History Main / NormallyIWouldBeDeadNow

* As though Simo Häyhä's being a OneManArmy ColdSniper with ImprobableAimingSkills isn't enough to make him seem more unbelievable than most fictional {{Action Hero}}es, he survived getting half his face blown off by an exploding bullet near the end of the Winter War. He shot and killed his attacker, passed out, and would live on to a ripe old age of 96 as a successful moose hunter.

* Shi woon has even lampshaded this several times in ''Manhwa/TheBreaker''. 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]].

* In ''Literature/{{Inkspell}}'', [[spoiler:Mo]] survives having been [[spoiler:shot in the chest by The Magpie]] after he was transported to [[spoiler:the Inkworld]].

* ''VideoGame/MaxPayne'' absolutely loves this trope, taking the HollywoodHealing approach to {{Action Hero}}es. By the end of the second game, he has been shot through the chest and head, fallen twenty feet onto hard concrete, and had the building he was in blown up, none of which slow him down much. Lampshaded in ''Max Payne 2''. When he is brought into the hospital after [[spoiler:Winters shoots him in the back]]. The doctors and nurses reference 'multiple gunshot wounds' 'severe head trauma' and use the phrase 'this guy is a trainwreck.'

** 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]]

* This happens an incredible amount of times in the ''VideoGame/TraumaCenter'' 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.

* Spike Spiegel of ''Anime/CowboyBebop'' 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 of 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 TheMovie, he got beaten down, shot, and thrown out a ''moving monorail hovering above the water''.

* Yuki Nagato of ''LightNovel/HaruhiSuzumiya'' takes four massive spear-like projectiles through the torso, then proceeds to kill the culprit -- her {{un|cannyValleyGirl}}derstudy -- without so much as a cry of pain or raised voice. Like Vita above, though, she's a [[RidiculouslyHumanRobot Ridiculously Human Network Terminal]], but as she still bleeds and breathes, this had to have been pretty significant damage. She collapses afterward. Well, first she takes [[http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/9526/yukispeard.jpg several iron spears to the chest]] (and pulls one out of her and ''turns it into a desk''). Then she gets hit with [[CombatTentacles Ryoko's giant energy tentacles]], either through the upper torso or ''[[ShockingMoments through]] her [[BoomHeadshot head]]''.
* ''LightNovel/HighSchoolDXD'': Seriously, Issei has been subjected to this trope so many times in his entire life. If he didn't accept that flier from one of Rias' familiars, he'd be dead already before the novels even started. And that's just ''the first case of this trope happening.''
* ''Manga/InuYasha'': Even {{youkai}} will die if they're stabbed through the heart. After spending most of the manga being almost unstoppable in battle, eventually [[HandicappedBadass Sesshoumaru]] comes up against an opponent so powerful that he winds up a BadassInDistress and is eventually ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice through the heart. Not only does it [[NoOneCouldSurviveThat not kill]] Sesshoumaru, but Sesshoumaru's {{determinat|or}}ion to keep fighting results in a [[CameBackStrong power upgrade]].

* In ''LightNovel/ReZero'', having already been badly wounded by Witch cultists, Rem is seemingly finished off by a single spell from [[AxCrazy Betelgeuse]], who then [[BodyHorror twists and contorts her limbs]] [[ForTheEvulz just for the sheer hell of it]]. Betelgeuse is in no doubt that she's dead, but after he and the other cultists have left, Rem somehow manages to crawl over to Subaru on her shattered limbs and break his shackles with her magic before finally dying in Subaru's arms. Luckily for Rem, her death is undone when Subaru himself is killed a few minutes later, causing time to rewind.

* ''Franchise/MetalGear'':

* Sven from ''Manga/BlackCat'' survives being stabbed through the chest by Eve's mutated knife-arm, because it "Eve intentionally avoided his vital organs", although it is unclear how a knife a little over half the size of his entire chest could avoid anything.

** Aizen once mentions Ichigo's resolve to live is so great even lethal wounds simply render him unable to move instead of killing him. When a massive hole is blasted in his chest, he very nearly dies until mysteriously resurrected and healed by his [[SuperPoweredEvilSide inner hollow]].

