Defeating the Undefeatable

Bruiser, Bruised.

"Well, that was unexpected..."

— The Last Words of Chaos Warmaster Varan The Undefeatable, Warhammer 40,000

A regular scourge in the ring: a character so powerful, so unstoppable, that not even the greatest of fighters can overcome his wrath. Be it The Brute, The Dragon, an Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy, or The Big Guy with a mean streak, this character is an unbeatable scourge that other fighters either dread facing or anticipate fighting in order to gain fame for being the first to beat him. However, they all fail. But nothing lasts forever...

Basically, this is a character who is introduced as and/or is famous for being brutally unstoppable, and, for a long time, they continue to be so, until that one hero (or villain) can finally show the world what he's made of by defeating him. These characters appear in varied roles: they can be a Big Bad, The Dragon, or, sometimes, just some seemingly unobtainable goal. Often, such a character will also be either a Jerkass or somewhat intimidating to give the hero even more reason for beating him, but not always. This character may also play a role of the Goliath if the one who beats him looks to be totally outmatched at first glance.

Said undefeatable nature may come in the form of an Implacable Man or Hero Killer.

Depending on the character, the fighter can still stay as powerful as they were after being beaten, but, occasionally, once beaten, they lose their power and become a regular fighter just like the rest. See Too Powerful to Live, Lord British Postulate, and Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?.

Compare The Worf Effect. Not So Invincible After All is the Super-Trope. Sub-Trope to Broken Win/Loss Streak.

