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{{trope}}
[[File:
'''Travis''': Seriously! ''I cut off your '''head'''''?!
Despite the prominence of [[Only a Flesh Wound]] in media, there are some things that even writers would concede as pretty fatal. For example, if a character gets shot in the head or stabbed in the chest, they're pretty much done for, hopefully with enough time to give a [[Final Speech]] before their death.▼
▲{{quote|'''Travis Touchdown''': Pain in MY ass. ''Why aren't you dead yet?''<br />
▲'''Skelter Helter''': Such [[Genre Blind|blind arrogance]]! Like the naked emperor...<br />
▲'''Travis''': Seriously! ''I cut off your '''head'''''?!|''[[No More Heroes Desperate Struggle]]''[[hottip:*:The decapitated head spun in the air for a couple of seconds, spilling blood everywhere, and landed back on his shoulders. [[Serial Escalation|A cleaning crew had come to get rid of the mess and Travis was mid-conversation before Skelter started moving and talking again.]]}}
Unless of course, if they're the [[Determinator]] or someone [[Good Thing You Can Heal|as tough]]. For them, that little hole where their heart was supposed to be is just another chance to show off how [[Badass]] they are. Even that is [[Only a Flesh Wound]], and the guy that injured them, likely to be pissing in his pants right now, is about to receive a world of hurt. When this occurs in a climactic battle, you often see a [[Heroic Second Wind]] sequence.
Killing the character after their display of [[Heroic Willpower]] for extra dramatic effect, or to show that the the wounds [[Living
▲Despite the prominence of [[Only a Flesh Wound]] in media, there are some things that even writers would concede as pretty fatal. For example, if a character gets shot in the head or stabbed in the chest, they're pretty much done for, hopefully with enough time to give a [[Final Speech]] before their death.
Note that
▲Unless of course, if they're the [[Determinator]] or someone [[Good Thing You Can Heal|as tough]]. For them, that little hole where their heart was supposed to be is just another chance to show off how [[Badass]] they are. Even that is [[Only a Flesh Wound]], and the guy that injured them, likely to be pissing in his pants right now, is about to receive a world of hurt. When this occurs in a climactic battle, you often see a [[Heroic Second Wind]] sequence.
May overlap with [[I Can Still Fight]]. See also, [[Made of Iron]].▼
▲Killing the character after their display of [[Heroic Willpower]] for extra dramatic effect, or to show that the the wounds [[Living On Borrowed Time|were fatal after all, just not right away]], is optional.
▲Note that [[Normally I Would Be Dead Now]] applies only to things that would have killed a normal character even by Hollywood rules. If it is "merely" something like severe bleeding from the shoulder or leg, that is [[Only a Flesh Wound]]. Surprisingly, this is actually a case of [[Truth in Television]]. There are many real life examples of people who had things rammed through their chests and heads and still lived due to the foreign material miraculously missing vital organs. This means there is a fine line between this and mere [[Aversion]] of [[Instant Death Bullet]]. However, it is far more common in fiction than in [[Real Life]] and all of them were left incapacitated or unable to move, so [[Don't Try This At Home]].
▲May overlap with [[I Can Still Fight]].
{{examples}}
▲== Anime & Manga ==
* Vita of ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]]'' was stabbed back to front, but still continued to fight in the final battle despite a gaping chest wound. Nanoha also gets badly injured. In both case they continue in large part because of their [[Determinator]] natures.
* Kamina of ''[[Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann]]'' {{spoiler|takes a laser up his chest, visibly tearing his body, and his mech, nearly in two, then gets stabbed in the back with a laser spear, and then gets hit with his own swords/sunglasses. However, he manages to pull himself up, throws his own mech's arm at Simon, delivers a hotblooded speech from hell out, kills ''an entire [[Redshirt Army]]'', catches the same laser that injured him earlier, then proceeds to string the guy up on his mech's [[Cool Shades|freakin' sunglasses]] and then shoves a drill through him that'd make any dentist cringe. All while bleeding out on the floor. [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|''Wow''.]]}}
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* Nuriko of ''[[Fushigi Yuugi]]'' was also stabbed through the chest. This didn't slow him down too much, as he proceeded to snap the neck of his opponent and lift the boulder blocking the cave containing the Shinzaho of Genbu. {{spoiler|Then he died.}}
* Neji Hyuga from ''[[Naruto]]'' was shot through the chest in the Sasuke retrieval arc, but still managed to kill his opponent with his ultimate technique before he collapsed. This was because he was able to deflect the huge arrow at the very last moment, making it perform a wound that, while fatal, wouldn't cause an instant kill since it avoided his vital organs. He still lived even after laying around for what must have been hours before [[The Cavalry]] came to pick up the survivors.
