six missile hits to down when most enemy planes go down in two. Even then, it still manages to pull off a [[Single-Stroke Battle]]-like flypast on Cipher's plane before it finally explodes.
* In ''[[Airforce Delta]] Strike'', some player aircraft have 4000+ hit points.
* [[Lugaru]] averts this. A few well-aimed blows to the head can deal with most enemies (or ''you'') and the staff can ''kill'' with one swing (again, you too).
* Wario in the ''[[Wario Land]]'' games will be put through every condition possible (to name a few, zombification, lit on fire, spun up into a ball of string, being trapped in a snowball, and more.) and he just shakes it off. All of them are also required to solve many of the puzzles.
* In ''[[Mass Effect]]'', Commander Shepard's Soldier class consists of equal parts [[More Dakka]] and Made of Iron; after some upgrade, s/he can more or less laugh off a missile to the face. [[The Big Guy|Krogan buddy Urdnot Wrex]] from the first game also counts. And as for the [[Mass Effect 2|second game's]] krogan, [[Blood Knight|Grunt]]...with a few upgrades and his special Fortification power, bringing him down with normal gunfire is like trying to break concrete with a toothpick.
** Krogan in-game are extremely hardy, with secondary and sometimes tertiary organ systems and regenerative abilities. Thane Krios, a superb assassin whose preferred techniques tend towards quick, low-fuss [[Neck Snap|neck snaps]] on most species, has a somewhat different style when killing krogan while [[Badass|unarmed]].
{{quote|
** Shepard [[Up to Eleven|turns this up to eleven]] in [[Mass Effect 3]] when {{spoiler|s/he is blasted by Harbinger's main gun on the way to the Citadel during the endgame. Bear in mind this is a gun that fires molten metal at near-lightspeed, and it has been shown to destroy dreadnoughts in other appearances. Shepard just gets up and keeps going, albeit with major injuries.}}
* ''[[Suikoden II]]'': Luca Blight ends up fighting eighteen heroes working in tandem, defeating at least twelve of them, and has to have half an army shoot him in order to weaken him enough to make a duel against him even remotely fair.
* ''[[Super Mario (franchise)|Super Mario Bros.]]'' Bowser, definitely. From being [[Super Mario Bros. (video game)|thrown]] [[Super Mario 64|into]] [[New Super Mario Bros. Wii|lava]], [[Mario
** ''[[Paper Mario:
** Perhaps the Mario Brothers aren't the only ones who can benefit from One-up Mushrooms.
* ''[[Paper Mario:
* King K Rool in ''[[Donkey Kong Country]]''. In the first game it's fairly standard punishment, but in the second, he gets his gun explode on him about ten times, gets punched out the window of an airship by a captured Donkey Kong, hits every single cliff face on the way down, torn apart by sharks, sinks into the ocean, has his gun explode AGAIN in the [[True Final Boss]] battle, flies into the island core, is presumably there when it sinks like Atlantis and sails away on his ship afterwards. Then, in the third game, he gets electrocuted like ten times from his mad science laboratory equipment, and has a giant egg dropped on his head by the freed Banana Bird queen... Then gets beaten up by all five Kongs in ''[[Donkey Kong 64]]'', hit by a rocket powered boot shot by Funky Kong, thrown straight through the roof of the boxing roof and into K Lumsy Island, where said giant locked up Kremling proceeds to beat K Rool senseless for locking him up. He's perfectly fine in later appearances.
* In ''[[Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood]]'', {{spoiler|the Cardinal in the St. Peter's Basilica Lair of Romulus sidequest}} can take multiple crossbow bolts or blows from a heavy weapon, damage that would crumple a [[Heavily Armored Mook|Brute]], despite apparently wearing nothing more protective than cloth robes.
** [[Assassin's Creed II|Ezio]] and possibly [[Assassin's Creed|Altaïr]] could count for this as well. Best seen in the trailer for ''[[
*** Compounded in the extended trailer (and the second opening cutscene) of ''Revelations'', when Ezio freefalls from several stories high only to make a [[Three-Point Landing]] ''with no negative physical effects'', and all of his acrobatic abilities intact.
* Luka Redgrave in ''[[Bayonetta]]'' suffers some pretty nasty abuse but is none the worse for wear by the ending. [[Butt Monkey|Enzo]] takes a few bumps, too, like being thrown head-first into the driver's seat of his car.
* The player ship in the entire ''[[The Tale of Alltynex]]'' trilogy.
* ''[[Raptor: Call of the Shadows]]'' has a player ship that is like this too, and that's ''not'' counting in the extra shielding (which take the same amount of damage as the plane).
* ''[[Mortal Kombat]]'' dips into this in the 2011 [[
** ''[[Mortal Kombat 11]]'' has Lethal Blows, which take it to the point of absurdity. These moves often impale the victim (somethings through the head) or otherwise inflict damage that would be fatal, but unless the recipient's Life Bar is depleted as a result, they'll recover almost instantly.