** 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 TheMovie, he got beat down, shot and thrown out a ''moving monorail hovering above the water''.
* Hiro Mashima's ''Manga/FairyTail'' -- There's also no explanation for how Gray took ''[[ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice being impaled]]'' '''through his stomach''' without even slowing down while fighting Lyon. In fact, all he apparently did to treat the wound was ''sealing it with ice'' (a seal which broke before the end of the fight), leaving no explanation for why he did not lose two or three vital organs. Just to makes this even more ridiculous, he then fights better against his opponent than he ever did uninjured and starts by beating the hell out of him with just his fists.

* ''LightNovel/HighSchoolDXD'': Seriously, Issei has been subjected with this trope so many times in his entire life. If he didn't accept that flier from one of Rias' familiars, he'd be dead already before the novels even started. And that's just ''the first case of this trope happening.''

*** Luffy displays this trope an awful lot, beginning with Crocodile and steadily escalating. His fight with Rob Lucci ends with Luffy unable to stand and having been trashed so soundly Lucci thinks that he must surely be dead. Later during his rampage through Impel Down he gets poisoned by Warden Magelen (a death sentence in itself) but still has the strength to drag Bon Clay through the arctic conditions of level 5 and beg Ivankov to heal Bon Clay first. After completing his gruesome healing procedure in less than a day he continues fighting and Ivankov constantly lampshades that the only thing keeping Luffy going is his [[HeroicWillpower unstoppable will]]
*** Comes up again at the end of the Wano Arc, Act 3. In this case, Luffy actually ''did'' die; his heart stopped beating after [[BigBad Kaido]] bludgeons him with a spiked war club the size of a tree. However, his heart restarts and he's able to get back up and finish the fight. [[spoiler: Death seems to have been the trigger for Luffy to [[TraumaticSuperpowerAwakening Awaken]] his Devil Fruit into it's true form: Mythical Zoan Hito Hito no Mi, Model Nika. This form, dubbed “Gear Five”, has Luffy transform into the reincarnation of a Sun God with [[ToonPhysics Toon Force]] powers. With this he takes full control over the battle and the battlefield, giving Kaido a much deserved, hilarious (but still painful) beatdown that sent the Yonko into hole deep under Wano, possibly into magma.]]

* Hiro Mashima ''loves'' this trope. Honestly, after reading a few volumes of ''Manga/RaveMaster'' you'll realize that you can never be sure -- no matter how much pounding, shooting, blasting, or ExplosiveOverclocking a character gets -- whether they're seriously dead/about to die or OnlyMostlyDead. Plue can stop bleeding and pain. But it does not explain Shuda surviving the loss of a limb and a 1000 foot fall, or Lucia being up and murderous after his beating from Haru, or the numerous times Sieg is kicking ass again after having a vital organ severely damaged.

** In ''Anime/YuGiOh5Ds'' Kalin pulls a similar move in the Crash Town finale. After goading his opponent into hitting him with enough effect damage to wipe him out on the first turn, he reveals the effect of his ''Infernity Zero'' monster; namely, it is unaffected by all other effects except itself and cannot be destroyed in battle. Also, while it is face-up on the field, its controller cannot lose the duel, even if their Life Points are depleted. However, for each multiple of 500 damage he would take, ''Zero'' gains a Doom Counter; when the count reaches 3, ''Zero'' self destructs.

* ComicBook/{{Batman}}. Seriously, the man just WILL NOT DIE. He's been shot, stabbed, blown up and hammered with enough physical trauma to kill any normal man. In ''ComicBook/NightOfTheOwls'', he was stabbed about eight or nine times by a member of the Court of Owls, pitched off a building, and trapped in an isolated maze for god knows how long. He was a little squirrelly afterwards, but He Got Better. Not really a comic reference, but watch the two promo videos for DC Universe Online that shows him take a missile to the face, and return in the second one as one of the three remaining superheroes on earth. Ironically, it lends Lex Luthor's cockroach analogy slightly wrong...

* 'ComicBook/GIJoe' 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 [[TransformersGenerationTwo Megatron]] shows up. No, really.

* In ''ComicBook/ScudTheDisposableAssassin'', the title robot is shot with a laser beam through the torso. He then keeps 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.

* ''ComicBook/WonderWoman1987'': ComicBook/{{Artemis}} is given ''two'' fatal wounds and still struggles back into the fight to distract their opponents long enough for Diana to have a chance. She then talks Diana into taking the Gauntlet of Atlas from her once she can't stand any longer. She perishes in Diana's arms minutes later, but her refusal to lay down when she's been stabbed through the heart saved Diana's life.