As this is a Defeat Trope, unmarked spoilers abound. Beware.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• It is a common staple of sports themed manga/anime (usually set in high school) to have a team that has dominated the national circuit and is always touted as the team to beat for the protagonist team. Examples are:
  • Eyeshield 21 has the perennial Kanto representative the Shinryuuji Naga, who had dominated the Kanto region for the longest time. They, however, pale in comparison to the Teikoku Alexanders, who have won the Christmas Bowl since the establishment of American Football in Japan.
  • Saki has Shiraitodai Girls School, the two time champion in high school team mahjong. Its ace player, Teru Miyanaga, is touted as the best individual mahjong player in the high school circuit, and is the sister of the title character.
  • Girls und Panzer has Kuromorimine Women's College, which have won the high school sensha-do (tankery) championship for 9 years. Their loss in the year before the storyline was not because of a better team, but because the commander of their flag tank abandoned her position to save a friendly tank that had fallen into a river.
  • Slam Dunk has the Sannoh Industry Affiliated High School basketball team. They have been the defending national champions for three years running and are ranked as an AA team. To give an idea of how powerful they are, the year prior to the start of the story they defeated Kainan, who are Kanagawa's top team for 16 years straight, by 30 points of difference, and since their current senior players joined, they haven't lost a single game. Shohoku faces them in the second round of the nationals barely winning by one point in the last second.
• Kazu from Air Gear was already getting some serious badass cred from his fight with Sleipnir, but he finally proves, once and for all, that he's no longer the little bitch who needs Ikki to fight for him when he takes out Nike, a ridiculously powerful Hero Killer who's never lost a fight. Sure, he had help, but he still stood alone for most of the battle.
• Assassination Classroom: Half of the plot is that Korosensei is determined to cultivate Kunigigaoka's E Class, the class of outcasts and ne'er-do-wells, into students knowledgeable enough to take out the A Class, the all-stars with the highest grades, with Principal Asano's son as the school's #1 student.
• Attack on Titan: Eren manages this during the battle with Reiner. At least, until he puts out a Distress Call and Bertolt falls on them.
• Downplayed in Beyblade Burst, but Valt becomes the first person to burst Spryzen in episode 15, even though he didn't win the match. On a more straight note, Lui defeating Free after 7 rounds to knock the world champion off his perch. Lui later proceeded to be on the receiving end of this courtesy of the same Free he had beaten before.
• Bleach: When Ichigo goes into a Roaring Rampage of Rescue across Soul Society in order to stop Rukia's execution, he encounters and defeats Kenpachi Zaraki and Byakuya Kuchiki, both of whom are considered among the strongest Captains in the history of the Gotei 13.
• A Certain Magical Index:
  • Accelerator. The most powerful esper in Academy City, no one has ever managed to land so much as a single blow on him. Then Touma Kamijou comes along, manages to negate Accelerator's power, and defeats him in combat by punching his lights out. Touma has a tendency to do this to other people as well, all thanks to his power to nullify anything.
  • Shizuri Mugino was ranked the fourth most powerful esper in Academy City. Then Shiage Hamazura, a guy with no powers at all, tricks her into blowing herself up. All thanks to his ingenuity and determination, he beats her in both rematches as well.
• Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba has the Twelve Kizuki. A group of the twelve strongest demons in existence, second only to the Big Bad himself. The Twelve Kizuki are divided into the Upper and Lower Ranks, with Lower-Six being the weakest, and Upper-One being the strongest. The Lower Ranks are formidable opponents in their own right; The Lower-Five, Rui, subjected the Main Character to a brutal Curb-Stomp Battle. But the Upper Ranks are on a completely different level. Muzan, the Big Bad, mentions in one episode that while countless Lower Ranks have been killed by Demon Slayers over the years, the Upper Ranks have gone largely unchanged for centuries. This is because no one, not even the most elite Demon Slayers, has been able to kill them. Obviously, it's the goal of this generation of Demon Slayers to be those killers. And by the end, though not without heavy costs, not only are all the Upper Ranks dead but even Muzan himself.
• Three villains in Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z (King Piccolo, Frieza, and Buu) were known to be nearly unstoppable and had been terrorizing the world/galaxy/universe for ages; eventually all three of them were defeated by Goku.
  • Frieza in particular was referred to by every character who knew him as the undisputed strongest being in the universe, such that he has (at least by his claim) never had to use anything close to his maximum power to defeat an opponent before he faces the Z-fighters, and even the arrogant Vegeta didn't want to fight him without the power of immortality on his side.
  • Broly's unique form of Super Saiyan is apparently the Super Saiyan of legend, which renders Vegeta (usually beyond stubborn) near-catatonic in his presence. In the original story, it takes the combined energy of the heroes channelled into Goku to defeat him. All of this is after a hellacious beating of all our heroes (that's Super Saiyan Gohan, Vegeta, Trunks, Goku, and Kami-Fused Piccolo for those wondering).
  • Cell is a unique case of a villain who goes from being a simple minded man-eating monster to the closest thing to a god at that point at the time and he was also stronger than Goku at the time. In fact, he is this until Gohan kills him.
  • The role is reversed with Beerus, the Big Bad of the 14th movie and the universe's designated God of Destruction. Not even Goku can defeat him, even after he briefly becomes a Super Saiyan God. To top it off, not only is his attendant Whis actually his trainer, but he reveals that the other universes have warriors stronger than him or Goku.
  • In the Tournament of Power arc in Dragon Ball Super, Jiren is presented as one of, if not the strongest mortals ever, and his power is said to exceed that of a God of Destruction. A team effort from Goku, Android 17, and Freeza eventually takes him down. The hype he got earlier decayed a bit though, when Beerus was retconned to be stronger than him all along.
• Both of the main villains of Fairy Tail have this reputation.
  • Zeref is feared throughout the world as the immortal Black Wizard who created multiple potential world-ending dark magics and demonic beings. Zeref himself very much wishes this wasn't true due to his gods-given curse, and quite a few of those magics and demons were made in the hopes of killing himself, with him even going so far as to turn his resurrected little brother into the most powerful demon of all in the hopes of being killed. Ultimately, it took Natsu the brother/demon in question everything he had plus the support of his friends keeping him alive to finally take him down and it took the similarly cursed Mavis Vermillion to finally achieve a Mutual Kill with him.
  • Acnologia is the Black Dragon of the Apocalypse and the Dragon King, so named because he wiped out the dragon race, the mightiest beings in all of Earthland. He's so powerful thanks to both his dragon physiology and the fact that no magic in existence hurts him that not even Zeref can beat him, and in one Bad Future even took over the world. Ultimately, it took the direct or indirect aid of every wizard on the continent to finally take him down.
• Food Wars!: This is a cooking manga, but this is still a recurring theme.
  • The Council of Ten Masters are considered the top chefs of the Tootsuki Academy. During the Central Arc, Soma and his friends make it their goal to defeat them so as to take over the council seats and overrun the expulsion of many students.
  • During the BLUE arc, Soma's main goal is to defeat Asahi Saiba, who aside from never suffering one single defeat in his entire career, was the first known person to inflict a devastating defeat on Soma's father Joichiro.
• In the .hack franchise, just about anything created by Morganna might count: the Dawn Wanderers (aka "Guardians") went undefeated throughout .hack//SIGN, except at the end, where one was taken down by a large team of players (that included one of the most powerful players in the game, bar none). The eight Phases (Skeith in particular) also wreaked havoc throughout The World, being completely unstoppable by way of having infinite Hit Points.
  • The backstory also provides another example in The One Sin, a boss monster of the original World so powerful no player could beat it. Doing so is what earned Balmung of the Azure Sky and Orca of the Azure Sea their status as legendary players.
    • Aaaaaaand then G.U. brings it back as a Superboss, alongside giving it a One-Winged Angel form, the God Eater, and a third incarnation known as The One Death.
• Hajime no Ippo:
  • WBA Featherweight Champion Ricardo Martinez, the "living legend", who is just made of this trope. Point. by. point. Eiji Date, the former Japanese champion, local Retired Badass and the only Japanese boxer to defeat Ippo in an official fight was defeated twice by him.
  • Takamura, one of the protagonists, is this trope to all of his opponents. He has the reputation of being unbeatable and his opponents do fear and respect his strength. In fact, Word of God outright says he is the best boxer in the entire series, above even the aforementioned Ricardo.
• In High School D×D, Raiser Phenex was supposed to be undefeatable because of his Healing Factor, but Issei defeats him with holy water and a Christian cross, both are devil weaknesses. It helps that Issei has a dragon arm that makes him partially immune against those weaknesses.
• At the start of Initial D, the Akagi Red Suns were undefeated in the world of street racing, even as they went around Japan challenging other racing teams on their home turf. This all changed when they challenged Takumi and his Toyota Trueno AE86 in a downhill race on Akina. On the flipside, Project D has yet to be defeated legitimately (Takumi got defeated a few times, but most of his defeats are technical).
