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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. This is the ability to shrug off blows that would disintegrate a human body when you technically shouldn't be able to. So Robots, Mutants, Mages, [[Ki Attacks|Ki using Martial Artists]] ''do not count.'' Having a story-enabled reason for not being a bloody smear immediately takes one out of the running for this trope. It can also be argued that certain [[Required Secondary Powers]] may also induce this. (For example, how can someone whose sole power is [[Playing with Fire|throwing flame]] take being thrown off a multi-story building?) If someone does not literally have "increased strength and endurance" in their portfolio, then they count. The line really gets fuzzy between [[Badass Normal]] and [[Charles Atlas Superpower]] where somehow a "normal" person has become something that does not exist in [[Real Life]].
 
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 consequences -- deathconsequences—death can only happen with intentionally-lethal weapons, like swords or guns. And even with [[Set Swords to Stun|normally-lethal weapons]], the hero may intentionally inflict [[Only a Flesh Wound|flesh wounds]] instead of shooting to kill.
 
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 hero -- thehero—the [[Implacable Man|Terminator-type]] that can walk unscathed through a bomb-blast, and the hero who gets hurt badly but somehow always manages to come back and triumph in the end.
 
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|Rasputinian Deaths]]s. If two Made of Iron characters go up against each other, it often leads to [[How Much More Can He Take?]] fights. Not to be confused with [[Robot Maid|Maid of Iron]].
 
A character who is Made of Iron isn't necessarily literally [[Chrome Champion|made]] of [[Animated Armor|iron]].
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== Anime & Manga ==
* 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'' [[Made of Iron]] (its territory being an old British sea fort).
* ''[[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.
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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 bleeding -- thebleeding—the wound was far more serious than he'd intended.
** 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]]'' can have their survival after ridiculous injuries justified by their practice of [[Supernatural Martial Arts]] (which is also the generally accepted excuse for them having a [[Healing Factor]] or for those who are outright [[Nigh Invulnerable]]).
** 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 going -- evengoing—even before [[Healing Factor|simply healing the damage]]. Fans have theorized, after seeing him survive with mere fleshwounds against Ryû Kumon's [[Razor Wind|Vacuum Blade]] attacks (which, for comparison, cut a 10 meter tall solid bronze Buddha statue into pieces), that he is, for all practical purposes, bulletproof. Perhaps one of the best examples might be the Golden Pair story arc: when Ranma [[Disproportionate Retribution|attacks]] [[Handsome Lech|Mikado Sanzen'in]] for stealing [[Gender Bender|his]] [[First Kiss]], the resultant "battle" has Ranma headbutt the ice-rink so hard he buries himself in it up to his shoulders, pull himself out without even being fazed (which startles the hell out of his opponent), trip over when making an attack and skid across the length of the rink, ''on his face'', at such speed that he smashes through the rink-wall when he crashes into it, and finally getting pulled into Mikado's "Dance of Death", in which he is repeatedly pummeled on for several minutes straight before being ejected out at high speed and landing hard on his head. He still manages to somersault back onto his feet when asked to stand up, only to slip and fall back down again. By the time he's gotten home, he's fine save for an assortment of scrapes and bruises, needing just a bit of disinfectant and a few bandaids.
** 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 absorbed -- atabsorbed—at least momentarily. Then he was poisoned.
** 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''.
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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|Magical Girls]]s are losing if they and [[Clothing Damage|their costumes have gotten slightly dirty]].
* ''[[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.
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* ''[[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, though -- hethough—he just pulls himself out of the wall he was embedded in and [[Idiot Hero|comes right back for more]].
* ''[[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 [[Determinator|determinatorsdeterminator]]s of ''[[Fairy Tail]]''. Special mention goes to Erza, who seems that she can survive nearly everything.
* 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]].
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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|Empty Shells]]s. The true weak spot is their Soul Gems, which are more [[Soul Jar|meaningful in name]].}} This is also [[Invoked]] by Kyubey, the person who forms the contracts with the girls and knows full well what will happen {{spoiler|if their souls weren't in compact objects and are in their person at the time of their death.}}
* ''[[To Aru Majutsu no Index]]'' has Touma, who's odd ability to keep going after taking wounds that would likely kill most people actually ''scares an enemy into insanity'' (of course there was a bit of acting involved with an epic [[Evil Laugh]].) Also to an extent Tsuchimikaido Motoharu, who, since he is somewhat of an esper, essentially starts self-destructing when he uses magic, yet can still stay alive since his esper power is level 0 auto-regeneration; just enough to keep him alive.
* ''[[Hayate the Combat Butler]]''
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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 Iron -- sheIron—she survives being hit by the Explorer, being smashed through a few walls, and even being slammed between the Explorer and a solid concrete wall. She was still beating the crap out of John after all this.
** 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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** 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 ''[[Goldeneye]]'', somehow, some way, Janus is not killed by being inside a chemical weapons plant when it exploded... even though ''he is standing right next to the gas tanks with the explosives on them''. The worst he walked away with was slight scarring on the side of his face. Then he survived {{spoiler|what seems to be a ''1-mile-fall'' from a giant parabolic antenna and into an empty, concrete dam. Granted, he wasn't in great shape, but he was still alive.}} How a regular human could survive this is a downright impossibility. It took {{spoiler|the entire antenna collapsing on top of his head}} to finally kill him.
* 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 Octopus -- aOctopus—a comparatively weak, fleshy human -- canhuman—can take more than a single punch to the jaw from the super-strong hero.
* 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 shot -- asshot—as it turns out, he has a chain mail vest made to stop bullets -- butbullets—but there is no explanation how, after the shot knocked him off the spider, he was able to survive falling 5 stories to land on his back.
* ''[[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.
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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 [[Retcon|retconnedretcon]]ned into supernatural [[Nigh Invulnerability]].
* ''[[Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen]]''. Sam Witwicky gets dropped a few stories, tossed around by giant robots, caught in the middle of friendly fire -- onlyfire—only the latter actually has any effect on him. Despite having a Mk84 bomb which causes lethal fragmentation up to 400 yards dropped about 100 feet behind him.
* 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 50mph50 mph and not only survives but continues to fight.
* ''[[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 abuse--asabuse—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:
{{quote|''Walter's boys just gave me a beating that will have ''them'' waking up sore in the morning. I should be on death’s door. Walter thinks so. [[Breaking the Fourth Wall|And you probably think so too.]] ''}}
* 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.
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** 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|Action Girls]]s and spends months recovering from all of his injuries.
* 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.
 
