Fighting a Shadow: Difference between revisions

 

{{examples}}

 

== Anime and Manga ==

** It should be noted that ANY Vandel can use this trick, and while the shadow may be weaker, the shadow of an extremely powerful Vandel is much more than even an experienced buster can handle.

* Type one used straight and played with in ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'': the twelth Angel, Leliel, appears as a floating, apparently unkillable orb over Tokyo-3, disappearing and reappearing at will. {{spoiler|Turns out its "shadow" is the real angel.}}

* {{spoiler|The Anti-Spiral}} from [[Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann]] seems to be something like this. Possible an collective conscience in a shadowy form.

 

* ''[[Locke and Key]]: Crown Of Shadows'' had an entire army of Shadow monsters attacking the protagonists.

* Rockslide from ''[[X-Men (Comic Book)|X-Men]]'' may be the poor man's version of this. His consciousness is some kind of disembodied psychic spirit that controls the mineral pieces of his body (which can explode and reform from nearby earth material at will).

* This happened to [[Atomic Robo]] in the Shadow from Beyond Time, where the titular creature kept coming back. Eventually, Robo meets with his fellow time displaced selves inside of the shadow and they detonate a quantum bomb that destroys the creature at all points in time simultaneously.

* ''[[Final Crisis]]'' reveals that [[Darkseid]] has been doing this for years, in order to [[Retcon]] decades of [[Villain Decay]] and justify his many, many defeats at the hands of lesser foes. The ''real'' Darkseid is far more powerful and dangerous.

* Nekron, as of the ''[[Blackest Night]]'' can inhabit any dead body.

* Similarly, the Dark Judges of [[Judge Dredd]] can take any dead body as their vessel.

 

== Film ==

* In ''In The Name Of The King: A Dungeon Siege Tale'', the evil wizard puts his consciousness inside an armored warrior. Every time his avatar is slain, he just laughs and uses a new body to fight.

* In ''[[The Matrix]]'', the Agents are computer programs working for those running the Matrix, so there's no reason they should stay dead. If you actually manage to kill one by the rules of the simulation, the program remains in existence, and the Agent can return immediately by possessing the nearest bystander. [[Double Subverted]] when Neo destroys Smith at the end of the first movie, seemingly for good but ultimately only causing him to become more powerful in the next movie.

 

== Literature ==

* Driving the HP to 0 of the Demonlord Tagazin, in the 10th Book of the ''[[Lone Wolf]]'' series "The Dungeons of Torgar" does not kill him; it just sends him home. In fact, the Remake of the series feels obliged to point out that even if you roll a [[One-Hit Kill]] with the [[Infinity+1 Sword]]; no, he's not dead. You later fight him on his home turf in a later book; where he can be destroyed permanently.

* Many supernatural beings (such as demons) are like this in [[The Dresden Files]]; ordinarily when summoned, their spirit arrives in the mortal world and creates a construct body, and if that body is killed, the spirit is simply sent back to the Nevernever (essentially, the supernatural dimension that exists alongside the mortal world). They can be killed permanently in the Nevernever itself, if they enter directly into the mortal world in their true form (as opposed to a construct body), or with certain powerful spells and weapons.

 

== Mythology and Religion ==

* [[The Bible|Jesus]] from Christianity and the [[Avatar]]s of Vishnu from Hinduism both are said to have been the divine taken physical form. The deaths of their physical bodies did not kill their divine selves. Indeed, Vishnu had ''ten'' Avatars, reincarnating every time Evil rose in the world and then accepting death each time once his purpose was fulfilled. Simply trying to define the Jesus/God connection is bound to result in argument, though.

* The concept of an immortal soul, either via [[Reincarnation]] or a true afterlife, implies that this is the case for humans or indeed, all mortal beings, plant or animal.

 

== Tabletop Games ==

* Daemons in ''[[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]]'' and ''[[Warhammer 40000]]'' behave like the D&D ones, as their physical forms are merely manifestations of their warp-based nature. Destruction of their physical form merely send them back to the warp.

** If you go to its roots, every daemon is effectively an avatar of its respective god, with a smite of personality depending on how strong it is (the Greater Daemons are effectively embodiments of the gods' overall personalities, but with their own sentience, while the Daemonic Beasts are effectively mindless), and can be absorbed back into the gestalt whole at a whim. So you aren't so much fighting the shadow of the daemon as the shadow of the god in millions of different avatars (which shows just how powerful the Dark Gods are, considering the strength of your average daemon). On the other hand, the Daemon Princes, who were once mortal, can considered to be this trope played straight - their bodies are comprised of warp energy and, if defeated, they are forced to return to the Warp for a few millenia while they pull themselves together enough to reconstruct their bodies.

