Nigh Invulnerability/Western Animation

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
This page needs visual enhancement.
You can help All The Tropes by finding a high-quality image or video to illustrate the topic of this page.

Examples of Nigh Invulnerability in Western Animation include:

  • In Avatar: The Last Airbender, you can kill the Avatar all you like, but unless you get lucky enough to kill him in the Avatar State, you're going to have to deal with his Reincarnation.
  • Parodied in Drawn Together, by the character Captain Hero, especially in an episode in which he and Foxxy Love go through an extreme form of BDSM relationship: because Captain Hero was indestructible, Foxxy could act out her most violent desires without fear of injuring him permanently (this disregarding the fact that all of the characters in the series die on a frequent basis, only to return shortly afterwards as if nothing had happened).
  • The Transformers are a nigh-invulnerable race, generally of the "Spare Body Parts" variety. They don't generally regenerate on their own, though some can, but pretty much any damage can be repaired; the line between what can be repaired and what's fatal, however, is nebulous at best.
    • Generally speaking, a Transformer can survive practically anything as long as their spark chamber (equivalent to a human's heart) and CPU (equivalent to a human's brain) are both physically intact. As you would expect, these two components are typically located within the most heavily armored parts of their bodies, making it even more hopeless for an average human to fight one, even before taking into account the difference in physical size between an average Transformer (20–30 ft. tall) and a human (~6 ft. tall). Inflicting significant damage to other body parts will certainly slow them down, though, and might even render their vehicle form(s) useless. After all, a Transformer who lost an arm can't change into car mode with the car parts that form that arm now missing.
    • When Animated Starscream is revived by a piece of the Allspark lodged in his head, he gains the resurrection method. Anytime that he is killed, the Allspark resurrects him. Discovering this, the Autobots opt to just capture him.
      • Then, of course, he is Killed Off for Real when he has the Allspark fragment removed at the end of the show.
      • In the G1 continuity that Starscream's spark is immortal, allowing him to possess other Transformers, and apparently float through time and space since he turns up in Beast Wars too.
      • An ability that was copied into BW Rampage. Rampage can regenerate, but he's later killed by a spike of raw energon going through his spark. In an earlier episode, a processed energon knife cutting parts of his spark did not do the job (though Megatron says it would've killed anyone else, and he takes it as proof of Rampage's immortality) however. It's unknown whether Starscream could be similarly killed.
      • Animated Megatron goes at ground zero of an explosion capable of destroying everything in a hundred-mile radius. For comparison, the Tsar Bomba, the most powerful nuclear device ever made, had a complete destruction radius of 40 miles. Megs survives (though he's pretty banged up).
    • Animated Soundwave also deserves mention, being able to take Spare Body Parts an order of magnitude further than your average Cybertronian (and, indeed, he's not Cybertronian. Possibly that has something to do with it). Twice now he's been reduced to a component the size of a human hand and remained online.
      • This ability is somewhat balanced out by his tendency to shatter if you hit him hard enough. The downside of a body without any Cybertronian alloys in it.
  • Vilgax from Ben 10 is not only Made Of Diamond to the point where he lived through being attached to a nuclear warhead as it was used to blow up his ship, but he has a tank full of healing fluid in case his next ship blows up partially, giving him Regeneration while he's in there. He's the Implacable Man's Implacable Man.
    • Ultimate Aggregor from Ben 10: Ultimate Alien. He takes a beating from Humongousaur (one of Ben's strongest aliens) and gets right back up without a scratch, even saying that he didn't feel a thing.
  • In Disney's Gargoyles, Demona and MacBeth are essentially immortal. Due to a pact they made back in Medieval Europe, when one dies they both die. However, due to some weird twist of logic with the pact (or just the "Weird Sisters" reviving one of them), since one of them wasn't killed directly they both come back to life shortly afterward (Elisa Maza once temporarily killed Demona to keep her from fighting MacBeth so she could talk to him). Allegedly, the only way for them to permanently die is to kill each other.
  • Futurama:
    • In the straight-to-DVD film "The Beast With a Billion Backs," the title beast is from another universe and made of "electromatter," which the professor describes as "normal matter's bad-ass grandma." Nothing can hurt it except something else made of electromatter.
    • One episode showed it was commonplace for robots to periodically upload a copy of their memory which will be uploaded into a new body if they are destroyed, with Bender being the exception because of a design flaw.