* In ''Fanfic/ConstantTemptation'' Thanks to the S&M games he used to play Light has a very high pain tolerance [[spoiler: and while he's not TooKinkyToTorture it does allows him to get through [[ColdBloodedTorture his ordeal]] with Beyond.]]
* ''[[Fanfic/{{Eleutherophobia}} The Day the Earth Stood Still]]'' begins with Rachel in grizzly bear morph slamming into Tom so hard that his skull shatters and his ribs puncture his lungs. He narrates that the pain alone would've killed him if he'd been in control of his body at the time. Fortunately, he has a precious few seconds to use his HealingFactor and [[SparedByTheAdaptation save himself]].

* ''Fanfic/{{HERZ}}'': In the battle of 2015 Asuka’s Eva got impaled by nine spears and then cut into pieces and eaten, and she felt each blow, slash and bite. Her heart stopped for a few seconds. Misato got shot and collapsed bleeding on the floor. The narration pointed out it was a miracle Asuka was alive, and Misato always wondered how she survived.

* Inigo Montoya in ''Film/ThePrincessBride'' takes a sword through the gut, gets HeroicSecondWind and kills his enemy. What's less credible is that an hour or so later he seems to have got all better.

* ''Literature/MillenniumSeries'': In ''The Girl Who Played with Fire'', [[ActionGirl Lisbeth Salander]] [[spoiler:is shot in the hip, in the back and in the head (the last bullet getting lodged in her brain), then [[BuriedAlive 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]].

* This trope doesn't come up much in ''Series/BreakingBad'' but when it ''does'', the writers sure make it count : first, there is [[spoiler: Gus Fring]], who [[spoiler: has a pipe-bomb detonating ''less than two feet'' away from him. And even with [[NightmareFace half of his head blown off]], he still manages to walk it off and check his tie before dropping dead]]. Then, there is [[spoiler: [[TheHeroDies Walter White himself]], who not only survived his cancer for several months longer than the doctors predicted, but ''also'' managed to keep standing and walking for several minutes after taking a stray heavy machinegun bullet to the lung.]]
* On ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'', 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.\\

* ''Series/WithoutATrace'' sorta does this when FBI Head of Missing Persons is kidnapped himself by a somewhat unbalanced woman who thinks he's an assassin. She ''nailguns'' his hand to a chair and then in the chest. He even rips his hand out of the nail from the other end. End of the episode has him rescued, and all the paramedics do is bandage him up and he ''walks out of there'', commenting that he'll work on the paperwork. Not as badass as other portrayals as he is weak and hurt by this, but no ''way'' the paramedics in real life wouldn't do their best to convince him to let them rush him to the hospital via stretcher at the very least.

** The Path of the Zealot barbarian with the Rage beyond Death abilitystraight up does not die as long as they are raging. Yes, they are, in fact, ''too angry to die''. They'll still feel the consequences as soon as they stop raging, however, so it's a temporary solution. Thank their God that [[DeathIsCheap their resurrections are 100% off materials-wise]].
** Monks of the Long Death can use one of their [[KiManipulation Ki points]] to stave of death. This can be done as many times as they have ki points to spare, and takes no action on their part. Unlike the Zealot, they outright prevent the damage that would've killed them, allowing them to survive even after the encounter.

* ''VideoGame/AdventRising''. 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.

* ''VideoGame/FallingFred'' (and ''Super Falling Fred'') has the titular Fred endlessly falling down from the building. The game ends when Fred suffers fatal injuries from the deadly obstacles thrown at him, which often include decapitation of his body parts. No matter what the final outcome was, the newspaper article shown afterwards reveals that he survived all of the injuries in the end, and is taken to the hospital. This might be the case of EarlyInstallmentWeirdness, since the later games justify Fred's countless deaths via ResurrectiveImmortality.

** You can do this yourself in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV''! At level 50 the Dark Knight class gains a skill called "Living Dead" which lasts for 10 seconds. If the user falls to zero hit points in that time they gain another 10 second status called "Walking Dead" which makes them unable to be [=KOed=]. However, [[LivingOnBorrowedTime they drop dead instantly when the timer expires]] unless their teammates are able to heal them back to full health before then.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Mabinogi}}'' the deadly status is this as a gameplay element. The player character has 0 hp or less (in theory there is no lower limit, just try getting hit by a dragon) and somehow they're still standing. Should they get hit one more time in this state they die no matter how much damage it was. This mainly happens when you get hit for something that should kill you when you have more than half health, and for bonus points, the chance of this actually happening is governed partially by [[HeroicWillpower the character's will stat.]]