** The Eldar Avatar of Khaine, despite it's name, isn't quite an example of this. It's an animated construct that houses a fragment of the Eldar war god's essence.

* Demons in ''[[Feng Shui]]'' are the same way. Killing one only sends him back to the Underworld, though if one kills a demon in the Underworld, then the death is permanent.

* ''[[Arkham Horror]]'' features the above-mentioned [[Cthulhu Mythos|Nyarlathotep]]. The Crawling Chaos is simultaneously a possible [[The Big Bad|Ancient One]], a possible [[The Dragon|Herald]], and five to ten separate monsters (depending on expansions.)

* ''[[Kult]]'' subverts this: Archons and other superbeings can have multiple incarnate avatars and it take less than one day to create a replacement when one is destroyed. However, getting killed hurts and if several incarnates are killed in short period, the pain can actually kill the being.

 

== Video Games ==

* Ganondorf from ''[[The Legend of Zelda]]'' series fits this trope to a T. Ganondorf appears to be the "physical body", while Ganon is the inner demon essence and a physical manifestation of Ganondorf's true power and rage.

** The Phantom Ganon from the Forest Temple in ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time|The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time]]'' probably counts as well.

{{quote|'''{{spoiler|Harbinger}}''': {{smallcaps|You only damage the vessel; you cannot hurt me.}}}}

** That's because {{spoiler|Harbinger is using a proxy - the Collector General - ostensibly to avoid what happened to Sovereign.}}

* As part of a particularly long quest chain in ''[[World of Warcraft]]'', you summon the Avatar of Hakkar in the [[Scrappy Level|Sunken Temple]] and trap his essence into some egg thingy as requested by some troll. You can do this as much as you like as he gives you a scroll to keep summoning Hakkar, saying it weakens his true form. A nearby dwarf continues the chain and you learn that actually, [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|you've been making Hakkar stronger by summoning his avatar repeatedly.]] [[Oh Crap|Woops!]] Eventually, you ''do'' kill the true form of Hakkar, but that happened later than this quest line was introduced. And it's really not settled yet if he's actually dead or was basically just banished again.

** According to some quests, demons in warcraft universe work like this too. If this i true, presumably the reason Archimonde and pals haven't come back is because it takes quite a while for a powerful demon to regenerate.

** One of the endgame boss fights in ''Wrath of the Lich King'' involves beating back the ''mouth'' of [[Eldritch Abomination|Yogg-Saron]] as he [[Sealed Evil in a Can|begins to emerge from his earthly prison]].

** In the Cataclysm expansion, Ragnaros, who was killed by players as the first end boss of WoW 1.0 will make a reappearance, his original death being ambiguously a "banishment".

* ''[[Persona 3]]'' [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|explicitly names its foe thus]]: ''{{spoiler|Nyx Avatar}}''. The battle is [[Marathon Boss|long]], [[Barrier Change Boss|gruesome]], and [[Nintendo Hard|difficult]], and yet {{spoiler|the [[Heads I Win, Tails You Lose|enemy shrugs off all damage]]}} and calls forth the undefeatable [[Cosmic Horror]] it is a mere fragment of: {{spoiler|Nyx, Death itself}}.

* In ''[[Persona 4]]'' {{spoiler|Ameno-sagiri}} is something like this for {{spoiler|Izanami}}.

* Wraith, the repeating [[Mid Boss]] of ''[[Phantom Brave]]'' is merely a shadow of the true evil, Sulphur. His class is specifically "Dark Avatar."

** Killing Sulphur merely sends him back to the "X-Dimension." The Magenta Core can summon him no matter how many times he gets sent back.

** Julius in ''[[Sword of Mana]]'' has a literal shadow of himself that often does dirty work that he's not available to perform in person. However, it's apparently not remote controlled, given that it actually ''asks Julius a favor'' shortly before the final battle. The heroes still act like they're talking to Julius, though, which is somewhat confusing.