      • Completely contradicting the previous episode where Bender championed the cause of broken-robots, which, although still fully sentient and aware, were generally just melted down for recycling materials (for beer cans and paper-weights and the like).
      • And contradicted by a later episode in which Bender's body is destroyed and he reflexively uploads a backup into The Cloud to become a "robot ghost"—which may also qualify as an example.
      • In "Jurassic Bark", Bender jumps into a pool of molten fucking lava in order to save Fry's fossilized dog. His sole injury is a slightly expanded torso chassis.
    • Leela is a very possible contender. In addition to being a genetically modified sewer mutant that has never lost a single fight during the series' run, she also survived a near-universally fatal space bee sting, suffering a mere two-week coma instead.
  • Most characters from Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry can survive vicious beatings, gunshot wounds, falling from cliffs, and explosions unless the creators want the character to die
    • Subverted in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?? with Dip, a mixture of various solvents that broke down the ink that Toons are drawn from in what is essentially permanent death for them.
  • Professor Impossible from The Venture Brothers is seemingly unkillable due to his body having the properties of elastic. He once swallowed an explosion meant to destroy an entire island in a failed attempt at suicide.
  • Signature power of the Mysteron Agents and the eponymous Phlebotinum Rebel in both incarnations of Captain Scarlet, although the method varies: the original series has them as classic Made Of Diamond Implacable Men, while in the remake they're more vulnerable but will still get up again right after being put down. Both versions also mix in shades of the Fighting a Shadow version since the Agents are merely cloned puppets and the Mysterons themselves remain aloof and untouchable no matter how many plots Spectrum foils.
  • In Invader Zim, it's specifically stated that their consciousness, personality, emotions and memory are all stored in their PAKs. In a fully scripted but never animated episode, Zim could take over Dib this way; his physical body would be dead, but his mind would be in a new body, so that's okay. This theoretically applies for every single member of the Irken race, which would make them all immortals who change bodies every so often (as it's unlikely their best soldiers would be allowed to die when they're still usable). Since a PAK can attach to someone even after you killed the body hosting it and is made of the same Irken metals that allowed The Massive to go through a star without being heavily damaged, the only way to kill an Irken is to either take the PAK to Irk and have it be erased by the Control Brains or hide it away from all living life. Basically, if Zim wasn't such an idiot, he'd be nigh unstoppable.
    • In the same script, though, Zim claims that Dib's "filthy human body chemistry isn't compatible with the PAK. It would've destroyed you!" Of course, considering the source, that may not be the case...
  • The Fairly OddParents has the Crimson Chin, a Superman parody. Timmy himself became this when he wished for superpowers.
  • The DCAU version of Superman isn't quite as tough as his comics counterpart, but is still monstrously hard to kill.
  • The characters of The Ren and Stimpy Show, combined with extreme Status Quo Is God.
  • "Darkwing Duck" has two of these characters. The Liquidator is a villain made out of water. And Dr. Bushroot, a mutant plant/duck that has can regenerate after being run over by a runing lawn mower.
  • Roger from American Dad. He's seemingly immortal, and invincible. Of course, he's an alien, and not only that, he was an alien who was literally used as a crash test dummy, so it's no surprise he's practically unkillable.
    • Apparently even his superiors weren't aware of how invulnerable he was, as they fully expected him to have died from blunt trauma. Oh and he's fire retardant too (which he hilariously did not know).
  • Grandfather from Codename: Kids Next Door. He survives a Colony Drop to the face without even a scratch and just dusts himself off afterwards.
  • In the episode "Schooled" of Young Justice, Amazo has absorbed the powers of, among others, Superman, The Flash, Martian Manhunter, meaning he is Made of Diamond, Intangible Man, and has Super Reflexes and Super Speed.
  • In the early seasons of South Park, Kenny was always killed off Once an Episode, only to inexplicably return the next week. In later seasons, it's revealed that he will always resurrect due to a Lovecraftian curse that was placed on him. Worse yet, because of the curse no one can remember any of his previous demises.
  • The titular character from The Tick (animation). The Trope Name is even invoked frequently when referencing him.
Back to Nigh Invulnerability
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Nigh_Invulnerability/Western_Animation?oldid=1680364"