Made of Iron: Difference between revisions

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]].

 

 

A character who is Made of Iron isn't necessarily literally [[Chrome Champion|made]] of [[Animated Armor|iron]].

* Most of the cast of ''[[Ranma ½ (Manga)|Ranma One Half]]'' 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 -- 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.

** It does not, however, explain [[Kid Samurai|Tatewaki]] [[Lord Error-Prone|Kunô]].

* ''[[Black Lagoon (Anime)|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]].

** 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 -- 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. }}

** 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''.

* ''[[Berserk (Manga)|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 (Anime)|Rurouni Kenshin]]'' can take inhuman amounts abuse with relatively little effect.

** 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 (Light Novel)|Durarara]]''

** 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.''

* ''[[Allison and Lillia (Anime)|Allison and Lillia]]'': Used to absurd effect in the last episode. {{spoiler|Treize was on the roof of a train that ''crashed off a cliff into a ravine''.}} He was missing and presumed dead... then {{spoiler|he shows up a couple weeks later in good enough shape to ''dance''.}}

* [[Jason Statham]] as Chev Cellios in ''[[Crank (Film)|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|retconned]] into supernatural [[Nigh Invulnerability]].

* 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 (TV)|Charlies Angels]]: Full Throttle'' is full of these moments. The [[Demi Moore]] character is thrown from a car moving 40 or 50mph and not only survives but continues to fight.

* ''[[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]] 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.

** 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.

** Day 2: Survives a plane crash in the first half of the season. Is later captured and tortured nearly to death.

** 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)|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 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.

** The current ultimate example of this is Commissar Yarrik. All of the above, then, if you actually manage to get through all of his wounds, he has an ability that lets him ''ignore death'' two times out of three. Roll well and Yarrik will survive anything and everything. [[Determinator]] does not begin to describe it.

** 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.

* The ''[[Warhammer 40000 (Tabletop Game)|Warhammer 40000]]'' series of ''[[Dark Heresy (Tabletop Game)|Dark Heresy]]'', ''[[Rogue Trader (Tabletop Game)|Rogue Trader]]'', ''[[Tabletop Game]]/Deathwatch'', and ''[[Black Crusade (Tabletop Game)|Black Crusade]]'' zig-zag this trope. Normal humans are absolutely squishy. Space Marines and many of the ''core monsters'', however, can be shot over and over by normal humans and ignore all damage that does not trigger the game's [[Critical Hit]] system, Righteous Fury. For a normal human, a weapon which does 4-13 damage is considered insanely lethal and able to tear arms off, while Space Marines typically wield armor piercing grenade launchers which do 7-25 damage. A typical Ork may ignore about 10 damage per hit, making them nearly unkillable with lasguns, while powerful Tyranid creatures can often ignore 12-18 damage from toughness plus another 6-10 from armor, meaning even bolters often can't even score [[Scratch Damage]] most of the time.

* ''[[GURPS (Tabletop Game)|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 Legend of Zelda]]'': Link seems to get this. He gets battered about with swords ''as big as he is'' and just shrugs it off. If he takes enough damage, he acts tired when he stands still. That's the extent of the damage.

** [[The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess|King Bulblin]] is no slouch, either. For a humanoid mini-boss with no magical protection, he handles being repeatedly sliced, diced, and thrown off bridges pretty damn well.

** 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.

*** And, finally, he was hit by a ''car'' and hurled 30 feet across the street, right into a metal pole, but stood up and walked away with just ''a sprained ankle''. Did we forget anything?

* 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 ''[[Air Force Delta]] Strike'', some player aircraft have 4000+ hit points.

* [[Lugaru (Video Game)|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).

* ''[[Paper Mario the Thousand Year Door (Video Game)|Paper Mario the Thousand Year Door]]'' has a literal example in Chapter 3 with the Iron Clefts/Armored Harriers/Iron Adonis Twins who [[Nigh Invulnerable|cannot be beaten]] until Mario gets his [[Sword of Plot Advancement|Yoshi partner]].

* 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 (Video Game)|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.

** [[Assassin's Creed II (Video Game)|Ezio]] and possibly [[Assassin's Creed (Video Game)|Altaïr]] could count for this as well. Best seen in the trailer for ''[[Assassin's Creed Revelations (Video Game)|Assassin's Creed: Revelations]]'', during which Ezio, [[One-Man Army|while working his way through an army one by one]], headbutts a guy wearing an actual iron helmet. Helmet-guy doesn't win this encounter. Desmond counts as well on the technicality that he doesn't have a health bar, meaning he can survive any fall or fight you can put him through.

* Luka Redgrave in ''[[Bayonetta (Video Game)|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.

** Infinity is amazingly hard to hurt as well because of her mutation. Her bones are made of metal and her musculature is far more dense than normal flesh. She gets hurt all the time, but it takes a lot to do it.

** Anvil is literally Made of Iron. Imagine Colossus of the X-Men, except permanently transformed and iron instead of steel.

** 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.

* ''[[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]]''.

** {{spoiler|[[Fridge Brilliance|Though Eddy must have built up resistance from the years of abuse.]] And [[Word of God]] said that [[Glass Cannon|his brother never took a hit in his life.]]}}

* 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.

* Colonel [[wikipedia:John Stapp|John Stapp]], Ph.D, was the human precursor to crash test dummies. In his life conducting tests for human endurance in acceleration and deceleration, he subjected himself to over 50 potentially lethal experiments. He [[Science Marches On|shattered conventional wisdom]] of thinking people would be subject to lethal injury at 18 g-forces when he walked away with temporary blindness and some bruising after sustaining 45 g-forces for over a second. His research was prime material that led to better [[Every Car Is a Pinto|car]] and [[Ejection Seat|aircraft]] safety the world over. He was also a good friend and colleague of Chuck Yeager

* Speaking of Chuck Yeager, he walked away from an airplane crash after beating a fire out ''on his face'' with his bare hands.

** 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."

[[Category:Plot Armor]]

[[Category:Made Of Iron]]