** Usually, this Trope only [[Gameplay and Story Segregation| applies to actual fights and is averted in cutscenes]]. For example, when Kano is shot through the face in ''11'' during a cutscene, he is most definitely killed. ''However'', there's another scene in ''11'' where Cassie survives being shot ''with a chaingun'' for pete's sake, and is still able to stand and take cover. She's wounded, yes, but by all logic she should have been torn in half.
* ''[[Fate/stay night|Fate Stay Night]]'': Shirou-"My body is made of blades"-Emiya.[[Nightmare Fuel|Both literally]] [[Determinator|and figuratively]].
* ''[[Portal 2]]'': Chell can take far more punishment than one would expect. So can her Long Fall Boots, apparently.
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* The snowboarders in ''[[SSX]]'' can take plenty of punishment. From hitting each other at the speed of a car to crashing after a massive jump, they always seem to be able to get back up uninjured. Crashing in such a fashion as to totally wipe out is incredibly rare.
* Everyone in [[Scribblenauts]]. Especially Maxwell himself. With the dizzying array of weapons in the game, you'd think SOMETHING would cause a lasting injury. But nope. [[Critical Existence Failure]] only here.
* Averted in ''Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare''. While Major Carmack, like every other Call of Duty NPC, can eat a nigh-infinite amount of bullets for breakfast, lunch, and dinner without feeling more than a need to stop and catch their breath every once in a while, during one level cutscene the [[Big Bad]] deliberately shoots him in the liver with a .45-caliber pistol while he's strapped to a table, noting that 'it should take you about twenty minutes to bleed to death' (which is an entirely realistic time estimate for that kind of injury). You spend the entire level desperately trying to carry him out of the enemy base and get him to a medical facility... and fail, with the transition cutscene to the next level being your party helplessly standing around and watching him bleed to death in the back of the truck. Approximately twenty minutes later.
== [[Web Comics]] ==▼
▲== Web Comics ==
* In ''[[Shortpacked]]'', [[Ronald Reagan|Ronnie]] [http://www.shortpacked.com/d/20060125.html gets shot] by a robber, then [http://www.shortpacked.com/d/20060201.html takes out the criminal] using nothing but [[Patriotic Fervor]].
* ''[[RPG World]]'' often [http://rpgworldcomic.com/d/20001201.html plays with] this trope.
* O-Chul from ''[[The Order of the Stick]]'' has survived being in an exploding castle whilst paralyzed, fighting a shark in a tank of acid, and (offscreen) having a staring contest with a basilisk. [[Word of God]] states that he has a constitution score in the mid twenties. The villains have taken to placing him in psychotically dangerous situations simply to bet on his survival. This is a man who has [[Chuck Norris]] jerky for breakfast.
{{quote|
'''Roy:''' Are you kidding?!? How did you get this??
'''O-Chul:''' One saving throw at a time. }}
* Steve from [[Life and Death]] in his fight with himself.
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** Bun-Bun has shrugged off attacks that would kill an ordinary human being, made all the more impressive by the fact that he's a ''rabbit''. At one point he was actually eaten alive by an alien, and simply burst his way out of the alien's stomach and proceeded to kick its butt. Bun-Bun has an origin even he is not clear about; he was bought from a Magical Store.
** Oasis might also count. She's been through many [[No One Could Survive That]] moments, including two explosions and a sniper bullet to the head. How she does this is not yet explained, and may or may not be a superpower she was given by Dr. Steve. Her "sister" Kusari has also survived being stabbed through the chest and even ''decapitated'', again by means unexplained.
* The entire cast of ''[[8-Bit Theater
** One member managed to survive having '''Australia''' dropped on them. That one member? The '''''[[Squishy Wizard|SQUISHY FREAKING WIZARD]]'''''.
** Fighter himself has survived several stabs to the back of the head courtesy of black mage and it isn't likely he's ever felt a thing. Hell, he even had one used as a lightning rod to channel a Lightning Spell directly into his brain. That particular spell actually INCREASED his intelligence instead of dealing any damage whatsoever!
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** And coming completely out of left field is quiet, unassuming, [[Mauve Shirt]] Airman Third Class Axel Higgs. He gets slammed into a stone wall hard enough to leave a man-shaped dent, brushes it off, {{spoiler|then cuts the insane clank that did the slamming with a wrench [[One-Hit Kill|in a single swipe.]]}} Although we're starting to get hints that he's not quite what he seems...
* [[The Ace|Ms. Jones]] from ''[[Gunnerkrigg Court]]''. Trick one: [http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/archive_page.php?comicID=380 a sword bounces from her face]. Trick two: [http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/archive_page.php?comicID=721 place a palm on a wall.] Close the fist, excavating what concrete happened to fit under the fingers. Who she is wasn't revealed yet, only that she's ''not'' a robot and [http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/archive_page.php?comicID=515 probably] not a "normal" magic-user either. We already saw one god and one valkyrie at the Court, though... And remember, androids aren't robots, and golems don't count as robots either.