** Other examples were Zabuza (who is the page picture here), {{spoiler|Tsunade, and Jiraiya}}. All were fatally stabbed but, through sheer willpower, managed to stay alive long enough to finish what they were doing. {{spoiler|Tsunade}} even managed to put her [[Healing Factor]] into action and regenerate, while {{spoiler|Jiraiya}} was stabbed deeply and ''multiple times'' by a weapon that's able to paralyze people and his opponent thought he already heard his heart stopped before he [[Heroic Willpower|spontaneously]] regained consciousness. {{spoiler|Danzou}} stays alive enough time to pull a [[Taking You
* {{spoiler|Mustang}} has one of these moments in [[Fullmetal Alchemist]]. After having been {{spoiler|''impaled'' by Lust}}, he gets back up, performs first aid on himself and {{spoiler|Havoc}} via alchemy, then tracks {{spoiler|Lust}} down and {{spoiler|''burns her to death over and over''}} before finally collapsing, but retaining consciousness. His earlier comment to an unconscious {{spoiler|Havoc}} while they are both lying on the floor bleeding out - "{{spoiler|Havoc}}, I won't let you die before me!" - indicates that he basically hauled himself back from the brink by sheer force of will because he refused to allow any of the people he was with to die if he could help it.
* In ''[[Bleach]]'', pretty much every character who fights has been impaled or slashed up horribly at least once.
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* Spike Spiegel of ''[[Cowboy Bebop]]'' took multiple bullets while getting to the final fight against Vicious. {{spoiler|He eventually died of those injuries and ones caused by Vicious. Maybe.}}
** What else has happened to him? In "Ballad of Fallen Angels", he got slashed in the face and thrown out a building. In "Jupiter Jazz Part 1", he got shot in the chest once and fell unconscious. He should have bled out but didn't. In [[The Movie]], he got beat down, shot and thrown out a ''moving monorail hovering above the water''.
* Negi of the ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]!'' manga puts up an admirable fight despite being ''impaled in the chest'' by a thick piece of stone, pulling out and gripping the stone in one hand and [[Mahou Sensei Negima
** Slightly subverted for Negi. {{spoiler|As it's later revealed that his use of Magica Erebea has turned him into a vampire - like his master Evangeline. She did say her path had its price...}}
* Yuki Nagato of ''[[Suzumiya Haruhi]]'' takes four massive spear-like projectiles through the torso, then proceeds to kill the
* Kazuki of ''[[Busou Renkin]]'' uses this to his advantage to defend against his opponent, a kendo genius whose signature (and vaguely illegal) move involves a devastating wide strike to the ribs. When Kazuki fights him, he's using a katana, and to avoid being {{spoiler|sliced in half, Kazuki returns his weapon to it's passive state where it functions as his heart, actually blocking}} the strike.
* In ''[[
** ''Jojo'' is generally made of this trope, including a ''self-inflicted'' occurrence by {{spoiler|Bucciarati in Golden Wind}} to trick an opponent. ''Steel Ball Run'' has a doozy; Johnny is shot in the head by Ringo Roadagain and survives.
* In the third fight in ''[[Claymore]]'', a youma holds Raki hostage in order to force Clare to throw away her sword. She throws it some ways downhill, and the youma proceeds to impale her with its claws. Except then Clare grabs its arm, dives down the hill dragging it with her, retrieves her sword, and promptly kills it. It would not be fatal to a Claymore, who can self-regenerate. Also, Ophelia had her neck twisted and didn't die.
* The wolves in ''
** Kiba is even more dramatic. He has been practically torn to pieces and ''still'' got up and continued fighting. You [[Determinator|just can't stop him!]]
* In ''[[Great Teacher Onizuka]]'', Onizuka is about to take a national test in which he needs to have the highest score in the nation so he doesn't lose his job. One of his students is kidnapped, and he goes in pursuit. {{spoiler|While saving the female student from a very dark situation, he is shot three times.}} He manages to {{spoiler|[[Crowning Moment of Awesome|make it back to the testing station, finish the test, and get a perfect score in half the given time of anyone else... while bleeding profusely.]]}}
** {{spoiler|Although he didn't really get a perfect score, but 231 out of 500.}}
* In ''[[One Piece]]'', the greatest example has to be Roronoa Zoro. This man according to the [[Word of God]] lost what amounted to ''five liters'' of blood fighting Hatchan, mostly due to an earlier wound given by the greatest swordsman in the world, Dracule Mihawk, who stabbed him ''in his heart'' and ''slashed him across the chest'', permanently scarring him just to finish him off. Mihawk seemed to sense he was [[Badass]] enough to survive by asking him to surpass him and challenge him again.
** Zoro also fought [[Made of Iron|Mr. 1]], an assassin and [[Bounty Hunter]] formerly known as [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast|Das Bones]], who during the fight turned his arms into buzzsaws and ''drove them into his chest''.
** Perhaps the greatest example is when Bartholomew Kuma, a designated [[Psycho for Hire]] (known to do psycho things, but now calm and now loyal to [[The Government]]) pushed all the pain and fatigue away from Monkey D. Luffy's body from his battle with the [[Big Bad]], and Zoro who himself took some punishment from the [[Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot|zombie giant]] Oz, and Kuma's shockwave, [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|took all the pain in]] ''[[Crowning Moment of Awesome|and survived]]''. When asked by Sanji what happened to him, he replied [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|"Nothing. Nothing at all."]]