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: This is the main focus of each Final Battle throughout every Story Arc. The main JoJo protagonist and their allies battle against a Big Bad who possesses an ability that surpasses all of those used by fought adversaries, making them virtually invincible. The heroes would engage in an intricate fight using their Stand (introduced in Part 3) to circumvent their opponent's ability until they've finally delivered the finishing attack to defeat them.
• Jujutsu Kaisen: Satoru Gojo is the greatest sorcerer alive in the current era. Born with Infinity technique and the Six Eyes ocular enhancement, he has unparalleled speed, an impenetrable offense, and his attacks make even the elite of the elite double over in pain; every other sorcerer who's said to have the greatest aspect to their abilities (Naobito's speed, Mei Mei's offensive power) is only said to be the best after Satoru Gojo. Then Sukuna kills him.
• Kinnikuman: Prince Kamehame is the one of the few persons to defeat Kinnikuman in the series and what's particularly memorable is the speed in which he did it: 7 seconds.
• Lyrical Nanoha
  • Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid has Sieglinde Jeremiah, a tournament veteran who had never been defeated in battle, and whose single loss was due to her not appearing for her match. Einhart gets a shot at breaking her streak and eventually fails.
  • Subverted in ViVid Strike!. Rinne Berlinetta was originally set up like this, only for it to be revealed that Vivio has already beaten her in the past. That said, Rinne's only lost was in points and she hadn't been defeated via knockout yet until her second loss to Vivio.
  • Sieglinde's invincibility comes up again in the third ViVid Strike! OVA when Victoria finally manages to defeat her. Much like Vivio's first victory over Rinne, it was only by points.
• Medaka Box: Kurokami Medaka is specifically referred to by Ajimu Najimi as a "Main Character", an existence that even the obscenely overpowered Najimi herself couldn't truly win against. Though Medaka herself feels she's being ridiculously overhyped, it is a fact that she had never truly lost at anything the entire story; even in the previous arc, she managed to truly win in a way that let the perpetual loser Kumagawa have a meaningful defeat for once. This soon becomes an actual problem that needs to be confronted in order for Medaka to start growing as a person, and Najimi arranges things to make Medaka's childhood friend Hitoyoshi Zenkichi a Main Character to beat her. And, much to Najimi's own great surprise... it worked. In the ensuing Student Council elections, Zenkichi defeated Medaka in a landslide. And all he needed was a Skill that prevented interfering whims of fate and the chance to convince the voters to help free Medaka from her self-imposed role.
  • Shishime Iihiko, an ancient Main Character who saved the world 5000 years ago, unexpectedly appears in modern times, preserved by the Shiranui clan as a monster that lives only to keep living. This man was the first human being that Ajimu Najimi couldn't defeat; she'd lost to him over one hundred million times. Anything he destroyed could never be healed, and even Skills that could warp reality itself didn't work on him. If he himself didn't recognize an attack or ability, it wouldn't reach him. He smashed through all of Najimi's Protagonist Skills and bisected her WITH A RUBBER BAND. But Medaka's friend Shiranui Hansode was in danger of being this man's next host, so even with an irreversibly broken arm, she decided she needed to defeat him "before the day was out". By acquiring a Style, the ability to communicate her attacks to make him recognize them, she succeeded in bringing him down by the skin of her teeth... only for him to hop to his next host Hansode on the spot and sucker punch her through the torso. But then, despite the new body, he lost for real... against the entirely ordinary Hitoyoshi Zenkichi armed with nothing but a very temporary probability-inverting Style and a deep bond with Hansode, who found just the opening she needed to make Iihiko irreversibly destroy HIMSELF.
• Megalo Box:
  • In Season 1, Yuri is the world Megalo Box champion and touted as the finest boxer this generation on top of his top-of-the-line integrated Gear (though given the sport is only a few years old and Megalonia is the first attempt at making tournament, it's slightly downplayed). He lays out Junk Dog in minutes during his Final Boss Preview and treats second-ranker Pepe Iglesias as little more than a speed-bump. It's only in The Stinger of the final episode we learn Joe actually won their final match, and even then it took Yuri removing his gear and boxing with severe health issues, plus thirteen rounds of slugging it out, for Joe to win.
  • During the Time Skip between Seasons 1 and 2, "Gearless" Joe was on the receiving end of this trope at the hands of Edison Liu, an up-and-coming Megalo Boxer and Yuri's pupil. Joe had only come out of retirement for an exhibition and was suffering an emotional breakdown due to Nanbu's death at the time. This ends up annoying Liu, because although he's considered the man who defeated Joe he doesn't view the win as legitimate.
  • During Season 2, Liu has become the undefeated champion of Megalonia for five years, having first won the title and defended it twice with no losses on his record. In Episode 8 he ends up another example, defeated by Mac Rosario and is hospitalized by a brutal series of punches to the head, though strictly speaking he didn't lose to Mac so much as to the implants controlling Mac's body at the time.
• The East is burning red! Master Asia's first appearance on screen in Mobile Fighter G Gundam involves destroying 3 giant robots with his bare hands by catching and returning artillery shells, picking up the ground one was standing on, and tearing one to pieces with a headband. He is in fact explicitly titled "The Undefeated of the East"
• My Hero Academia:
  • All For One, the Big Bad of the series, has been terrorising the world for years and everyone fears him. Enter All Might, who defeats him, not once, but twice, restoring peace in the world and becoming the Symbol of Peace. Although, both victories came at great personal cost, All For One himself is crippled and handicapped, to the point that when he faced All Might the second time, he flat out asked him if he is there "to kill me again".
  • Muscular is widely reviled as a Hero Killer who has managed to escape multiple attempts by the heroes to stop him. Then Izuku Midoriya steps up to protect the son of two heroes Muscular murdered, and he manages to smash his face into a mountain and knock him out at the cost of breaking both arms. When they meet again months later, Izuku destroys him without getting touched once.
• In Naruto, Gaara had never been injured before his fight with Lee, and Naruto defeated him for the first time. Pain also never lost a battle, even against the leader of the Rain Village, one of the strongest ninja in the world who defeated the three Sannin, until he loses to Naruto.
• One Piece:
  • Fans theorized that this was why Whitebeard was called "the World's Strongest Man". Obviously, someone's going to rise to his level and beat him in battle, most likely the main character or a future Big Bad. It actually took an entire army, including all three Admirals and five of the Seven Warlords of the Sea, a regretted ambush from one of Whitebeard's allies, and Blackbeard's entire crew to kill him.
  • Psycho Electro Eneru was this in the Skypiea arc; his abilities as a lightning Logia made him untouchable and all-powerful. Even when Wiper managed to blindside him with a Power Nullifier and land a fatal blow on him, his powers restarted his heart. The only reason that Eneru didn't succeed in his planned genocide is that Luffy, as a Rubber Man, is completely unaffected by lightning.
  • Another example is when the Straw Hat Pirates raided Enies Lobby and defeated CP9, who have never failed a mission, exist only in rumor, and as far as Marines were concerned, were the reason Enies Lobby had never fallen to anyone. In fact, this generation of CP9 were the strongest in its history. More specifically, Monkey D. Luffy defeating Rob Lucci, the strongest individual in CP9's history, who had such a reputation that the Marines leading the Buster Call were more than willing to bet that he would win for sure. Only for him to be put in a coma by Luffy. Even Bartholomew Kuma did not see coming that Lucci would be defeated at all, let alone by Luffy.
  • Crocodile definitely counts. He's introduced to us as the first Big Bad of the Grand Line, belonging to the same group as Mihawk (who had curb-stomped Zoro a while earlier). Luffy challenges him... and almost gets killed for it. Crocodile proceeds with his plan, but Luffy turns up again, now knowing Crocodile's weakness... and he almost gets killed again. The third time, Luffy finally manages to defeat the sand-man — who had fought with a poisoned hook. If it weren't for Robin, Luffy would've died anyway.
  • Which makes the one guy of this type that remains all the more awesome: Mihawk. He is always referred to as "the World's Greatest Swordsman", has never been defeated and used to spar with Shanks until Shanks lost his left arm, after which he didn't see enough of a challenge in him. Just a reminder, Shanks is one of the four guys that the entire Navy is supposed to counteract.
  • Beating one of the Seven Warlords of the Sea or the Four Emperors in general is this trope. The Warlords rely on their reputation just to help cull the pirate population, while the Emperors have been stated to be the four most powerful pirates in the world. Defeating any one of them could throw the balance of the Three Great Powers off-kilter.
  • If you tangle with the Four Emperors and get any sort of victory at all, it's already a massive credit to your strength.
    • Defeating the single most powerful subordinate one of the Emperors has, one so idolized not even his colleagues and siblings thought he could ever be defeated and thought of him as pretty much perfection incarnate, definitely qualifies as this. And yet Luffy tangled with Big Mom, and took down Katakuri, a billion-plus-Belli-bounty nightmare, and none of the Big Mom Pirates could believe it, not even the ones that directly witnessed it. Ironically, the only person who even accepted the fact he could be and did get defeated was Katakuri himself, who found Luffy to be the Worthy Opponent he never realized he needed.