** Kefka was a fan of this technique, using it to taunt and ultimately defeat General Leo

* In ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]'', Sephiroth manages to do this in a number of ways, though he doesn't have any inherent quality of always surviving death. The first times you see him in the game (when you can't fight him, and the characters wouldn't be up to it anyway), it's actually his real body but Jenova's stuff, so killing it almost certainly would not kill him. When you finally get to him for the [[Final Boss]] fights, you have to kill two physical [[One-Winged Angel]] forms in a row. After that, he was still hanging out in [[The Lifestream]] or something and pulled Cloud in to a mental battle. Even after being defeated, he still refuses to be dispersed in the Lifestream like a normal dead person, but instead eventually (in ''Advent Children'') sends out three avatars (who are separate persons from him) to look for what's left of Jenova. When they find it, one of them uses it to transform into Sephiroth, whom Cloud kills again. After ''that'', he's presumably gone for good.

** The Sephiroth in ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'' is apparently a more straightforward example, an embodiment of Cloud's inner darkness who will always return after being defeated by him. Cloud's fighting his own shadow, in a way. Okay, maybe it's not that straightforward.

* Midway through ''[[Shin Megami Tensei II]]'', you fight against YHVH, aka God. Except it's not the real one, it's just a false image unconsciously created and empowered by the archangels. In the end, if you're not choosing the Lawful path, you fight the REAL one. And even if you win, He says He will not truly be defeated - as long as there are people praying to him, he will return.

** The same holds true to any demon or god in the series. Killing them doesn't stop them from showing up in any of the other games, or even later in the same game. (Often it gives you [[You Kill It, You Bought It|the right]] to [[Summon Magic|summon]] them as [[Mon]]s.]]

 

== Webcomics ==

* Parodied by ''[[RPG World]]''. The [[Big Bad]] knows that the band of heroes is going to storm his fortress, so vacates it and leaves a Shadow of himself behind to fight them. The good guys ''know'' that it's just a Shadow, but Hero insists on defeating it anyway.

* In ''Digger'', when Shadowchild {{spoiler|meets with and eats [[Sweet Grass Voice]], this might be part of why [[Sweet Grass]] was quickly defeated}}

* The Bloodgrem from ''[[El Goonish Shive]]''. It can't be killed, only "un-summoned", and it can always be summoned again.

 

== Web Original ==

* In ''[[Fine Structure]]'', {{spoiler|Zykov was just the container for the local manifestation of the [[Big Bad]]. Killing himself wasn't surrender, it was just cutting out the middleman to [[My Death Is Just the Beginning]].}}

* In ''[[The Questport Chronicles]]'', this is one explanation for the [[Big Bad|Master of Darkness']] return after his defeat a thousand years ago. Or he might have been [[Faking the Dead|faking]] [[Never Found the Body|it]].

 

== Western Animation ==

* This is how the Avatar in ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]'' normally works: the Avatar's existence is mostly in the spiritual world; and reincarnates into one person at a time. This trope is actually inverted when in the Avatar State; by pulling all of itself into the physical world, the current Avatar wields tremendous power, but if he should die while in the Avatar State [[Deader Than Dead|he'll have no way of reincarnating]].

* The death of anyone in ''[[Transformers]]'' who is considered to be a "multiversal singularity" is considered to be this, so don't count {{spoiler|Unicron, The Fallen, or Vector Prime}} out just yet. Mind you, it is an [[All There in the Manual]] thing and within their series, there is nothing to hint their survival - ''when shown to be completely destroyed.'' (Blow Unicron up but leave the head? He'll be back.)

** To specify, they are both extremely hard to actually ''kill'' rather than weaken, and, once you ''do'' actually kill them, it doesn't stick. They've long since learned the ins and outs of cross-multiversal existence, and periodically spend time in reverse-time universes, which basically allows them to save their e Spirit game and resume from there when a physical body kicks it, as the consciousness just jumps to the concurrent body in the reverse-time universe, which retroactively becomes their "true form", despite having been a past/future self a few minutes ago. So, essentially, they revive themselves by telling causality to ''suck it''.

* Brainiac in ''[[Superman: The Animated Series]]''. Even the smallest piece of him contains his complete consciousness - and he ''always'' has a back-up copy of himself stored somewhere. As such, he's one of the few opponents Superman ''will'' use lethal force on, because the Brainiac you can kill is always just one part of the whole.

*** And yet, [[Legion of Super-Heroes|Brainiac 5]] must've come from ''somewhere.''

 

 

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