* [[VG Cats]] parodied this with (amusingly enough, considering the Trope Picture) Zoro from ''[[One Piece]]''. Zoro blows off some physical damage taken by earlier attacks... only for Chopper to tell him that he's taken such internal damage from the attacks that [http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=226 most of his colon has to be removed].
* The title character of ''[[Princess Pi]]''. Watch as she survives [http://www.platypuscomix.net/princesspi/index.php?issue=1&page=5 an explosion], then ''two'' [http://www.platypuscomix.net/princesspi/index.php?issue=1&page=6 throws to the ground], then [http://www.platypuscomix.net/princesspi/index.php?issue=1&page=7 a gasoline fire].
* ''[[Memoria (2010 webcomic)|Memoria]]'': [http://memoria.valice.net/?p=303 The children realize their injuries should have been worse.]
* {{spoiler|Richard}} in ''[[Looking for Group]]'' may qualify as a double subversion, {{spoiler|given the huge number of [[Amusing Injuries]] he's survived with little ill effect. At first it seemed justified by the fact that he's undead, but recently some strips have dropped hints that he may be a flesh-and-blood human masquerading as an undead.}}
** Triple subversion! {{spoiler|His immortality is derived from some sort of magic which requires him to kill innocents and harvest their ashes.}}
* Among other things, Vane Black of ''[[Next Town Over]]'' has been shot through the hand and hanged, and the strongest reaction she has is frustration that John Henry Hunter is getting away because of such holdups.
* As part of being "The Gamer" -- a person with a video game interface to his life and the real world -- Han Jihan of the Korean web toon ''[[The Gamer]]'' possesses the power "The Gamer's Body", which turns any and all harm inflicted upon him into a simple deduction from his hit points, without any physical symptoms -- even [[Off with His Head|attempted decapitation]].
== [[Web Original]] ==▼
▲== Web Original ==
* Jacob Starr of ''[[Survival of the Fittest]]'' is (in)famous for this trope, to the point of handlers referring to its use as "The Jacob Treatment". The character in question, over the course of his tenure on the island, was [[Annoying Arrows|hit by arrows]], burned, [[Only a Flesh Wound|shot]], cut and stabbed, all without seeming to flinch or even lose any mobility.
** V3's Rick Holeman also took an absurd amount of injuries before dying. These included getting shot in the chest while still being able to run right over to his attacker, knock her over and starting to beat her down. All the while being stabbed with a knife - then he survived long enough to deliver some last words before finally kicking the bucket.
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** Pelvanida experiments are ''extremely'' hard to kill.
** [[Badass Normal|Alfred]] shrugged off at least two point blank gut shots from a pistol and continued engaging [[Scary Black Man|Marcus]] in a fist fight.
** Marcus is an ordinary human Dragonstorm agent. He was capable of taking on two beings with [[Super Strength]], even after he had been punched several times by them.
* Corbin from ''[[Splinter Cell Extinction]]'' gets surrounded by a SWAT team, sedated, takes a [[Magic Antidote]], his [[Mission Control]] provides him a distraction via [[Hollywood Hacking]] that leads to a [[Darkened Building Shootout]], Corbin gets shot in the chest while totally murdering everyone in the room, then beats the crap out of four more armed commandos and escapes.
* [[The Nostalgia Chick]] can get her head exploded and only need happy pills to cure the minor headache she got.
== [[Western Animation]] ==▼
▲== Western Animation ==
* In ''[[Teen Titans (animation)|Teen Titans]]'', Robin (being the [[Badass Normal]]) is the only character to ever ''occasionally'' receive minor injuries, but even those were for the sake of the plot (such as the episode "Fractured") and were invariably [[Hollywood Healing|gone by the next episode]] (Raven has [[Healing Hands]], so maybe that part is justified). Other than that, despite having no superpowers whatsoever, he is just as Made of Iron as the rest of his superpowered teammates, sometimes rivaling that of the literally Made of Iron Cyborg.
* ''[[The Venture Brothers]]''
** Brock Sampson has, in various episodes, survived being beaten, stabbed, shot, exposed to the vacuum of space, hit with a bus and buried alive after receiving a supposedly lethal dose of knockout darts. When the Phantom Limb has to perform emergency surgery on Brock to save his life in the episode "Hate Floats" he runs down a litany of all the things he removed.
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** To a lesser extent, Dr. Venture is also indestructible, having survived the loss of an arm (later reattached with no ill effects) and having an eye knocked out of its socket (he's forced to wear an eye patch for an episode, but next time we see him, [[Snap Back|all is well]]) and kidney removal. Both kidneys, by the way.
* Despite frequently being on the receiving end of, among other things, [[Elemental Powers|giant boulders and fire blasts]], the characters of ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]'' rarely receive anything more than cuts and bruises.
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** Just about all the main characters get blasted, smacked, slammed, falls, and runs through other notable dangerous hazards with nothing more then scrapes. Valerie's future self fell ''hundreds of feet from the sky and lives!''