    • While Big Mom wouldn't be defeated in the Whole Cake Island arc, she would find herself ultimately losing against the teamup of Eustass Kid and Trafalgar Law in the following Land of Wano arc, which was then followed by Luffy defeating another Emperor, Kaidou, who for very good reasons is called "the World's Strongest Creature".
  • Luffy is not the only one who has been taking down adversaries thought invincible — the entire One Piece world has been greatly shaken up by incidents like these from various other people as well. Due to their unprecedented wide-scale disruption and being seemingly unstoppable, Luffy and ten other pirates active at the same time as him (one of which is on his crew) have been collectively deemed the "Worst Generation."
• In One-Punch Man, Boros had this reputation, having apparently never lost a fight, until he came up against someone even more unbeatable than him.
• Pokémon: The Series:
  • The Elite Four, as well as several other characters, including the infamous Legendary spammer Tobias. While Ash fails to win the match against him, even defeating his Darkrai counts since it's a feat no one else accomplished. The fact he manages to also take out his Latios is icing on the cake.
  • The Champions especially so. Not even the Elite Four stand a chance in a battle against a Champion. While the battle was never finished, Ash's second battle against Diantha was the very first instance of another trainer actually gaining the upper hand against a Champion. By the time Ash actually defeats a Champion (Iris, one of his former companions) in battle, Ash had already became a Champion himself.
  • During Sun and Moon Ash's matches against Tapu Koko (one of the region's deities) have the same effect. At the end of the Alola League, he manages to defeat it with a clash of their Limit Breaks.
  • Despite having only a small amount of screen time, Guzma claims to have never been defeated in a battle (he's lying to save face in front of his Team Skull lackeys). His luck runs out in the Alola League, where Ash defeats him in front of everyone.
  • Cynthia never loses a single battle on-screen throughout the series until Ash beats her in the semifinals of the World Coronation Series Masters Tournament, finally putting an end to her streak. This serves as a double example, as Cynthia's Garchomp similarly never lost an on-screen battle until her defeat at the hands of Ash's Lucario.
  • Just like in the games, Ash manages to defeat the undefeated Leon in the finals of the Masters 8. This one also serves as a double example, as Leon's Charizard is also stated to be undefeated until it is finally brought down by Pikachu.
• Lina Inverse and her True Companions are finally called Slayers at the end of Evolution-R, after killing (part of) Ruby-Eye Shabranigdu.
• In Special A, Hikari's goal is to beat her rival/Love Interest, Kei at something. Anything. Unfortunately, Kei's The Ace and is undefeatable at everything. The only person to ever beat him is Big Bad Yahiro, who cheated.
• In Summer Wars, Kenji hacks into OZ's previously unhackable systems because he thought the numbers he was sent that night was a mathematical equation.
• Tokyo Ghoul:
  • Kishou Arima has such nicknames as "The Undefeated Ghoul Investigator" and "Shinigami". During the finale of the first series, Kaneki finds himself facing off against him. ......and is mercilessly subjected to a Curb-Stomp Battle that leaves him on the verge of death. But in the process of going down, he manages to damage Arima's weapon and even nick him. It seems this impressed Arima enough that the sequel shows he's taken an amnesiac Kaneki as his protege and serves as a Parental Substitute to him.
  • In the sequel, the Quinx and Itou Squads find themselves facing Noro, a ghoul infamous for being a nigh-invulnerable horror. They manage to bring the creature down, but at a terrible cost: Shirazu and the majority of Itou Squad are killed in the process, with Kuramoto and Mutsuki both suffering serious injuries.
  • The sequel also sees a rematch between Kaneki and Arima. Though initially overwhelmed and fully intending to commit Suicide by Cop, Kaneki eventually regains his will to live and defeats Arima in battle. Afterwards, Arima ponders having remained unchallenged for his entire 18 year career.....and then slashes his own throat, dying in Kaneki's arms while confessing his secrets. As a dying request, he asks Kaneki to take credit for his death and promises the reason will become clear soon.
• Tomorrow's Joe: Jose Mendoza is the world bantamweight champion and undefeated in the ring. He ends up permanently retiring Carlos Rivera (who seemed to have been set up as the final opponent, and while ranked #5 was said to be so strong the higher-ranked boxers didn't want to face him) in one round by giving him punch-drunk syndrome, and in the anime unifies the bantamweight championship in a match that kills the other champion, and is set up as Joe's final challenge when Joe finally gets a title shot against him. The end match ends up being something of a downplayed subversion: Mendoza wins by points but Joe is the first to go the distance against him (though it's strongly implied he died shortly afterwards) and traumatizes Mendoza due to his inability to stay down no matter how many times Mendoza knocks him down.
• Every fights against black trigger holders in World Trigger are this. Black triggers are so broken but rare that a country's power is measured by how many black triggers it possesses in universe. Having 11 black triggers is enough to become a superpower country in the universe. When Aftokrator attacked earth, it brought 4 black trigger holders with broken abilities. Border had to expend enormous effort and numbers to defeat and exhaust them.
  • Vorvoros can turn its user into solid or gas or liquid. The gas can solidify to pierce the innards of the unknowing enemy that breathe it in. Its user also cannot be killed through decapitation, so the only way to kill its user is by piercing its trion core. To make it harder, it creates numerous dummy cores to conceal the real one.
  • Organon creates multiple rings that cut through anything instantly with a ridiculous radius. It can cut through city blocks like butter in one go.
  • Alektor creates animal-shaped bullets that turn every trion they touch into trion cubes, including blades, bullets, and shields. They can also turn enemy fighters in trion bodies into trion cubes, rendering them useless and trapping them. To top it off, the trigger also can heal its user with the trion cubes produced.
  • Speiraskia creates windows to teleport enemies in and out. It can also teleport and redirect bullets. Smaller windows can also be produced to cut or pierce through people.
• The Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise's protagonists tend to make a habit of this, starting with a duel against Seto Kaiba.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh!: Yami Yugi's losses could be counted on one hand, and even then they were always the result of the opponent cheating or manipulating the duel in some way until the end of the series when he loses fairly in a duel with Yugi.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! GX: Played with in the manga version. Judai keeps the habit early on, including a 2-on-1 victory against Manjoume (because the latter refused to work with his spirit card, whereas Judai and Winged Kuriboh are inseperable). Manjoume then returns the favor in the Tournament Arc... only to be defeated by the much more undefeatable Marufuji Ryo.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds: When Team Taiyo managed to summon Zushin the Sleeping Giant, a card with a ridiculously hard summoning condition but extremely overpowered effects, everyone acted like the duel was over, as they couldn't see how Yusei could counter it. Being that it was immune to card effects, automatically negated the effects of every monster it battled with, and its ATK would always be 1000 points higher than whatever monster it was battling, this was understandable. However, Yusei shocked everyone by finding a way to defeat it anyway, by granting his Stardust Dragon an effect from a different card, that couldn't be negated by Zushin.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL:
    • Kaito/Kite had this attitude during his duel with V/Quinton. (Of course, while V's card, Number 9: Dyson Sphere, was a very powerful card that sure seemed undefeatable, V's claim that it was never defeated had an obvious flaw: he clearly could not have used it more than once or twice in the past, seeing as a duel using a Duel Monster the size of the sun would likely have been witnessed. So his boast that it had "never been defeated" was probably meaningless. Unless one considers the possibility of V using this card in Duels not involving realistic holograms, but seeing how the series treats Duels, Especially ones involving Numbers, as Serious Business with Rule of Cool, it's improbable.)
    • Definitely meaningless. In a later duel, Kaito used Number 9 against Tron, and Tron defeated it with a Monster that was not even his strongest card. Clearly, there are far stronger Numbers than Number 9, and V's claim was complete BS.
    • Or... Tron was the person who taught V how to fight, considering this was his father who was also a more experienced duelist than he was.
    • Speaking of Kaito, Kaito himself ends up defeated by the hands of Tron, something that no characters has ever done since the beginning of the series and no other character would defeat Kaito in all subsequent duels.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V had two examples with Yuya's victories over Jack Atlas and Yuri.
    • In Season 2, Jack was undefeated for three years before the Lancers arrived in the City and he personally proved it by crushing Yuya in their first match and beating Sergey who was using a deck especially made to counter Synchro and Fusion monsters.
    • Yuri was The Dreaded for the longest time and anyone that met him reacted with fear or distain. Yuri finally proved it when he took down 6 of the series' strongest duelists in Season 3 before Yuya was able to barely beat him.