* ''VideoGame/MaxPayne'' absolutely loves this trope, taking the HollywoodHealing approach to {{Action Hero}}es. By the end of the second game, he has been shot through the chest and head, fallen twenty feet onto hard concrete and had the building he was in blown up, none of which slow him down much. Lampshaded in ''Max Payne 2''. When he is brought into the hospital after [[spoiler:Winters shoots him in the back]]. The doctors and nurses reference 'multiple gunshot wounds' 'severe head trauma' and use the phrase 'this guy is a trainwreck.'

* ''VideoGame/NoMoreHeroes'': Several characters in the series survive impalement and massive blood loss before deciding its time to die. Sometimes even by ''decapitation.'' One boss in the first game refuses to die until Travis admits defeat, even though his sword is currently sticking through her chest. She finally collapses and bleeds out over him the second he says she has won. Travis himself survives [[spoiler:getting impaled through the heart with Jeane's fist, immediately after she killed a man by impaling him through the crotch with that same fist]]. Another case is Skelter Helter in ''VideoGame/NoMoreHeroes2DesperateStruggle'', whose decapitated head keeps talking and takes Travis by unpleasant surprise. The most extreme case is Destroyman, who is split into half in the first game, has those halves united respectively with robotic halves in the second, and then becomes a mass-produced army in ''VideoGame/NoMoreHeroesIII''.

** 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 InTheBack 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.

* ''VisualNovel/{{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...

* ''Webcomic/DominicDeegan'': Dex Garritt achieves this trope through the inversion of RedemptionEqualsDeath. [[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.

* ''Webcomic/AMiracleOfScience'' 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 to 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.]]

** Aylee has her moments, although it tends to vary depending on the qualities of her current form. Once she had Bun-bun tear his way out of her chest and then cut off her arm, both of which are treated as insignificant scratches that will heal and grow back shortly, whereas in a later form she gets stabbed in the neck and takes a few months to heal. That same form still powers through getting stabbed in the chest because it didn't hit her heart.

** In Season 9, several sniper rounds to the chest? No problem. Eight pistol bullets to the face and neck at extremely close range? Not an issue. Thrown off a moving truck into a HUGE semi truck going 50 miles per hour the opposite direction and falling off the freeway which shown later on is about 200 to 300 feet up? Who cares. Out of all of these wounds, only a single pistol shot to the neck does damage by [[spoiler: hitting his vocal cords, rendering him TheVoiceless.]]

* ''Literature/WhateleyUniverse'' 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.]]

** 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. [[SuperpoweredEvilSide 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.]]

** A good deal of the story was likely made up by the assassins to 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.

* Blackbeard the pirate, whose LastStand 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.

* 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.

** Flight attendant [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87 Vesna Vulovic]] survived an even greater fall, 33,000ft (10,160m) when the plane blew up. She even overcame paralysis, but did limp for the rest of her life.

* 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.

* On January 8th, 2011; Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona was shot in the head by a deranged attempted assassin. Unfortunately, six other people, including a 9-year-old child and a federal judge, were killed in the attempt, but Congresswoman Giffords survived. She returned to office on August 1st, 2011, to be met with a standing ovation, though she retired shortly thereafter due to complications from her injuries, including difficulty forming sentences because part of the brain responsible was damaged by the bullet along with partial vision loss and paralysis.

* UsefulNotes/NikiLauda had a brush with death in 1976 when he raced in Nürburgring. He was initially reluctant due to what he saw as [[NoOSHACompliance safety issues]], and called for a drivers' meeting to gather a consensus on whether to continue on with the race. Unfortunately for him, he himself attested to the dangers of that track the hard way, sustaining serious burns in his head and damage to his lungs from the toxic fumes he ingested from the wreckage. His injuries were so harrowing that Niki was given the Last Rites by a priest as his wife was certain that he was going to buy the farm, only for the Austrian to fight his way out his injuries and get back to the championship fight with James Hunt just ''six weeks'' later, all while his scars are still ''fresh and bleeding''. He would have won the 1976 championship had it not for the inclement weather in the Japanese Grand Prix, not to mention the fact that his eyes were watery and had difficulty blinking due to the aforementioned injuries.