** Danny himself, though partially justified through his ghost abilities. Still, given the number of times he gets shocked, blasted, slammed into walls or the ground and overall smacked around by every ghost EVER, he definitely falls into this trope.
* Everybody in the [[DCAU]], starting with ''[[Superman: The
* ''[[Duckman]]'' has Big Jack McBastard, who is trampled by a horse, eaten by vultures down to a skeleton, and then buried. At the end of the episode, he shows up to congratulate them on completing their job. When asked how he survived, he takes a drag on his cigar, and says "[[Noodle Incident|Long story]]."
* Pretty much any character from ''[[Ed, Edd 'n' Eddy]]''.
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* Major Bludd in ''[[G.I. Joe: Renegades]]'' is a fairly impressive example, taking about as much punishment in one episode as one could theoretically suffer in a kids show, and shrugging every bit of it off like nothing happened. To elaborate, he get punched, kicked, shuriken'd, knocked off a speeding truck ''through'' a billboard, smashed into crates, ''[[Forklift Fu|hit with a forklift]]'', buried under debris from a collapsing wall, and finally blown up with a shopping mall/ammo dump. Only after the last one [[Eye Scream|costs him an eye]] does he ''start'' to even [[It's Personal|hold a grudge]] against the Joes.
* [[Evil Old Folks|Grandfather]] from ''[[Codename: Kids Next Door]]'' is an extreme example. He survives {{spoiler|''[[Nigh Invulnerable|getting a giant flaming metal treehouse dropped on him]]''}} and shrugs it off like it were no big deal. Naturally, it's [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]].
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* The Ponies in ''[[My Little Pony:
▲* The Ponies in ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'' receive a lot of their respect among male fans by the constant demonstration that they're pretty much invulnerable. Pianos dropping on them, taking a full buffalo charge, getting hit by dragon breath, hitting a mountain at jet speed, nothing appears to even ''stun'' them for more than a few seconds. On an occasion where one character falls several hundred feet and is only just saved by what appears to be dumb luck people commented on Equestria's horrible health and safety regulations, only for someone else to point at that based on their demonstrated hardiness ponies could quite likely survive such falls. The first real injury in the series is quite clearly shown to be a compound fracture, which requires a ''[[Hollywood Healing|couple of days hospital stay and staying off the limb for a week]]''.
** Based on "Sonic Rainboom", ponies in this show can sustain ''over 1600 G-forces''. This is demonstrated by Rainbow Dash turning on a dime at Mach 1.
** And later we see a flashback where she does it as a young filly. She is a pegasus, and is implied that the earth ponies are the ones more physically able than the other races. If they have health/safety regulations, they are for other animals as the cows and donkeys they live with, because ponies surely doesn't need them.
** And the royal alicorns have durability that makes their mortal cousins look like paper-mache. In the season 4 finale Twilight Sparkle is literally punched sideways through a ''mountain'' by Tirek, and doesn't so much as muss her mane. And in the season 5 finale, the Celestia of an alternate timeline is implied to still be alive despite having been ''banished to the center of the sun''.
* [[Archer|Sterling Archer]] is virtually impervious to pain, most recently walking away from a space shuttle crash unscathed.
== [[Real Life]] ==▼
* [[
▲== Real Life ==
** During the battle of Holtzwihr in France, Murphy's company (of which 19 out of the original 128 men remained in fighting condition) was attacked by tanks and infantry. He ordered his men to withdraw while he remained and directed artillery from his forward position. When the Germans got close, he climbed onto a still-burning tank destroyer and opened fire with its .50 caliber machine gun. Almost totally exposed to enemy fire, he nonetheless [[One-Man Army|single-handedly]] held off ''tanks and infantry'' -- '''''for an hour''''' (during which he was [[Immune to Bullets|shot in the leg]]) until the phone line connecting him with artillery got cut and he ran out of ammo. He then made his way back to his company, [[Only a Flesh Wound|refused medical attention]], and ''organized his company in a counterattack,'' which forced the Germans to withdraw. At the time he had just recovered from being shot in the arm and the day before had been hit by shrapnel from a nearby mortar strike that killed two members of his squad. He received a Medal of Honor for his actions during this battle, and this isn't even the most ridiculously [[Badass]] thing he did during WWII. Not bad for a guy who was 5'6" and
▲* [[wikipedia:Audie Murphy|Audie Murphy]]. There's no way to list the ways in which this man was made of Adamantium without repeating everything on the linked page.
▲** During the battle of Holtzwihr in France, Murphy's company (of which 19 out of the original 128 men remained in fighting condition) was attacked by tanks and infantry. He ordered his men to withdraw while he remained and directed artillery from his forward position. When the Germans got close, he climbed onto a still-burning tank destroyer and opened fire with its .50 caliber machine gun. Almost totally exposed to enemy fire, he nonetheless [[One-Man Army|single-handedly]] held off ''tanks and infantry'' -- '''''for an hour''''' (during which he was [[Immune to Bullets|shot in the leg]]) until the phone line connecting him with artillery got cut and he ran out of ammo. He then made his way back to his company, [[Only a Flesh Wound|refused medical attention]], and ''organized his company in a counterattack,'' which forced the Germans to withdraw. At the time he had just recovered from being shot in the arm and the day before had been hit by shrapnel from a nearby mortar strike that killed two members of his squad. He received a Medal of Honor for his actions during this battle, and this isn't even the most ridiculously [[Badass]] thing he did during WWII. Not bad for a guy who was 5'6" and 130lbs and lied about his age to enlist.