Asian Animation

• Mechamato: Amato and MechaBot are initially reluctant to take on Janitoor since he was the undefeated champion of the space arena for 5 consecutive years up until the competition was decommissioned. However, after Mechamato mechanises with Pian's gym equipment, they become strong enough to defeat him.

Comic Books

• Fantastic Four: Earth's superheroes come to the attention of the Kree Empire when the Fantastic Four become the first people to ever defeat a Kree Sentry. They'd all but outright forgotten the planet entirely, and were quite surprised when an old piece of tech called in, and less than twenty-four hours later got destroyed. So the Supreme Intelligence sends Ronan the Accuser to find out just what happened.
• The Incredible Hulk: In Immortal Hulk, one Bad Future depicts the Hulk (now a conduit of the One Below All) having wiped out all life in the universe, so as to be able to survive into the next. The last thing he killed? Mr. Immortal, the guy whose entire power is Resurrective Immortality, and who was given his powers specifically so that he could survive to the Natural End of Time. How he did this is unseen (it's implied he ate his soul in some fashion), but it's quite a chilling note on just how horrifyingly powerful he's become.
• Legion of Super-Heroes: In The Great Darkness Saga, the Legion manages to defeat Darkseid. Even though he wasn't destroyed for good, the mere fact that he was beaten and forced to retreat is impressive.
  Darkseid: It seems there is more to you than I dreamed, youths. You have done that which is beyond imagining. You have shattered the dream of a god.
• Marvel Universe: The Champion of the Universe. He goes around the universe challenging people to boxing matches and was undefeated until The Thing stood up to him. Not that Thing beat him physically; Thing was just too stubborn to stay down after getting knocked out, so the Champion conceded. More recently She-Hulk beat him too.
  • Champion of the Universe is considered by many fans to be a subversion (or very bad example) of this as he has pretty much never defeated anyone with a name.
    • He has defeated Adam Warlock, Beta Ray Bill, Drax the Destroyer, the Silver Surfer and Gladiator. He handily beat She-Hulk as well; however, she then spent a month working her ass off (in human form) and bulked up impressively...and realized the Infinity Gem he was using could be counted as a "weapon" — and was therefore against the rules — and beat the tar out of him. With the Gem, he is undefeatable. Without it, he's tough, but not impossibly so. Gladiator is quick to note that any of them could have beaten him at that point, to which She-Hulk responds by... saying something outrageously sexist.
    • He is apparently defeated for good when Titania, armed with the Gem, picked up a mountain and squashed him under it. He's immortal, but without the Gem, he's not strong enough to free himself.
• Secret Wars (2015)
  • In the prelude to the event, the Punisher is somehow able to kill the Scorpion, the Lizard, and the Sandman with bullets, something all three have previously been immune to.
  • In order to make Battleworld, Doom killed the Beyonders, who were able to kill every cosmic entity in every universe.
• Sin City: Manute was The Juggernaut of the series. At the end of A Dame To Kill For, Dwight had to resort to shooting Manute several times, kicking him off a roof, and then having Miho pin him to the pavement by shoving swords into his arms. This did not kill him, nor did it even knock him out. It got him out of the way nonetheless. He's killed in a hail of gunfire in the next volume, The Big Fat Kill. In the extended cut of the movie, this was changed to being bisected by Miho.
• Squirrel Girl: Defeating characters who are considered impossible to beat is Squirrel Girl's shtick.
• Superman:
  • Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?: Superman had endured Mr. Mxyzptlk's antics for decades, well aware that Mxy could simply wish him out of existence... until Mxyzptlk decides to kill him, and Superman has to come up with a way to kill Mxy first, using a Phantom Zone Projector and trickery.
  • The Death of Superman (1961): Lex Luthor manages to kill his nemesis Superman.

