Mutual Disadvantage: Difference between revisions

 

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* In ''[[One Piece]]'', Smoker and Ace proved unable to hurt each other, due to both being logia fruit users with elements that do not naturally interact - all they achieved was a huge pillar of smoke and fire.

 

* The most recent issue of ''Billy Batson and the Power of Shazam''; [[Captain Marvel]] and [[Evil Counterpart|Black Adam]] are evenly matched and cannot harm each other; likewise [[Distaff Counterpart|Mary Marvel]] and Black Adam Junior {{spoiler|who is an embittered Freddy Freeman!}} seem to be immune to each other's punches. {{spoiler|But Black Adam Junior '''can''' injure Captain Marvel.}}

* Havok and Cyclops in ''[[X-Men]]'' comics. As they are brothers, this situation happens very rarely, but when it does, they are both immune to each other's attacks, because their powers work in the same way, and each can use the other's attack as an energy source. The same is true of Sean Cassidy (Banshee), and his cousin Thomas, neither's powers can affect the other. This is believed in both cases to be due to their genetic relationship and can apply to other related mutants as well.

* In a [[Marvel Comics|Marvel]]/[[DC Comics|DC]] crossover between [[Batman]] and [[Captain America (comics)]], after [[The Joker]] becomes [[Even Evil Has Standards|furious]] after finding out that his collaborator the Red Skull is a Nazi, the two villains try to use their own weaponized toxins on each other to no effect. Since both Joker and Red Skull are immune to their own toxins and both Joker Venom and Red Skull's "dust of death" are remarkably similar, both characters are also immune to ''each other's'' toxins.

 

* Barbossa and Jack Sparrow fall into a type one version of this trope for a short while, during ''[[Pirates of the Caribbean]]: Curse of the Black Pearl''.

** Again in the third film, though here imposed by terrain. Calypso hated both ships and their captains, so she created a huge typhoon that made maneuvering impossible (removing the Black Pearl's speed advantage) and made firing the cannons impossible (removing the Flying Dutchman's firepower advantage). Thus it came down to a brutal ship to ship fight between crews she hoped neither would survive.

* ''[[The Golden Voyage of Sinbad]]''. The eternal battle between Good and Evil is personified by a combat between a griffin and a centaur at the Fountain of Destiny. Neither one can prevail on its own, but "The deeds of weak and mortal men can tip the scales one way or the other."

 

* ''[[Animorphs|Megamorphs]]'' #2: The crab aliens can't get to the ant aliens' base without getting shredded by their energy weapons, the ants can't penetrate the crabs' force field.

 

* In one episode of ''[[Charmed]]'' Piper and Cole have a fight while both are invulnerable.

* In an episode of the ''[[Superman]]'' TV-series, some random dude off the street ends up with a carbon-copy of Superman's powers due to [[Lightning Can Do Anything|lightning]]. Said random dude then starts a Hero For Hire business, charging people premium rates for applying his superhuman powers, in between using his X-ray vision to [[Power Perversion Potential|check out girl's changing-rooms]]. Supes gets fed up with this pretty quickly and starts actively interfering in the 'business' (and pleasure), causing the dude to lose his temper and start a fight. Both of them, of course, are super-strong, but entirely invulnerable - and they're more invulnerable than super-strong, resulting in a Type-1 brawl... the only possible loser being the surrounding area.

** It is implied that Ascended beings can kill one another but only if one is vastly more powerful than the other, which is a very rare case but not impossible: belief can empower an Ascended which is why they insist to everyone on the mortal plains that they're not gods. That was one of the causes for the ideological split between the Alterans and the Ori: the latter formed [[Path of Inspiration|Origin]] [[A God Am I|specifically to gain even more power]] but the distance between the Ori galaxy and the Milky Way meant they were still too weak to overpower the Alterans... which is why they started converting the Milky Way's native population to Origin as well, abusing the Alterans' [[Prime Directive]] to build up a power base in plain sight without a [[Deus Ex Machina]] to fear from.