* Shaolin monks practice a rigorous regimen known as "Iron Body Technique", allowing wooden clubs to be broken across their bodies, limbs and ''heads'' with little effect, as well as great resistance to piercing weapons. One of the most extreme examples involved a single monk bending two spears (with metal heads) almost double against his throat and having a baseball bat broken on his back at the same time.
** Those clubs are weakened to avoid breaking bones. (They still hurt like hell, though.)
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* [[Truth in Television]]: It's possible to survive being stabbed in a non-vital area because the damage is mostly localized, so first aid and adequate medical care can allow someone to live without any detrimental effects (beyond the time it takes to heal). Bullets which are not designed to expand upon impact also can be survived, since the wound cavity is only as large as the bullet is..
* In February 2008, British marine Matthew Croucher [[Jumping on a Grenade|jumped on a grenade]], was blown across the compound, and then got up with only a concussion. His backpack apparently took "most" of the blast, but still.
** The USMC's Jacklyn Lucas smothered two grenades (one was a dud) with his body on Iwo Jima in 1945. The 17-year-old had no body armour. He died in 2008.
*** Lucas also survived jumping out of a plane when both his parachutes failed to open on a training exercise.
* While running for his third term of office, [[Theodore Roosevelt]] was shot in the chest by a would-be assassin as he was on his way to deliver a speech. Roosevelt, never one to be deterred by something so trivial as a bullet wound, went on to deliver the entire fifty-page speech while bleeding from the gut, bothering only to add the following preface:
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** Bear in mind that TR delivered the speech ''from memory'', as the bullet had gone ''through'' the speech, folded in his pocket. This slowed the bullet enough to probably save his life, but left the speech with a hole through it and soaked in blood. He also claimed that he would be giving a shorter speech than intended. [[Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness|He went on to speak for 90 minutes.]]
** Surprisingly (or perhaps ''not'' surprisingly, given who we're talking about), he went on to place second in the election.
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**** He also kept a badger as a pet. Not a trained one, considering most people complained of it running around savaging visitors ankles.
*** According to some, he took up judo after he was blinded boxing, because it wasn't as rough.
** In short, there's a reason why ''[[Cracked.com]]'' has him as the most badass manliest-man ever.
* During the Hundred Years War between England and France, English King Henry V was supposedly '''hit in the face with an arrow'''. He not only survived both the impact of the arrow and the surgery to remove it from his face, he proceeded to get right back up and return to beating the hell out of the French until he seized the Crown of France.
** It was at the Battle of Shrewsbury in 1403 when Henry was 16 and still only a prince. John Bradmore, the doctor who removed the arrow, wrote about it -- "struck by an arrow next to his nose on the left side"; "The which arrow entered at an angle (ex traverso), and after the arrow shaft was extracted, the head of the aforesaid arrow remained in the furthermost part of the bone of the skull for the depth of six inches." The aftercare took several weeks. Henry won the battle, which was against English rebels.
* Henry V has nothing on the circus strong man Joe Greenstein, a.k.a. the Mighty Atom. He was shot in the face with a .38 revolver from 30 feet away. The bullet was flattened by the impact with his skull, and caused no serious injury. He was out of the hospital that evening. This is in addition to a career based on feats like bursting multiple chains at once by flexing his chest, bending 1/2 steel bars, and driving nails through several sheets of metal with his hands.
* Xiahou Dun of Wei did the whole "take an arrow to the face" thing first, when one of Lü Bu's men shot him in the eye at the Battle of Xiapi. Anyone else would have been on the ground moaning in pain, but he got back up, then proceeded to rip the arrow {{spoiler|''[[Eye Scream|and his own eye]]'' [[Eye Scream|out, swallowed the eye in one bite]]}}, found the poor bastard who had the audacity of plonking him, and ''ended him'' in rather brutal fashion.
* Another example from ''Romance of the Three Kingdoms'' involves Guan Yu, who once took a poisoned arrow in his
** Note that these stories are from Romance of the Three Kingdoms which is not necessarily historically accurate, but instead a somewhat romanticized version of history.
* Richard Hammond, who crashed a jet-powered racecar at 288 miles per hour and not only ''survived'' the incident (which many say would have decapitated a taller
* [http://www.badassoftheweek.com/scaeva.html Marcus Cassius Scaeva.] To quote:
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* Mr Harishchandra Shiverhankar, one of the survivors of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, ''[[Slashed Throat|had a blade slit his neck]]''. Obviously he is still around to tell the tale. So neck-slitting is no guaranteed kill, despite what fiction may have convinced us.