Fan Works

• A Champion in Earth-Bet: The Avatar, a superhero from another world, the leader of its Global Champions Super Team, and a literal Physical God, shows his chops when he is transported into Earth-Bet. On his very first day, he, alongside the resident heroes, slays Leviathan, one of the three Endbringers, until then thought of as unbeatable and indestructible.
  • And later on, he does the same to the Simurgh, this time by himself in a pitched battle.
• In Code Geass: The Prepared Rebellion, Zero hands Cornelia her first defeat at the Battle of Saitama Ghetto.
• Code Geass: Paladins of Voltron
  • In Chapter 23, Lelouch and Voltron successfully defeat Cornelia, the Goddess of Victory, marking the first time she has ever been defeated.
  • Doubled down in Chapter 26, where Lelouch defeats Schneizel, something he never managed to do in canon (at least in a fair fight).
• Code Prime: Chapter 8 of R1 sees Cornelia suffer her first defeat at the Battle of Saitama, where the Autobots manage to save the Yamato Alliance and the civilians of Saitama, and Optimus Prime is able to handily defeat Cornelia in a duel.
  • Throughout R1, while the Autobots and Black Knights would often get one over on the Decepticons during small fights for weapons or Energon deposits, a full-scale battle would often end in the Decepticons' favor, especially during the Black Rebellion, when the Cons overthrow Britannia and name themselves the new rulers of Earth. In R2 however, the heroes are finally able to hand the Decepticons their first irrefutable loss when they manage to launch the Ark and save it from being destroyed, cripple and sink the Nemesis, and kill several high-ranking Cons.
• In The Legend of Link: Lucky Number 13 the Originals and Hadrian are considered by Fate and Destiny themselves to be impossible to kill. Link, after becoming the God of Fear, kills them all.
• Viktor was the undisputed champion of men's figure skating with no one trying to challenge him until Yuuri showed up in the Rivals Series. Yuuri is the only one that can truly challenge Viktor, and he finally proves himself when he beats Viktor at the Winter Olympics and the following Worlds Championships.
• In A Fighting Chance, the Minbari were considered invincible in open battle until the Battle of Jericho, when Earthforce defeated and routed the Minbari in open battle.
• Hellsister Trilogy: At the height of the Apokoliptian War, Darkseid has crushed an army made up for heroes of five parallel dimensions, and stomped over every hero who has dared to engage him, including Pre-Crisis Superman and Supergirl. Then his son Orion turns up and blasts Darkseid's body to atoms.
• Halo: Chimera Rising: McBride is ordered to find a way to kill or at least maim a Spartan. He succeeds.
• Kwami Magi Homura Magica has Walpurgisnacht, the ultimate witch and a living disaster. Homura believes that Cat Noir could defeat it, but after dozens of attempts she is adamant to just do it herself via the Miraculous wish. However what Homura missed is that Cat Noir had in fact defeated the witch in a timeline about ten timelines ago, and Mami had done the same in an earlier timeline when under the effect of the Eagle Miraculous. She simply missed these do to circumstances and only saw the resulting lucky charm which told her to go back in time again just as in outright defeats. She would later witness a Cat Noir defeat Walpurgisnacht in a completely unconnected timeline.
• In The Last Daughter, the Endbringers, who had been considered impossible to destroy for over three decades, meet their end at the hands of Kryptonian Taylor Hebert.
• In My Iron Giant, All Might is killed by the combined efforts of Kurogiri and a special Nomu named Diablo. It is lampshaded later how the Nomu accomplished this and was felled itself.
• The Night Unfurls: Sir Kyril the Bloody, who has yet to experience defeat or demise, experiences his first death at the hands of an assassin of House Mandeville, who shoots him from a distance. Said assassin pays dearly for this.
• Nightmare in Arkham: The Joker does what so many have tried and failed to do, and permanently kills Freddy Krueger. When the Joker battles Freddy in the dream world, Freddy's powers don't work on him — as the Joker explains, he is the complete embodiment of pure insanity, which is actually way worse than the embodiment of fear that Freddy is. With absolutely nothing to exploit from the Joker, Freddy's power of fear is rendered completely useless against the Joker's chaotic, twisted mind. This gives the Joker all the edge that he needs to beat Freddy in battle.
• A couple of times throughout The Numbershots, a Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL fanfic's continuity:
  • Deckshibition Chapter 3 introduces a duelist known as Captain White-Eye, a pirate-themed pro duelist who in-universe had a 200+ winning streak, and had never lost before. His first loss is handed to him in this chapter by Takashi Todoroki.
  • Numbershot 1 has this in two varieties:
    • The first one is the defeat of Marizu. The entire storyline had built her up by having her win all of her duels without losing a single life point, making this trope's "undefeated opponent" status being exaggerated by her Parody Sue traits. Her hot streak comes to an end when she squares off against Yuma in the finals.
    • The second one comes in the final opponent after winning the tournament, Ace, the host of the tournament. Prior to the events of the story, Ace had scored plenty of championship wins, deciding to host his own tournament to find the perfect opponent. Much like Marizu, his defeat comes at the hands of Yuma.
• Senki Zesshou Symphogear: WXD Unlimited has Genjuro Kazanari defeat Lung in single combat, beating the Dragon of Kyushu to within an inch of his life. Considering that Lung was able to go one on one with Leviathan, this trope is in full effect.