** Some [[Lampshade Hanging]] on Zoro's case when [[A God Am I|self-proclaimed god]], [[Psycho Electro|Eneru]] blasted [[Lightning Can Do Anything|a large column of lightning]] through an upper level of Giant Jack and Zoro, Wiper, Chopper and the giant snake came crashing with massive debris, no less. As he crashed on the ground, he pushed a giant rock away from his body and yelled "Damn rock! I could have died!" Nico Robin [[Genre Savvy|agreed]].
** Even Luffy falls into this trope. His match duel with [[The Chessmaster]] / [[Big Bad]] Crocodile who is fond of giving [[
** Oda seems to adore this trope, because at least one character per arc seems to fit this trope. The first I can remember is Dolton from the Drum arc, who was hit by arrows and then frozen over. To be fair, he got medical attention really fast. Kohza from the Alabasta arc got it even worse when he got shot in the chest a grand total of five times, and he still was totally fine a few days later. However, the character who takes the cake for this trope, by far, is Wiper from Skypeia. He got stabbed in the shoulder, Axe Dialed to the back, and electrocuted at least twice. If that weren't enough already, he uses a kamikaze move, his Reject Dial, three times, even though every time someone tells him that he'll die if he uses it! The bones in his arm were pretty much shattered. After all this, you would think he'd be down for the count, but no! He can still get up later that evening! All he needed was a bunch of bandages.
** If this example isn't first for [[One Piece]], then it's a pretty close second. During the Whitebeard War Arc, {{spoiler|Whitebeard}} took a grand total of 267 slashes and stabs, 152 bullets, 46 cannonballs, and {{spoiler|half his goddamned face being melted off}}. And this is after laying down a well deserved beat down on {{spoiler|Blackbeard}}.
* Hiro Mashima ''loves'' this trope. Honestly, after reading a few volumes of ''[[Rave Master]]'' you'll realize that you can never be
* Hiro Mashima's ''[[Fairy Tail]]'' - There's also no explanation for how Gray took ''[[Impaled
* ''[[Rosario
** He was also burned to a husk (while still human) by a four-tailed yoko. Ouch. {{spoiler|And it looks like he's about to have it happen again.}}
* ''[[Sengoku Basara]]'' - Played for laughs: Shingen punches Yukimura who flies through a shoji wall(?), across a courtyard and into a stone wall, which crumbles a bit from the impact. Sasuke comments mildly that this would kill a normal man. Yukimura, however, comes running right back into Shingen's fist so he can do it all over again, although he's in a slightly rotated position when he hits the stone wall the second time.
* Sven from ''[[Black Cat (
* Itou Komataro from ''[[
* Shi woon has even lampshaded this several times in ''[[The Breaker]]''. But his [[Determinator]] drive keeps him going long after he should have been knocked out cold
** In New Wave, he can now {{spoiler|heal from practically any wound in about half a day}}.
== [[Comic Books]] ==
* [[Iron Man]]'s origin story involved a deadly shrapnel wound that would eventually penetrate his heart; to quote the movie, "I should be dead already." Instead of resigning himself to fate, he put his inventive genius to
== Comics ==▼
▲* [[Iron Man]]'s origin story involved a deadly shrapnel wound that would eventually penetrate his heart; to quote the movie, "I should be dead already." Instead of resigning himself to fate, he put his inventive genius to work -- rigging up an electromagnetic pacemaker to keep his heart beating and keep the shrapnel out. And since the power source was putting out so much juice, he figured he [[Super-Powered Robot Meter Maids|might as well hook up some armor and guns to it.]]
* Cutter in ''[[Elf Quest]]'' is determined to keep fighting even after being speared through the gut. Not surprisingly this puts his continued survival in doubt.
* In ''[[Scud the Disposable Assassin]]'', the titular robot was shot with a laser beam through the torso. He then kept talking about how much it hurt in spite of his being a robot, implying that the wound was rather severe, then drove a semi truck off of a ''twelve-mile-high cliff'' - and he and the truck ''survived''. In fact, he drove the truck ''several miles'' through the desert after hitting the ground. Given that the main premise of the comics is that he's avoiding self-destruction (his model self-destructs after killing its intended target, so he instead incapacitates it and puts it in stasis, becoming a hit man to pay its hospital bills), it's strange such a thing would even be possible.
* ''[[The Punisher]]'' is a good example of this. Particularly in the Max Comics series, Frank Castle takes an insane amount of damage over the course of the series. In the "Punisher: Born" miniseries, Captain Frank Castle survives the obliteration of Firebase Valley Forge by attacking Viet Cong, surviving being shot ''seven times.'' It freaked the hell out of the reinforcements that came to see who survived. At one point, he gets shot in the side of his chest, point-blank, with a shotgun. After acknowledging that one of his ribs is "...gone. Not broken, gone.", he gets into an extended fistfight with the man who shot him, tosses him out of a window, and carries on. It seems like you can't finish an story arc without Castle experiencing some near-fatal damage.