* Phineas Gage, a railroad worker who was impaled by a steel bar through the head, removing about 1/3 of his brain. He survived for twelve years (although his personality changed significantly, turning him into a textbook case in neurological studies).
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* [[Andrew Jackson]], 7th president of the United States, dueled quite a bit. In one duel, he actually allowed his opponent to take the first shot, then shot and killed his opponent while he was reloading. Repeat: in a contest where the object is to kill your opponent, Jackson ''volunteered'' to be shot at first. Apparently, his opponent had such a reputation as a duelist that he saw no purpose in trying to draw faster, so he accepted the rapid-but-badly-aimed first shot in order to retaliate with an aimed (and therefore lethal) shot. Keep in mind, Jackson got shot in the ribs, with the bullet so close to his heart no doctor would try to remove it for fear of killing him. Yet he walked away from the duel, acting like nothing had happened. Also a real life example of [[Authority Equals Asskicking]].
** Jackson actually had ''several'' bullets, a few arrowheads, and a ''bayonet tip'' lodged permanently in his body. It was said that he "rattled like a bag of marbles" when he walked around. (There's a story about Jackson digging a bullet out of his own arm during a Cabinet meeting, no form of pain relief, then mailing it back to a former duel opponent with a note along the lines of "I believe this belongs to you". This ''could'' be apocryphal, but given ''who'' the story is about....)
*** According to ''[[Cracked
*** Also under the category of "get post-op infection and die".
** Then there was [https://web.archive.org/web/20081024234731/http://www.americanheritage.com/people/articles/web/20070130-richard-lawrence-andrew-jackson-assassination-warren-r-davis.shtml the time Richard Lawrence tried to assassinate then-President Jackson]. Two pistols misfired, and Jackson promptly beat Lawrence so thoroughly with his cane that his aides had to physically restrain him. Jackson was 67 at the time, and reportedly having respiratory problems.
*** The respiratory problem is the only reason that the two aides were able to stop him before he added another name to his kill tally.
* Adrian Carton De Wiart... [[wikipedia:Adrian Carton de Wiart|just look him up]].
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** And less then a year later, Giffords was back on the job.
* William George Barker of the RAF citation for the Victoria Cross says "On the morning of the 27th October, 1918, this officer observed an enemy two-seater over the F'oret de Mormal. He attacked this machine, and after a short burst it broke up in the air. At the same time a Fokker biplane attacked him, and-he was wounded in the right thigh, but managed, despite this, to shoot down the enemy aeroplane in flames. He then found, himself in the middle of a large formation of Fokkers, who attacked him from all directions; and was again severely wounded in the left thigh; but succeeded in driving down two of the enemy in a spin. He lost consciousness after this, and his machine fell out of control. On recovery he found himself being again attacked heavily by a large formation, and singling out one machine, he deliberately charged and drove it down in flames. During this fight his left elbow was shattered and he again fainted, and on regaining consciousness he found himself still being attacked, but, notwithstanding that he was now severely wounded in both legs and his left arm shattered, he dived on the nearest machine and shot it down in flames. Being greatly exhausted, he dived out of the fight to regain our lines, but was met by another formation, which attacked and endeavoured to cut him off, but after a hard fight he succeeded in breaking up this formation and reached our lines, where he crashed on landing."
* Nicholas Alkemade was a tail gunner for the RAF during the Second World War. On the night of 24 March 1944 his Lancaster was attacked and set on fire by a Junkers Ju 88.
* Manfred Freiherr von
** His eventual demise was also notable. The .303 machine gun bullet that hit his chest ruptured his heart and severely damaged his
* Everyone from the following ''[[Cracked.com]]'' articles: [http://www.cracked.com/article_17573_7-fatal-injuries-that-people-somehow-survived.html 7 Fatal Injuries That People Somehow Survived] and [http://www.cracked.com/article_16497_7-people-who-cheated-death-then-kicked-it-in-balls.html 7 People Who Cheated Death, Then Kicked It in the Balls].
* A couple of years ago in California, a man emptied his revolver into his lawyer at point blank range in front of the courthouse. Not only did the lawyer not die, but he was even able to casually walk away when the gunman ran out of ammo. The tail end of the incident was caught on video and circulated around on the internet. The lawyer was not wearing armor and he was indeed hit several times (including being shot through the neck), but you wouldn't know it from the way he seems to shrug it off in the video.
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20121231032818/http://web.orange.co.uk/article/quirkies/stabbed_man_orders_coffee This guy]. When your first reaction to getting stabbed is to call not an ambulance but ''the police'', and then your second is to ''walk a mile to go and order a coffee''...
* This is a common trait of Wombats, which is probably the tank of [[Australian Wildlife|Australia]]. It is one of the few animals where you are advised to swerve to avoid because hitting one will generally wreck the car.