 

* In [[ECW]] Rob Van Dam and Jerry Lynn usually started their matches with a series of Chain Wrestling moves which the other countered pretty quickly.

 

* England vs. France in the Hundred Years War, among others. England had the world's best navy; France had the best land army. England was unable to launch a successful land war against France, while France was unable to even touch English shores.

* A mention of the Peloponnesian War could probably go along with that France/England Hundred Years War example. Athens was a sea power and Sparta had the best land forces in Greece. Sparta had to build a navy before it could successfully choke off Athens, almost 30 years in.

 

* In ''[[Team Fortress 2]]'' this is the case with a few of the classes.

** Two Pyros will fall into this trope. Both are resistant to each other's signature ability (setting each other on fire), their unlockables are useless as the Flare Gun and Axtinguisher require their opponent to be on fire , meaning the winner is decided by either shotguns (if either has one equipped), flamethrowers (which would require either participant to move into the range of the other's flamethrower) or melee weapons (which do have some advantages over each other but don't make all that much difference).

* In ''[[Touhou]]'', mortal enemies Mokou and Kaguya, while not invulnerable as such to each other's attacks, are both immortal and will regenerate the wounds inflicted by the other. The result is a long-term stalemate where no matter who wins the individual battles (usually Kaguya), either of them will be back to start again in no time.

* Knalgan [[Mirror Match|mirrors]] in ''[[Battle for Wesnoth]]'' - a mirror match with a faction composed of highly defensive and slow dwarves, and fast but low-damage or frail outlaws. Neither side has and magic or poison needed to dislodge the other's defensive dwarves, and neither side has any Time-of-Day based powerphase advantage over the other. As a result, neither side has much incentive to attack.

 

* The titular characters of the webcomic ''[[Bob and George]]'' were immune to each others' powers due to being brothers. This is in turn a reference to [[X-Men|Scott and Alex Summers]] being immune to the other's superpowers for the same reason.

 

 

* Also in the ''[[Pokémon]]'' series, Ghost and Dragon typed Pokémon are notably vulnerable to their own element, especially the Dragons as they are the only element that Dragon-type attacks get an advantage against at all. It is also common competitive practice to teach a given Pokémon moves from other elements specifically to counter the types they are weak against (such as giving a Fire-type user the Grass-type "Solarbeam" for use against Water-types).

** Due to the complicated nature of [[Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors]], Pokémon with dual elemental types can in fact become vulnerable to one of their own elements (like the Rock+Flying Aerodactyl being vulnerable to Rock attacks, or the Fighting+Steel Lucario being vulnerable to Fighting attacks).

* In the ''[[Dissidia Final Fantasy]]'' [[Divine Chessboard|campaign modes]], the player would sometime happen upon a golden Manikin piece. These units tend to be equipped in such a way that their health is critically low, but are augmented in other ways (such as having nigh impenetrable Bravery defence, or having summons that send their own Bravery points skyrocket), meaning that the first HP attack to connect is generally what wins the match.

 

** This is still generally the reason ''nobody'' uses nuclear weapons in the modern age: even if you did launch a nuke at somebody else, they'd just lob a nuke right back before yours got there, and then you'd both be dead.

** This also served as the central conflict in the film ''[[War Games]]'' when the WOPR supercomputer (with access to real nukes) was instructed to play a simulation called "Global Thermonuclear War". In the end, it memorably declared "The only winning move is not to play."

 

 

* ''[[Chrono Cross]]'' had three sets of opposing elements (Red/Blue, Green/Yellow, Black/White), each dealing increased damage to its opposite and reduced damage to itself; every character in the ([[Loads and Loads of Characters|rather large]]) roster was assigned an elemental affinity.

* ''[[Final Fantasy X]]'' and [[Final Fantasy X-2|its sequel]], although the player characters were [[Non-Elemental]] by default, elements were arranged in pairs (Fire/Ice and Water/Thunder) with each doing increased damage to its opposite. The player could also find (or [[Item Crafting|customize]]) weapons and armor with elemental affinities, which could create scenarios of mutual weakness or invulnerability depending on what was equipped at a given time.