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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|Kamen Riders]]s are just as bad. Just ask Kamen Rider Ichigo, Nigo and Riderman, who survived ''nuclear explosions to the face'' and come back just in time to aid other Riders! Then there's [[Kamen Rider Fourze]], who, in his cameo in a [[Kamen Rider OOO]] movie, made his arrival by ''crash landing from low orbit'' '''HEAD-FIRST''', and just hopped up from the ground, dusted himself off and went to aid OOO. All he got out of that was a mild headache.
* ''[[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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== Sports ==
* 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 -- hiswin—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.
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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 this--eventhis—even a relatively fragile psychic with no defensive powers is capable of taking a few machine-gun clips to the face with no lasting ill effect. And this goes double for the enemies, ''triple'' for Archvillain/Hero-class foes.
** 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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** 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, though -- ifthough—if he were humanly durable, then the game would be unrepentantly hard.
** Perhaps the best example is also the first example, the one and only [[Doom|Doomguy]]guy, who manages to survive everything hell can throw at him.
*** 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]] -- such—such as ''[[Counter-Strike]]'' and ''[[Operation Flashpoint]]'' -- where—where it's possible for anyone to die from one gunshot wound, even if it's "just" to the torso.
* 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|Super Soldiers]]s.
* 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.
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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 Animated Series|Superman the Animated Series]]''. The first seasons of ''[[Batman: The Animated Series|Batman the Animated Series]]'' were fairly tame, but starting with Superman and continuing through ''The New Batman Adventures,'' ''[[Batman Beyond]],'' and ''[[Justice League Unlimited]],'' supposedly human characters (and not just the [[Badass Normal|Badass Normals]]s) routinely take abuse that should kill or cripple everybody involved.
* ''[[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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== Real Life ==
* [[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 130lbs130 lbs 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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* 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 arm -- thearm—the best surgeon in the land was forced to cut the wound wide open, remove the arrowhead, and remove every shred of poisoned tissue, to the extent of scraping the poison off the bone. What did Guan Yu do all this time? Go a few rounds of Go with his good arm.
** 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 man -- thereman—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:
{{quote|''He was getting nailed from all sides during the fight -- his helmet was destroyed, his shield was bristling with arrows, he was stabbed in the shoulder with a javelin, hit in thigh by a sword, and fucking shot in the left eye socket with a goddamned arrow. Amazingly, this only made him more ripshit pissed off. He pulled the fucking arrow out of his own eye, threw it down, and resumed with the asskickings like a blood-lusted cyclops.''}}
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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. Alkemade -- whoseAlkemade—whose parachute had been consumed by the flames -- choseflames—chose to jump rather than burn to death. He fell for 18,000 feet, eventually crashing through pine trees and coming to rest in a snowdrift. Despite the fall, [[Not the Fall That Kills You|and the sudden stop at the end]], he suffered only minor injuries. His captors refused to believe that he was not a spy, until the wreckage of his Lancaster was found. He spent the rest of the war as a POW, and died of natural causes in 1987.
* Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen -- theRichthofen—the Red Baron. He was shot in the back of the head with an aircraft machine gun in late 1917. The bullet ricocheted off his skull, doing no permanent damage... at least physically. Those who knew him said he was a changed man after that day though, and may have led to his death in April, 1918.
** His eventual demise was also notable. The .303 machine gun bullet that hit his chest ruptured his heart and severely damaged his lungs -- alungs—a wound that should incapacitate a man instantly and lead to death within a couple of seconds. Not if you are the Red Baron. He managed to land and bring his Fokker plane to a full stop safely before moving on to the next world.
* 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.
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