* Similarly, Moose. If you're driving anything smaller than a loaded transport truck in the Canadian Shield and hit a moose, it will walk away. You will need a new car. (They've been known to walk away from collisions with transport trucks too, but less often).
* [[wikipedia:John Levitow|Airman First Class John Levitow, USAF]], lowest ranking airman to ever win the Medal of Honor. He was a loadmaster on an [[Death From Above|AC-47]] [[More Dakka|Gunship]] over Vietnam when his plane was hit by a stray artillery shell. Riddled with shrapnel, he saw a similarly wounded crewmate at risk of falling out of the open cargo door of the damaged plane. He crawled over to the crewmate and dragged him to safety, only to realize that a magnesium flare, used for night-time illumination of the battlefield, had fallen from its rack and begun to ignite, while rolling around on the floor amidst the cans of ammo used for the guns aboard the plane. Levitow threw himself upon the flare and body-dragged it to the door, where he threw it free of the plane. He died more than thirty years later of cancer.
* [[wikipedia:Simo Hayha|Simo Hayha]], a Finnish sniper in the Winter War (and current page image for [[Cold Sniper]]) spent months in severe winter conditions (-20 to -40 degrees Celsius) hiding in snow killing Russian soldiers and officers using his bolt-action rifle with iron sights and a sub-machine gun. The Russians dubbed him the White Death and often employed artillery fire, tanks and counter snipers against him to no avail. His confirmed kill count was 705 when he was finally hit with a headshot by an enemy soldier. He recovered and died of natural causes by the age of 97.
** [[Badass|And he killed the guy who shot him in the head a few moments later.]]
* [[wikipedia:Tardigrade|Tardigrade, also known as "Water Bear"]] is the toughest animal on Earth. 1 millimeter in length, it can be found in the Antarctic, on the summits of the Himalayas, in the deep sea as well as in your backyard. The list of conditions it can withstand includes near absolute zero temperatures (1 Kelvin) as well as temperatures well over the water boiling point (100 degree Celsius), pressure ranging from 0 (vacuum) to 1200 atmospheres. It can also survive more than 10 years of dehydration and 1000 times the doses of radiation lethal to a human. In 2007 tardigrades were flown to the Earth's orbit and exposed to outer space conditions for 10 days. They survived.
** And had sex. In space.
* Juliane Köpcke, the 17 year old schoolgirl who was the sole survivor when her plane broke up in mid-air above Peru. She fell more than two miles but only broke her collarbone. She then trekked for 9 days through the rainforest to find help. [[Survivor Guilt|Some scars remain though.]]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20120506012805/http://www.marines.mil/unit/imef/Pages/MarineabsorbsIEDblast,walksaway.aspx Cpl. Matt Garst] stepped on an IED, which blew up, sending him flying 15 feet. Immediately standing up, he yelled at his squad, "What the f-- are you looking at? Get on the cordon!"
* There was a newspaper article about a cute little kitten that liked to play in the laundry basket, hiding beneath the clothes. One day, it was laundry time and the kitten ended up inside the [[Nightmare Fuel|washer machine]]. The poor thing spend the whole cycle in there before its owner heard the screams and came to the rescue. What happened to the little kitten? Absolutely nothing, just the shock.
* In 2010 a Frenchman fell over 75 feet into the Grand Canyon but somehow survived.
* [[wikipedia:Deinococcus radiodurans|These]] [[wikipedia:Thermococcus gammatolerans|bacteria]] are [[I Love Nuclear Power|immune to radiation]]. Several other animals are capable of surviving crazy high and low temperatures and pressures that would kill most anything else; these are known as [[wikipedia:Extremophile|extremophiles]], and the most famous may be the [[wikipedia:Tardigrade|water bear]].
* Subverted with the [[wikipedia:RMS Titanic|RMS Titanic]]. It was claimed to be "unsinkable" by its owners. Pretty [[Incredibly Lame Pun|Ironic]], huh?
* [[World War II]] Airman [[wikipedia:Henry E. Erwin|Henry Erwin]]. A phosphorus flare exploded prematurely in his aircraft, leaving him blinded and burned. He knew that if the flare stayed where it was, it would burn through the floor of the aircraft and set off the bombs in the cargo bay, killing all 11 people on board. So he picked up the burning flare ''with his bare hands'', crawled into the cockpit with it, and threw it out the window, saving everyone. He received the Medal of Honor for his bravery. Doctors expected him to die from his horrific injuries, but he recovered and lived to age 80.
* Colloquially, NHL players who make it through a season without an injury are referred to as "Iron Men".
* Brett Michaels from ''Poison''. You don't survive an emergency appendectomy, a brain hemorrhage, '''AND''' a hole in the heart all within six weeks if you're not this.