** The Punisher's Nemesis Barracuda is the same. Shortly after meeting the Punisher, 'Cuda gets the fingers on his right hand chopped off, his eye stabbed out, and his teeth broken, not to mention later shot in the chest and hurled off a boat into ''shark-infested waters.'' Barracuda survives (he [[Lampshade Hanging|explains]] this by claiming he grabbed onto the back of the boat and got towed to shore), and comes after the Punisher again, and {{spoiler|later tortured by having his nutsack clipped to a car battery, shot several times, blown up, his ''nose ripped off,'' before the Punisher finally kills him by chopping his hands off with an axe and shooting his head to bits with an AK-47.}} As Punisher had noted, [[There Is No Kill Like Overkill|"Barracuda was dead when you shot him to bits and shot the bits and burned them. Anything less just left that nagging doubt."]]
* '[[G.I. Joe]]' comics. Scarlett is pretending to be a double-agent, so in order to maintain her cover, Snake-Eyes the ninja is forced to give her a survivable stab in the chest. Nobody counted on the Cobra ninja Slice, who realized if Snake-Eyes really wanted to kill, Scarlett would be dead instantly. So the whole thing is a load of B.S. Then [[Transformers Generation Two|Megatron]] shows up. No, really.▼
** The Punisher's durability is justified by him {{spoiler|making a deal with Death at the end of ''Punisher: Born'', at the cost of his family.}}
▲* '[[G.I. Joe]]'' comics. Scarlett is pretending to be a double-agent, so in order to maintain her cover, Snake-Eyes the ninja is forced to give her a survivable stab in the chest. Nobody counted on the Cobra ninja Slice, who realized if Snake-Eyes really wanted to kill, Scarlett would be dead instantly. So the whole thing is a load of B.S. Then [[Transformers Generation Two|Megatron]] shows up. No, really.
== [[Film]] ==
* The [[Trope Namer]] is the short "Den" from ''[[Heavy Metal (
== Films -- Animation ==▼
* Renard, [[James Bond (
▲* The [[Trope Namer]] is the short "Den" from ''[[Heavy Metal (Animation)|Heavy Metal]]''. The hero is teleported to a savage land and turned from a wimp into a musclebound hero. While rescuing a gorgeous woman from death (as one does), he swims an enormously long time underwater without breathing, and quotes the trope title in voiceover in disbelief.
* The Captain in ''[[300
* In ''[[The
* The main character of ''[[Hero (
▲* Renard, [[James Bond (Film)|James Bond's]] adversary in ''[[The World Is Not Enough (Film)|The World Is Not Enough]]'', survived being shot in the head. A partial subversion in that the bullet is slowly killing him as it drills further into his brain. A bad case of [[You Fail Biology Forever]] as the part of the brain the bullet is in does not control physical sensation. Further, even if it did, try walking with all your limbs numb some time. You might find it almost impossible to control what you cannot feel.
▲* The Captain in ''[[300 (Film)|Three Hundred]]'' {{spoiler|takes a spear through his chest. He pulls it deeper so he can hack the Persian wielding it to death.}} It takes a few more Persians to finally bring him down.
▲* In ''[[The Fellowship of the Ring (Film)|The Fellowship of the Ring]]'', Boromir is shot in the chest with arrows multiple times before he stays down.
▲* The main character of ''[[Hero (Film)|Hero]]'' is revealed to be able to strike with surgical precision with a sword from a few steps away. This means that he's able to stab people apparently {{spoiler|fatally so he they can fake their deaths}} with many, many witnesses, and he can invoke this trope at will.
* In the ''[[V for Vendetta]]'' film at the end the titular character takes numerous {{spoiler|rounds from several fully automatic or large calibre weapons, and is still able to kill every one of his attackers before they are able to reload. He does die a short time after, and was shown to have been wearing a chest plate which would have slowed down (but not stopped) the bullets}}, but it still pushes beyond normal human capability.
* The Bride in ''[[
* ''[[
* In the [[Film of the Book
* Spotted Horse in ''[[The Quick and
* One of the taglines used to promote ''[[Crank]] 2'', in praise of its too-tough-to-die antihero, was: "Anyone else would be ''so'' dead by now."
* Inigo Montoya in ''[[The Princess Bride]]'' takes a sword through the gut, gets [[Heroic Second Wind]] and kills his enemy. What's less credible is that an hour or so later he seems to have got all better.
== [[Literature]] ==▼
▲== Literature ==
* Lampshaded several times in ''[[Harry Potter]]''. His nickname is The Boy Who Lived, after all. Everyone just thinks that "normally, he would be dead" part.
* In the Tamora Pierce novel ''[[Wild Magic]]'', the harpy/Stormwing Zhaneh Bitterclaws is shot through the eye. She pulls the arrow out, glares with her remaining eye at the protagonist, and flies off, swearing vengeance. Though, to be fair, Immortals are hardier than humans unless the wound is particularly lethal. Hence the name.
* Done to an over-the-top extent in one of Mark E Rodgers's ''[[Samurai Cat]]'' books, ''Samurai Cat Goes to the Movies''. The protagonist, samurai Miaowara Tomokato, ends up shot nearly to pieces by his enemies. The bullets are said to pass through the several places in his heart and brain where a bullet could pass through harmlessly. He (and his sidekick) are, if memory serves, 'millimetres more accurate' in their return fire.