Film

• The 2003 German film Das Wunder Von Bern, based on the 1954 "Miracle of Berne" described under Real Life.
• Game of Death: The guardians of the pagoda in the original version have exceptional skills and are thought to be undefeatable. Bruce Lee disproves this.
• Tai Lung in Kung Fu Panda. So powerful that not even an army of rhinos, the Furious Five, or his own master could stop him. Po defeating him is what finally secures his status as the Dragon Warrior. Even Po wins primarily by chance; as a number of commentators have noted, the way he's built as a fighter makes him exactly the wrong person for Tai Lung to fight. For instance, Tai Lung heavily favors nerve strikes that even masters find very difficult to counter, and Po is fat enough to be completely immune to them. Even then, it's demonstrated that Tai Lung is entirely focused on getting the Dragon Scroll, and takes a significant pummelling in the process. When he actually bothers to focus on Po in earnest, he flattens him... until he finds out the truth about the Dragon Scroll.
  • It's specifically mentioned that the only other person who can defeat Tai Lung (Shifu's own teacher, Master Oogway) has just ascended to a higher plane. It's possible that Shifu himself could have defeated Tai Lung using Oogway's technique, but he likely hasn't mastered it yet, and there's still the guilt he has over Tai Lung's Start of Darkness. Basically, Shifu deciding to stay and fight Tai Lung is even stated to be a Delaying Action, while Po and the Furious Five help evacuate the valley.
• Miracle, which is based on the "Miracle on Ice" hockey game described under Real Life.
• No Holds Barred: Zeus (Tom Lister), an ex-con who acts as the muscle of Mr. Brell, the corrupt CEO of a television network who wishes to get rival wrestler Rip (Hulk Hogan) under his command. Expanded upon with a bar fight scene, a fight at a steel plant and on television several times. Eventually, Zeus goes too far and beats up Rip's brother, Randy... and after Rip has his initial difficulties is able to get the best of him in a fight.
• Played with in Real Steel where Zeus is a robot fighter that has won every match he fought by knockouts on the first round. That changes in the fight against Atom, where the latter gets up after a vicious beating right before the first round ends. Ultimately, Atom is not able to inflict a knockout, but neither is Zeus, and although Zeus ends up winning by split decision, the audience of the match considers Atom the true winner because he came close to actually knocking out Zeus.
• Combined with Serial Escalation in the Rocky series:
  • Rocky: Rocky is a nobody boxer given a chance against Apollo Creed, an unstoppable champion who wins every single fight via knockout. Subverted in that Rocky doesn't actually beat Apollo. However...
  • Rocky II: Because the Rocky/Apollo fight was so close, a rematch is demanded, only this time Apollo has trained to become even more Undefeatable. This time around Rocky does beat him, but barely.
  • Rocky III: Rocky has become complacent as the World Heavyweight Champion, fighting a string of no-hopers arranged by Mickey to keep Rocky from losing his title. Then the monstrous Clubber Lang demands a bout with Rocky, beating him soundly and knocking him off his pedestal until he returns for a successful rematch, courtesy of some training from former rival Apollo Creed.
  • Rocky IV: Rocky goes into retirement. The Soviets unveil their steroid-pumped machine of a boxer, Ivan Drago. Not even Apollo Creed can beat him, so Rocky comes out of retirement, flies to Russia, trains by jogging in the snow and chopping trees instead of using fancy machines, beats Drago, and single-handedly ends the Cold War.
  • Rocky V: Rocky, unable to fight himself due to old age and a brain injury, goes into retirement, but agrees to train and manage the impetuous, street-fighting Tommy "The Machine" Gunn. However, Gunn's arrogance and bad temper culminates in a streetfight against his former mentor Rocky. Guess what? Rocky beats him, though the original script ended with his death shortly afterwards.
  • Rocky Balboa: Rocky is in retirement, but finds his that his life is unfulfilled and he's caught dealing with unsatisfied anger issues. Thus despite being in his 60s, he wants to climb back into the ring and vent some of those bad feelings. He does so just in time to, just like in the first movie, fight to a close loss against the dominating and unbeaten world champion, Mason "The Line" Dixon. In the next film, his retirement finally sticks, and he acts as a mentor to Apollo Creed's son, Adonis.
• In Star Wars, Darth Vader is generally seen as an unstoppable Juggernaut. As a result, even doing well against him, as Ahsoka does in Twilight of the Apprentice is considered impressive. In Star Wars: Return of the Jedi Luke finally defeats Darth Vader in a lightsaber duel - and while it's debatable how much Vader really wanted that fight, he was an immensely powerful Sith Lord who had personally defeated and killed countless Jedi who were far more experienced than Luke. Vader is completely caught off guard and decides to return to the light side of the Force when Luke then spares his life rather than kill his own father.
  • Perhaps more startling is the example of Obi-Wan Kenobi, who faced Vader in his prime, with the latter having absolutely no qualms about destroying him - and unlike Luke, despite his own considerable strength in the Force, he was not on Vader's level. And Vader, even when Obi-Wan first faces him, is a Master Swordsman honed by considerable experience in the Clone Wars. Obi-Wan, however, is better. As a result, he doesn't just beat Vader at his best, he does it twice - the first time on Mustafar, when he lured Vader into a critical mistake, dismembered him with a single strike, and left him aburning, limbless ruin, the second time at the end of Obi-Wan Kenobi after his Heroic Second Wind when he bludgeoned Vader with a hailstorm of rocks, danced rings around him, crippled his respirator, forcing him to his knees as he sliced open his faceplate, then left him a wheezing, crippled ruin that was impotently screaming his name.

