Made of Iron: Difference between revisions

* 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.}}

** 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]]

** 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 From Hell|practice]].

'''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.]]

* ''[[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:

* 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. Rock]] often takes a hell of a beating. This trope also applies, unsurprisingly, to his [[Arch Enemy]], "The Iron Major".

** 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'':

** 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.

** 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 abuse--as his drug-dosing doctor pal calls it, "the tapestry of pain". His ability to withstand pain and death is pretty much supernatural, as he admits himself:

* 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.

* 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]].

* 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]]:

'''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.

* ''[[Conan the Barbarian]]''

** In [[Robert E. Howard]]'s story "A Witch Shall Be Born", the witch survives exposure as a baby.

** 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.

* [[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.

* 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.

* 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]].

** 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.

* ''[[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.

'''O-Chul:''' One saving throw at a time. }}

* Steve from [[Life and Death]] in his fight with himself.

* ''[[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.

** 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.

* 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]].

* 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]]''.

*** 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:

** 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.

* 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 man -- there's a reason he's [[Fan Nickname|called the Hamster]]), but recovered from all his injuries with no lasting damage (though he did joke about a new and inexplicable fondness for celery attributed to brain damage) and made a triumphant return to the show ''[[Top Gear]]'' the following season.

* [http://www.badassoftheweek.com/scaeva.html Marcus Cassius Scaeva.] To quote:

* 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).