* In ''[[Le Morte
* Edgar Freemantle and Wiseman in [[Stephen King|Stephen King's]] ''[[Duma Key]]'' both fit the example, and this condition is what opens them up to the key's... let's say environmental hazards.
* In ''[[The Girl Who Played With Fire]]'', [[Action Girl|Lisbeth Salander]] {{spoiler|is shot in the hip, in the back and in the head (the last bullet getting lodged in her brain), then [[Buried Alive|buried (barely) alive]],}} yet she still manages to not only {{spoiler|dig her way out and take axe revenge, but also survive all the way into and through the sequel}}.
* In the ''[[
** Played with in that for a little while he really does believe that he died then and there. While in the hospital he hallucinates his dead father appearing to him, telling him that he's dead, and offering to take Victor with him to the afterlife. His love's dead grandfather also appears and says that because he died heroically defending her, he's there to offer to take Victor to their afterlife (a different one, as the two families [[Feuding Families|were traditional enemies]] until the Clans forced an [[Enemy Mine]] between them). The two of them ask him to choose who to go with. As both options involve dying for good, he decides to [[Take a Third Option|take a third.]]
* In ''[[Sir Gawain and
* In ''[[
* In ''[[Redwall|Mossflower]]'', Tsarmina is extremely unnerved by the fact that no matter how many times she seems to cut him down, Martin refuses to die and refuses to run.
** The Badger Lords often embody this, to a certain extent: while under [[Unstoppable Rage|Blood Wrath]], they will continue to fight, regardless of injuries, until they either drop dead or kill their enemy.
* This is one of the traits of Space Marines in the ''[[Warhammer
* ''[[
▲== Live Action TV ==
▲* [[Twenty Four]] Jack Bauer should have been dead several times but apparently was not willing to be pushed around by something as trifling as death when there were terrorists to fight.
* The ''[[Lost]]'' season 3 finale, "Through the Looking Glass," appears to do this with {{spoiler|Mikhail}}. As well as with {{spoiler|Locke}}, who survives his shooting two episodes prior due to having {{spoiler|donated the kidney}} that the bullet would otherwise have hit.
* ''[[Firefly]]'': {{spoiler|After being shot in the stomach on a ship with diminishing heat and oxygen, Mal not only staggers up and forces his attackers to leave, but then manages to get to the medical bay, inject himself with adrenaline, get to the ship's engine, repair the ship's engine by putting in the one busted crucial part, and get all the way up to the cockpit before he collapses. He wakes up to see his crew have returned and are treating him, though he barely survives the ordeal and has to get significant medical care}}. That's just how tough Mal is.
** "War Stories": Mal {{spoiler|gets captured by [[Cold-Blooded Torture|Adelai Niska]], tortured to the point where he has, in fact, clinically died. Later, when his torturers' backs are turned, he gets up off the table, takes out the torture assistant, and proceeds to [[No
* ''[[
* During [[Stephen Colbert]]'s appearance on ''[[Late Night|Late Night with Conan O'Brien]]'', his statements about Rosa Parks enrage Conan so much that he pulls a pistol and shoots him in the chest. Colbert falls back, apparently dead - then slowly sits up after a few seconds and continues his argument, completely unfazed. Conan complains, exasperated, "I shot you very near the heart!"
* On ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'', Buffy receives a severe electric shock intended to kill her. She manages to escape without severe harm thanks to Slayer toughness, but Giles implies that a normal human would have been killed by the shock. In the series finale: "Mommy, this mortal wound itches." Then again, being impaled through the midsection is demonstrably not always fatal in the Buffyverse. Still, the First Evil seemed to think it would do her in, and the First is probably an expert in fatalities. We see that that impaling a Slayer does little to stop them
** There is also Xander, who survived being smacked around with a hammer that injures deities.
* On the first episode of ''[[Deadwood]]'', a prostitute named Trixie shoots a customer in the head. The Doctor is summoned, and observes in fascination as the customer continues to babble half-coherently despite the bullet going straight through his head (demonstrated after he dies by sticking a metal probe straight through the wound channel.) The customer does die after some minutes, but even the Doctor seemed to think he should be dead, or at least not babbling.
* ''[[
** Jack Harkness might have bits of this trope as well. Normally, he would be dead, but comes back anyway.
*** Jack gets it
== [[Video Games]] ==
* Any
* ''[[Mortal Kombat]]'', particularly the later games where you could have a sword lodged in your chest or forehead [[I Can Still Fight|yet still be able to fight!]]
* ''[[Max Payne (
* Several times in ''[[Final Fantasy IV]]''. Most notably, Cid leaps from the airship, presumably falling several ''miles'' onto either rocks or lava, ''with enough explosives strapped to his chest to seal off the route to the underworld to stop a pursuing fleet of airships'', which he sets off on-screen. And lives
** Yang also survives the destruction of the robotic Giant of Babil, which he himself caused by ''jamming himself into its world-sundering laser cannon'' so it misfired. He shows up at the end of the game without a scratch.
* In a cutscene in ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]'' where Sephiroth stabs Cloud with his extremely long sword, whereupon Cloud pulls himself down the blade until he has enough leverage to shake Sephiroth off.
