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Nigh Invulnerability/Live-Action TV

< Nigh Invulnerability

Examples of Nigh Invulnerability in Live-Action TV include:

  • Big Bad Mayor Wilkins of Buffy the Vampire Slayer regenerated all damage, thanks to a dark ritual performed a hundred days prior to his ascension. The Next Big Bad, Adam, was Made of Diamond; until the finale none of the heroes' attacks even made him flinch. Besides which, he was sustained by a uranium power core, and so could continue functioning without a head; destroying him meant either utterly annihilating his body or destroying the power core. Adam was followed by Glory, a hell goddess who wasn't budged by anything short of semi trucks or the hammer of a troll god.
    • Also in the Buffyverse are the Beast, whose hide is so tough that the only thing that can hurt him is a piece of himself; The First, who's made of air; the mystic orbs that the Geek Trio use towards the end of season 6--whoever holds them is made of diamond and super strong; and Jasmine, whose weaknesses revolve around her blood.
    • And, in the last season of Angel, Marcus Hamilton. Until...
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Hamilton: Let me say this as clearly as I can. You cannot beat me. I am a part of them. The Wolf, Ram, and Hart. Their strength flows through my veins. My blood is filled with their ancient power.
Angel (a vampire): Can you pick out the one word there you probably shouldn't have said?

    • Basically every Big Bad from Buffy. Dark Willow from season six was unstoppable, if it wasn't for that pesky human conscience...
  • Claire and Peter from Heroes—for the same reason. Both have healing powers so strong that they both regenerated after being dead for several hours, and Claire proved her resilience by being at the core of a nuclear reaction and having her skin burned off - then having it grow back leaving her perfectly unharmed just ten seconds later. Since Peter's powers are taken from Claire, he has the same potential (though, for full resurrection, she might have to be with him).
    • In the second season, we are introduced to Adam, who essentially has the same ability as Claire: he automatically heals all damage. He is also immortal (his body, after his ability emerged, stopped aging). It is also revealed that both Adam and Claire can use their blood to temporarily grant their powers to other people and heal them (including bringing back people from the dead). In fact his power is only thing keeping Adam alive. When he loses it he quickly withers into a pile of dust.
    • In season three, Sylar finally gets his hands on Claire's power and becomes immortal as well. Peter, on the other hand, is un-immortal'd due to the sudden alteration of his power (he can only use one at a time, and therefore ages normally whenever he isn't using Claire's power - which is most of the time).
  • The Daleks of Doctor Who are nigh-on invulnerable, generally needing to be out-thought rather than out-fought. However, this often suits The Doctor, who is a classic Technical Pacifist.
    • Aim for the eyepiece! The eye* ZZZAAAPP!
      • Even THAT apparently doesn't work anymore:

Dalek: ::sizzle:: My vision is NOT impaired!