* RAF pilot Group Captain Sir Douglas Bader lost both his legs in a fairly horrific aerobatics accident, but recovered and tried to return to work as a pilot on the grounds that his two tin legs were perfectly good for the job. He was retired on medical grounds, but returned to the service as a fighter pilot in [[World War II]], becoming a recognised fighter ace. When he was forced to bail out over occupied France and captured as a prisoner of war, he made so many escape attempts that the Germans actually threatened to take away his prosthetics unless he stopped. [[
* British Airways Flight 5390 was going to be a routine flight for Timothy "Tim" Lancaster and his crew as they were bound for Málaga Airport in Spain. But shortly after takeoff, one of the BAC One-Eleven's windscreens separated from the plane, causing an explosive decompression which shot Lancaster partway out of the plane. His body was pinned against the window frame for twenty minutes while Alastair Atchison, the co-pilot, fought to get the plane to safety during whch his comrades held on to Tim's body. Three-hundred-mile-per-hour winds and frostbite battered Tim to a pulp, leading to his colleagues to assume that he was good as dead. They did contemplate pushing his body out of the way, but ruled it out as not only was throwing Tim's (seemingly-dead) body out a disservice to his relatives, his body would end up striking one of the engines, making the situation even worse. Atchison managed to land the plane with all of the passengers unharmed, but the crew were understandably sorry for whatever fate Tim had gone through. To the crew's surprise and relief, Tim had somehow managed to survive the ordeal of having to ride face-first into violent winds and sub-zero frost, with frostbite, bruising, shock, and fractures to his right arm, left thumb, and right wrist. And after less than five months of recuperating from his injuries, Tim went back to service, piloting until he retired in 2008.
▲* Olympic skier Hermann Maier's [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yu2kexdW3a8 spectacular crash] at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. High winds caused an unintentional ski jump. He flew through the air, hit the ground headfirst at 70 miles per hour, bounced, tumbled, and smashed through two wire-and-slat fences before coming to a stop. And then ''he picked himself up and walked back up the hill'', rubbing his shoulder (he also had a minor leg injury). A few days later, he won gold medals in two events. [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sports/longterm/olympics1998/sport/alpine/articles/wilbon14.htm A news article about the event] began with the words, "The Tough Man contest is over. Forever. The winner is Hermann Maier." And he almost lost his leg after a traffic accident but continues to
▲* Hockey player Gordie Howe was said to get a goal, an assist, and a fight in every game. He continued playing in the NHL into his fifties, even through its notoriously violent era, long enough to play with his grown sons. After his retirement, he even suited up for a charity game in the minors, whereupon a local radio DJ offered a large cash prize to any player on the opposing team who fought Howe, by then in his seventies. No-one was stupid enough to take up the offer.
▲* In a similar vein, Toronto Maple Leaf Bobby Baun scored the game winning goal of game six of the 1963-1964 Stanley Cup finals after sustaining a broken ankle earlier in the game.
▲* [https://web.archive.org/web/20131105133700/http://www.classicalfencing.com/articles/bloody.php This classical fencing article] discusses how unreliable a sword-inflicted wound could be in ending a duel.
▲* Jake Brown, 2007 X Games skateboard contender, lost control of his board and fell 45 feet to the deck below (clip is [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Q3PNj3tRW4 here]). After a dazed few minutes, he ''got up'' and was able to walk out under his own power.
▲* George Chuvalo, a former heavyweight boxer, was known to have one of the toughest chins in history. He faced some of the most devastating punchers in history and was never knocked down as a professional in 93 fights (his two technical knockout losses came when the referee stopped the fights). In fact in his fight against George Foreman (a man whose punch normally [[Megaton Punch|sends mere mortals to the moon]]), Chuvalo complained to the referee after the fight was stopped.
▲* Though both have become more vulnerable as they've aged, [[wikipedia:Mark Hunt|Mark Hunt]] and [[wikipedia:Antônio Rodrigo Nogueira|Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira]] were each known for this. Hunt was known for shrugging off life-threatening strikes as mere annoyances, while Nogueira was known for taking immense amounts of punishment, but still somehow managing to not only survive, but to ''win''.
▲* Bert Trautmann, football (soccer) goalkeeper active in the 1950s. During the 1956 FA Cup Final, he was injured in a collision with an opponent. With 17 minutes to go, and no substitutes allowed, he shook off the injury and continued. He saved several goals, preserving his team's lead and helping to win the match. The injury? Merely a broken neck.
▲* Jack Youngblood played the entire 1979 playoffs and Super Bowl, AND the meaningless Pro Bowl game with a broken tibula. Because of this, he was called “the John Wayne of football”.
▲* Steve Yzerman played on essentially on one leg due to having a blown out right knee during the 2002 Stanley Cup playoffs.
▲* Donovan McNabb played on a broken ankle for most of a 2002 regular season game.
▲* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtFvR7QRmow Fedor Emilianenko vs. Kevin Randleman]. Fedor got hit with possibly the most perfect suplex in history, impacting the mat with all of his own weight plus all of Randleman's weight directly onto his spinal column. He calmly turned around and made Randleman tap out.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Injury Tropes]]
[[Category:Fight Scene]]
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[[Category:Rule of Perception]]
[[Category:Plot Armor]]
▲[[Category:Made of Iron]]
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