* [[Fallout: New Vegas]] begins with the player character getting shot in the head. However, after a few days (with help from a friendly robot that thinks he's a cowboy and a local doctor) you're back on your feet and good to go. Naturally, the people who shot you are [[Oh Crap|extremely freaked out when you catch up to them.]]
* This happens an incredible amount of times in the ''[[Trauma Center]]'' series. Rifle wound to the heart in the middle of a snowstorm when the hospital is ten minutes away? No problem, and that's just in the first chapter. Never mind the parasites that ''slash your internal organs apart.'' I'm not even going to touch the guy who has multiple brain aneurysms burst before you even open him up.
** In ''[[Trauma Team]]'', there's a girl who {{spoiler|is holding a bomb when it explodes, yet survives.}} Did we mention that the same kind of {{spoiler|bomb}} has killed ''grown men'' in two different incidents?
* ''[[Tales of Vesperia]]'' has {{spoiler|Raven/Schwann}}, whose heart was speared through ten years ago during the Great War. {{spoiler|Alexei}} replaced it with a special blastia that kept him alive. Of course, you only discover this after beating the snot out of him {{spoiler|during his ten-minute [[Face Heel Turn]]}}.
** {{spoiler|Yeager}} received a similar heart replacement, which he reveals halfway through the fight against him. The secret mission for the fight is to destroy it by having Raven shoot him with a particular arte after you break his guard, but he's able to keep fighting even after you do this.
* In ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]'', Liquid {{spoiler|after getting the crap beat out of him by Solid Snake, falls of Metal Gear Rex, supposedly to his death, then later on, it is revealed that he survived, only to die from FOXDIE}}.
* ''[[Metal Gear Solid|Metal Gear Solid 2]]'' offers a unique example near its endgame:{{spoiler|After disabling Fortune's bullet deflecting plot device, Ocelot fires a bullet straight through the left side of her chest...which she survives, because as Ocelot quickly remembers, [
* Mentioned in ''[[Metal Gear Solid|Metal Gear Solid 3]]''. If the player reaches {{spoiler|the Groznyj Grad cells}} after a rough ride, Volgin remarks that lesser men would be dead by now.
* Snake pulls one of these near the end of ''[[Metal Gear Solid|Metal Gear Solid 4]]'' in {{spoiler|the microwave hallway}}. Otacon and Snake talk about it as if it's a death sentence to even try. What makes it this trope is that [[Determinator|Snake]] [[Badass|can keep going even if his Life bar empties,]] [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|pulling himself along literally by his fingers.]]
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* ''[[Advent Rising]]''. In a cut-scene hero falls out of a walkway, hits the side of a building hard, slides down it for about thirty stories and slams into an observation platform. He just shakes it off. And this is ''before'' getting any superpowers.
* In ''[[Persona 3]]'', {{spoiler|the main character managed to live for a couple months after using all of his life energy to seal Nyx away from the world in order to fulfill a promise he made with the rest of SEES. Too bad he couldn't hold out for a couple more minutes...}}
* Zaeed Massani from ''[[
* In ''[[Final Fantasy V]]'', [[Badass Grandpa|Galuf]] gets put down to '''0 HP''' by Ex-Death but stands his ground and keeps fighting anyways. {{spoiler|Unfortunately, as soon as the battle is over, he keels over and [[Deader Than Dead|dies for real.]]}}
* In ''[[Mabinogi Fantasy Life]]'' the deadly status is this as a gameplay element. The player character has 0
* In ''[[No More Heroes]]'', quoted above, several characters survive impalement and massive blood loss before deciding its time to die. One boss in the first game refuses to die until she's won.
* In ''[[Tales of Maj
== [[Visual Novels]] ==▼
* Shirou in ''[[
▲== Visual Novels ==
▲* Shirou in ''[[Fate Stay Night|Fate/stay night]]''. Like with [[Tsukihime|Shiki]], it's practically his shtick that he can't pull off any impressive victories unless he's been rendered three-quarters dead first.
** Lancer and Berserker have the 'Battle Continuation' ability that allow them usage of this trope. In Unlimited Blade Works, {{spoiler|Lancer is ordered to kill himself with Gae Bolg by his master, which ''removes his heart from his body''. Keeping that in mind, he is still able to stay alive long enough to kill Kotomine in retaliation, stare down and wound Shinji, offer some [[Gallows Humor]], and use his runes to burn down the building before giving up the ghost.}}
** Archer, who in the same route, although having been nearly {{spoiler|killed by Lancer, master-less and near out of magical energy from ability overuse, manages to stay alive for another day to have an exhausting duel with Shirou. He gets run through, shot [[In the Back]] and skewered by half a dozen of Gilgamesh's swords (something which would kill most of the other servants several times over even at full health), and is still somehow alive a whole day later to rip apart half the holy grail, finish off Gilgamesh, and survive to see the end of the war.}} Good grief.
** {{spoiler|Kotomine}} in Heaven's Feel is {{spoiler|cut off from his source of life by Dark Sakura, which effectively stops his heart.}} Next day, he's still moving around and able to give Shirou a [[No
* ''[[Tsukihime]]'': Shiki is impaled in the guts by a black deer, has some animals eating him and then gets up and starts fighting in a rather [[Badass]] fashion. After winning, he falls down and gets back to bleeding to death. Obviously, he doesn't but...