    • Their Plot Armor is even stronger than their physical defenses - if even a single Dalek survives extermination, it will inevitably end up traveling back in time and regrowing the whole species. Again and again and again...
    • And the Doctor himself managed a regrowth recently: he was able to regrow a severed hand, but only because he'd only just regenerated.
    • Captain Jack Harkness (Of Doctor Who and Torchwood) has a direct link to the Heart of the TARDIS, and just regenerates whenever he dies—which he does quite often (over 1,000 times in the twentieth century alone). Eventually Gwen Cooper, the other main character of Torchwood, stops screaming whenever Jack dies, realising that it's really no big deal. However, Jack does age very slowly.
  • On Battlestar Galactica the humanoid Cylons have the ability to "redownload" and resurrect in shiny new bodies after they're killed, but only when there's a resurrection ship nearby. Even if one manages to make death stick for one of them, though, there are plenty of copies. It is possible to shut an individual Cylon (or even an entire model) down for good, but the only ones with the technology to do this are the other Cylons.
    • As of season 4 subverted, where the Cylons have lost the ability to resurrect due to the destruction of the resurrection hub.
  • There are many examples of this trope in the Stargate Verse - almost every category has an example: The Ori are Gods, The Ori Priors have Divine Protection, The Kull warriors are Made of diamond, the Black Knights are Made of air, Human-form replicators are The Blob, the Wraith, the first Unas and the Replicators have Regeneration, Anubis: Can only kill part of him, Ba'al and the Replicators have Multiple bodies and Apophis had Extreme luck during the first four seasons.
    • Daniel Jackson, while not actually invulnerable in any reliable or definitive way, has managed to recover from death on a frightening number of occasions, arguably placing him in Resurrection. To the point where the fanon has him dying and recovering on an almost monthly basis.
    • This is the main reason Anubis's Kull warriors in Stargate SG-1 qualify as Bosses in Mook Clothing. Their armor is basically impenetrable to anything short of an artillery cannon (one survived a near-direct hit from a small missile, while another shrugged off C-4 and multiple claymores), so defeating them with man-portable weapons required the development of Applied Phlebotinum that negates their Healing Factor.
  • The Changelings from Star Trek Deep Space Nine are immune to any "regular" damage - they simply liquify and reshift. Odo survives being shattered (while being a glass) and run through in human form. Laas can even travel in vacuum. The only things that can kill them are beam weapons at high setting (it took over 100 hits to finish off the Martok impersonator), radiation and a special virus developed by Section 31.
    • Although Mirror!Odo is destroyed by a common phaser blast
    • Borg are hive-minded and can quickly adapt to energy weapons, although kinetic weapons can always kill them.
    • Also Q, though godlike aliens have weapons to kill each other - which are powerful enough to make stars go supernova as a side effect.
  • The Objects from The Lost Room are indestructible as long as they're outside the eponymous room. Including the Occupant.
  • Jesse Kilmartin of Mutant X is both the Made of Air and Made of Diamond version of this trope. His favorite tactic is to wait for someone to hit him, then punch them out while they nurse their now-broken hand. He's also used as cover, since he's not only Immune to Bullets, but he's been shown to reflect lasers and even Brennan's electrical attacks.
  • Ex-demon Cole Turner in Charmed became functionally invincible after absorbing the power of MANY fallen demons; he was able to use this power to return from beyond the grave so he could be with Phoebe again. Sadly, his immense power now made him a threat to her and her family, so she divorced him. To his dismay, he found that he could not even kill himself while in a stint of depression. He was eventually vanquished during a last-ditch (failed) attempt to win Phoebe back in an alternate timeline.
  • This - specifically the Resurrection version - was what made Big Bad Master Org so hard for the rangers to take down in Power Rangers Wild Force. While they had won a number of prior battles simply by the sheer number of Zords they had available to throw at an enemy, Master Orge was able to absorb all their attacks, regenerate without a scratch, and eventually wear down and destroy 4 different Megazords as well as the leftover stragglers. They get better.
  • In MacGyver, Murdoc survived just about everything.
  • Lost's Man in Black couldn't be killed until the island was "unplugged" in the finale.
  • A number of types appear in Supernatural:
    • God: Pagan gods can be killed by mere mortals, but the trope does apply to the Big G, since it seems like Death is the only entity that could kill him.
    • Divine protection mixed with Resurrection: In season 5 Sam and Dean are functionally incapable of staying dead. If they do die then the Angels (and in Sam's case, also Satan) will just resurrect them because they can't be used as Angelic vessels if they're dead.
    • External Repair: Dr. Benton is a scientist who somehow gained immortality, but his body kept on decaying. In order to continue functioning he regularly harvests new organs.
    • Extreme Luck: Whoever acquires the rabbit's foot, at least as long as they have it in their possession.
    • Regeneration: The Leviathans recover from almost anything. The only known means of immobilizing them so far is to chop off the head, and then keeping it absolutely out of reach of the body so it can’t just reattach itself.
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