** Kohaku pulls off one of these in the doujin game [[Battle Moon Wars]], when she takes a blast from [[Fate/stay
* ''[[
▲== [[Web Comics]] ==
== Web Comics ==▼
* Dex Garritt in ''[[Dominic Deegan]]'' achieves this trope through the inversion of [[Redemption Equals Death]]. {{spoiler|Shortly after learning about his horrible past where he beat his girlfriend (only once, as he lamely defended himself) he gets into a fight where he is disemboweled and blown up with little to no chance of recovery.}} Since he is not forgiven for his past deeds, his survives on what seems to be sheer willpower.
* Parodied in ''[[
* ''[[
* ''[[A Miracle of Science]]'' has {{spoiler|Ben being shot through the torso with an energy weapon, after already having been shot and barely patched up. He manages to stay conscious just long enough get Haas to surrender before he finally collapses. He only survived because of Martian nanotech being able to stabilize him long enough to get replacements for the organs that got speared.}}
* The more extreme injuries Oasis and Kusari take in ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'' are justified, since they seem to possess an as-yet unexplained ability to come back from the dead. However, Kusari ''did'' get stabbed through the chest four times and was still able to ask for someone to pry her off the wall she'd been stuck to. Oasis, meanwhile, managed to survive for several days with untreated knife wounds in her stomach.
* Used as a [[Running Gag]] in ''[[8-
* Used frequently in ''[[
* ''[[Whateley Universe]]'' has several people who can pull this off. Tennyo and Jade, on Team Kimba's side, along with werewolves; Great Old Ones; other regenerators...there are a lot of people that you need to be really sure stay dead, if you think you've killed them. Tennyo periodically has chunks of her body blown off, and Jade's technically died {{spoiler|several times. In the same day.}}
* ''[[Red vs. Blue]]'' has the Meta. Just watch Chapter 19 and 20 and you'll see just how much he can take.
** [
* In ''[[Transformers Armada]]'', Smokescreen takes an almost point-blank hit from the Requiem Blaster that blasts a hole clear through his abdomen. He still manages to stagger upright as molten metal drips down his torso and stagger towards Megatron for another attack, and winds up surviving after having his body rebuilt. While they ''are'' robots, other Transformers in the series have died from lesser wounds. Laws of Fatality are not consistent in Transformers. Same person can be unharmed by some attack at one point and next dying after being hit by same attack.
* In [[The Movie]] of ''[[Kim Possible]]'' Shego is kicked from the roof of a building that is several stories high, into an electrical signal tower, which not only electrocutes her but also collapses right on top of her. And she comes out of the incident with slightly torn clothes and frazzled hair...
* In ''[[The Spectacular Spider-Man]]'', Silver Sable is hit twice in the course of one episode by a limo but still gets up and continues fighting as if nothing's wrong.
** This also applies to Spidey himself in nearly every single episode, he can be beaten, scratched, smashed, burned, and hit with explosives from every villain he encounters, and he can still shake it off and fight normally. Most notably is one episode where he defeats the Sinister Six while sleepwalking. [[Super-Powered Evil Side|Granted, it was the symbiote doing all the work for him, but the fact that Peter still had all of his bones in the right place the next day is nothing short of a miracle.]]
* ''[[Ace Lightning]]'': Chuck Mugel is hit by Ace's lightning bolt attack ''twice''. The first time (a "deflected shot") it ''gave him'' temporary superpowers. The second time just knocked him out for a few minutes, though granted, it freaked the main characters out a bit anyway.
== [[Real Life]] ==
* [[w:Phineas Gage|Phineas Gage]] got a six-foot iron tamping rod shot through his skull and survived.
* [[
** He even sat up during the burning
** Incidentally, the reason Rasputin didn't eat sweets was because of a condition stemming from a previous assassination attempt, in which he had his belly slit open so that his ''entrails hung out'' (
** Rasputin purportedly practiced Mithridatism, which is the practice of taking small non-lethal amounts of a poison in order to build an immunity to that poison over time, which might be the reason why Rasputin supposedly ingested five times the minimum amount of cyanide required to kill a normal man. Since his assassins did not know of his
** A good deal of the story was likely made up by the assassins to [[Demonization|demonize]] Rasputin further and make themselves appear vindicated. An unpublished autopsy performed in 1916 and reviewed in 1993 and 2004/5 found no poison in his stomach but determined that the third bullet wound (directly to the forehead) killed him instantly. The culprit? Lt. Oswald Rayner, an Englishman. The bullet was the only unjacketed round found in Rasputin's body, and the only gun that fired unjacketed rounds and was present at Rasputin's murder was a Webley .445 inch revolver, owned (and most likely fired) by Lt. Rayner. That said, three rounds and numerous bladed weapon wounds is still a lot to kill a man.
*** Although there is a possibility that the poison was destroyed when the food was baked
** And to cap it all off, the autopsy showed that there was air in his lungs at the time of death, meaning ''he was still alive when he was thrown under the frozen surface of the water.'' Tenacious isn't the word.
* Blackbeard the pirate, whose [[Last Stand]] involved a half dozen pistol wounds and over a dozen saber cuts. The bit where his headless corpse kept swimming around the ship until they riddled it with musket-balls is a myth, though.
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* The French resistant Armand Bacquer was born in 1920, executed in 1944 [http://www.plaques-commemoratives.org/Members/FTanniou/BACQUER%20Armand and died in 2005]. Armand Bacquer was a French policeman in Paris, caught by germans the day Paris was liberated, he was promptly shot at nightfall, and survived all night, until a passer-by called the Red Cross. His most important wound was in the left lung which is usually very fatal. He limped for the rest of his life, having been also shot four times in the right leg. He recovered slowly, and lived until 2005. He was 24 at the time of his execution.
* All the tales of ''I Shouldn't Be Alive'', which was a show on the Discovery Channel.
* ''[[Cracked.com]]'' has a couple lists of them.
** Pretty much everyone on [http://www.cracked.com/article_16497_7-people-who-cheated-death-then-kicked-it-in-balls.html this list] but especially Alexis Goggins, who took six bullets (apparently including a couple to the head) and survived, which would be pretty impressive for a trained Marine, but crosses into I Am Not Making This Up territory when you find out she was a six-year-old girl.
*
* Anyone on [http://www.greenharbor.com/fffolder/ffallers.html this page], but Lt. Chisov in particular. He survived a fall of 22,000
* Similar to the Marine story mentioned above, a man was robbing a small town bank when, through pure coincidence, one of the tellers happened to be a former classmate who recognized him. Now needing to eliminate the witnesses, the crook took them to a back room and executed them each with a shot in the back of the head with a large-calibre handgun. Except, again coincidentally, for the woman who knew him: the bullet traveled around her skull and out the forehead, knocking her unconscious and (like all head wounds) causing so much blood that he assumed she was dead. She testified at his trial
* ~Mötley Crüe~ Bassist Nikki Sixx has been pronounced clinically dead ''on three separate occasions'' after overdosing on heroin. The first time, after being revived by ''two'' adrenaline shots to the heart and taken to hospital, he got up, checked himself out of hospital, and hitchhiked back to his house wearing only his leather pants. He did this ''again'' in London where he was dumped inside a dumpster after the dealer he OD'd in front of tried to ''beat him back to life with a baseball bat''.▼
** Getting shot in the head and having the bullet not penetrate is surprisingly common, even with modern firearms. Given the strength and roundness of a skull, bullets can skip off or pull the "run under the scalp" thing described above. Of course more powerful rounds are less likely to fail to penetrate.
* Army dentist Dr. AnnaLee Kruyer came back from Iraq with the story of an anonymous sergeant who was shot in the face in the exact right spot for all of the bullet's energy to be tranferred to one of his teeth, ejecting it from its socket and stopping the bullet there. He initially assumed the shot missed and kept coming, scaring the living hell out of the guy who hit him, who surrendered immediately. ''[[Snopes]]'' confirms it [http://www.snopes.com/photos/military/teeth.asp here].▼
▲*
▲* Army dentist Dr. AnnaLee Kruyer came back from Iraq with the story of an anonymous sergeant who was shot in the face in the exact right spot for all of the bullet's energy to be
* Merriweather Lewis (of Lewis and Clark fame) tried to kill himself by shooting himself in the head. This seems pretty foolproof, but a couple bullets in his brain (yes, ''two'') didn't quite get the job done. He wrote a short letter explaining the circumstances, slit his wrists, and finally bled to death.
* As though Simo Häyhä's being a [[One-Man Army]] [[Cold Sniper]] with [[Improbable Aiming Skills]] isn't enough to make him seem more unbelievable than most fictional [[Action Hero
* In the real-life [[Determinator]] category, it's well-known that there's a reason for the crossbar on a boar
** Though even if a boar would be instantly killed, 150
* Then there's the well-known case of Curtis Jackson, better known as 50 Cent, who in the early 2000's was shot a total of nine times in the chest, hand, arm, hip, and both legs, but survived to become a multi-million dollar rapper.
* Notorious Depression-era bank robber George "[[Berserk Button|Baby Face]]" Nelson, who was cornered by a couple of FBI agents wielding a shotgun and a Tommy gun. Instead of retreating, Nelson advanced on them across an open field, emptying his bolt-action rifle into them as he went, and being hit nine times. The G-men died at the scene. Nelson got back into his car and drove off, dying several hours later.
* The autobiography of Sonny Barger (of Hell's Angels fame)
* Theodore Roosevelt was shot in the chest by an assassin and took the time to finish his speech before he sought medical attention. He was helped a bit by the bullet being partially stopped by his glasses and the thick, folded speech being held in his breast pocket, preventing the round from piercing his lung.
* On January
** Three months after and she's doing very well, while a bullet wound like her own would kill a normal man, she has no memory loss, and is expected to be up and around, completely rehabilitated, in under a year.
*** Congresswoman Giffords returned to office on August
{{reflist}}
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[[Category:Truth in Television]]
[[Category:Normally I Would Be Dead Now]]
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