Literature

• The Beginning After the End: After Arthur Came Back Strong as an aether-wielding demigod, his newfound power allows him to defeat enemies who had previously been considered undefeatable. In the Victoriad, Arthur manages to slay Cadell, the strongest among the Scythes. For context, the Scythes vastly outmatched the Lances, the strongest mages on Dicathen, and Cadell had previously been an Invincible Villain whom Arthur had failed to defeat beforehand. Afterwards, Arthur ends up slaying the asura Taci, who despite being a boy by asuran standards had managed to beat the remaining Lances all on his own to the point of near-death. Later on, Arthur ends up being able to take on squads of Wraiths, the Semi-Divine Super-Soldiers feared by the Alacryans as semi-mythical bogeymen and asura-killers.
• Ciaphas Cain:
  • As mentioned in the page quote, Varan the Undefeatable from Cain's Last Stand, whose reputation largely stemmed from his use of a Warp-derived Compelling Voice to force his opponents to defect to his cause. This being a Ciaphas Cain novel, you get no points for guessing who wins the inevitable confrontation between the two.
  • Interestingly, this only works the first time the quote is seen as a Noodle Incident chapter heading. Once we see the actual battle happening, they take an entirely different context: Varan is screaming them gloatingly because Cain's just discovered Varan is a mutant with natural body armor and Femme Fatalons.
• The Culture:
  • Although not the most powerful civilization in their home galaxy, the titular Culture is known to be effectively untouchable by more primitive races lacking 'equiv-tech', and for good reason. Their vessels are controlled by supercomputers billions of times more intelligent than humans, their weapons can easily destroy entire star systems and strike from light-years away, their effectors can remotely take control of other technology at such ranges as well, they can fight and react at trillions of times the speed of light and move through four spatial dimensions, their shields can shrug off anything up to (and sometimes including) a supernova, and they're even capable of shunting all of the energy from a nuke going off inside the ship to hyperspace so quickly that it wouldn't even be noticeable. Yet, in The Hydrogen Sonata, a Culture LCU (a small, but still powerful, Culture warship) was engaged and destroyed by a much more primitive group of Liseiden scavengers, who could only think and react at human speeds and had weapons limited to slower-than-light, realspace missiles and lasers.
• Discworld:
  • Parodied in Soul Music, where an up-and-coming Barbarian Hero decides to call himself Vincent the Invulnerable, goes into the Mended Drum to announce this, and lasts about twenty seconds. In fact, terminal stupidity of this type is quasi-officially designated as "suicide" by the Watch, suggesting that this happens a lot.
  • There's also a remark concerning magic armor in Interesting Times where Rincewind thinks to himself that many a dark lord's last words were "You can't kill me because I've got magic aaaaaargh!"
• In The Excalibur Alternative, there is surprise all around when a hitherto untouchable Federation battle squadron gets utterly Curb Stomped by Avalon Empire forces.
• Albus Dumbledore, the resident World's Strongest Man, World's Best Warrior, and the best of the Archmage in Harry Potter proves his worth to be considered the greatest wizard in history by being the only person capable of defeating the two infamously nigh-unstoppable Dark Lords in a fair fight.
  • He first defeats Gellert Grindelwald, the first Dark Lord, who was later revealed to be wielding the Elder Wand, meaning he was supposed to be unbeatable directly, but Dumbledore did it anyway, in a legendary duel that ended the war Grindelwald had been winning all over the world. It should be noted that not even armies of Aurors were of any threat to Grindelwald at all.
  • Even more than a hundred years old, he is also the only one who could beat Lord Voldemort, the next Dark Lord, in a direct fight. While he doesn't finish him off due to not being the Chosen One of the story, he still hands Voldemort his ass rather thoroughly in their one fight, and that's a feat no one, not even the combined efforts of three exceptional wizards and witches, could do, with the main protagonist and the actual Chosen One only defeating Voldemort due to having the advantage of the Power of Love and Voldemort never seeing him as a true threat. To be fair, he does have the Elder Wand, but at the same time, it must be noted that due to his determination to keep the Elder Wand a secret, he was most likely not using it's true powers, and even Voldemort frustratedly rants that Dumbledore had been holding back in their fight the entire time. Not only that, an off-handed comment from both Dumbledore and Snape confirms he still isn't in his glory days even with the Elder Wand, meaning even Dumbledore past his prime where he could beat an Elder-Wand wielding Grindelwald was still more than a match for Voldemort. The fight shook Voldemort badly enough that he decided to screw trying to fight him again, and it's indicated that while it may be a punishment, part of the reason why he assigns Draco the task of killing Dumbledore is because he knows no one has a chance against Dumbledore in a one-on-one fight, so he had to attempt to manipulate Dumbledore's feelings, knowing he would be hesistant to kill Draco even though he could do it with zero effort in a fight if he wanted to.
• Amongst thousands of challengers, Karsa Orlong from Malazan Book of the Fallen is the fist to manage killing the Emperor of a Thousand Deaths who was supposed to be unkillable. Though he had help figuring out what the problem was, and Samar Dev at hand, who had the souls trapped in her knife help transport him to the Warren where he could kill Rhulad before he was revived by his sword again.
• In The Mental State, Big Billy Crane is the biggest and strongest inmate serving time at the prison. His brother, Little Mickey, frequently uses him to threaten others into joining his gang. Zack, the protagonist, realises that he can cripple Mickey's control over the other inmates by beating Billy in one-on-one combat. He ultimately succeeds using deeply underhanded tactics to cripple his opponent.
• In Mistborn: The Original Trilogy the Lord Ruler's most feared enforcers are the Steel Inquisitors, mysterious figures with steel spikes driven through their eyes and protruding from the back of the skulls, and believed to be invincible. That Kelsier manages to kill one, pinning it to a wall by its own eyespikes and decapitating it, goes a long way to convincing people that the Lord Ruler is capable of being defeated at all. The rest of them in the city are killed the easy way, when an infiltrator discovers their Achilles' Heel and uses it to destroy them as they sleep.
• Arra Sails, one of the few women among the Proud Warrior Race Guy vampires in The Saga of Darren Shan, is this in the combat halls of Vampire Mountain. She is defeated by Kurda Smahlt, a peaceful person but an unexpectedly good fighter, because she underestimated.
• Schooled in Magic: Necromancers are seen as unbeatable in a Wizard Duel by any non-necromancer, due to the immense power they harvest from death; the usual way to destroy one is to assassinate them with poison (which gets kudos but is not this trope). When Emily takes one down at the end of the first book, she earns the title "Necromancer's Bane," and people are divided between whether she used poison, some kind of magical cheat, or is a necromancer herself. For the record, she cheated. After bringing down her second necromancer, she becomes a living legend.
• A Song of Ice and Fire: Robb Stark never lost a battle in the War of the Five Kings. He still ended up losing the war (and his life) because treacherous allies turn on him and join his enemies. Together, they hatch a plan that becomes the backbreaking and traumatic Red Wedding.
• In Time Scout, Wagers of Sin, Skeeter Jackson steals a small fortune from an undefeated champion of the Roman arena. Guess who Skeeter ends up facing there? Guess who wins?
• A folk tale or legend is used by the trainer of Warders in The Wheel of Time, as a warning not to get cocky. He asks his class who the greatest swordsman of all time was. They all respond immediately and in unison. He then asks who handed him his only defeat. They are silent. "A farmer with a quarterstaff!" This particular lesson was delivered after Mat Cauthon, a farmer with a quarterstaff, had just defeated Gawyn and Galad, two of the best students in the group. At the same time. While recovering from an injury.

Live-Action TV

• BattleBots:
  • T-Minus defeated Hazard... in the quarter finals. For those of you who don't know, Hazard was previously undefeated for 3 tournaments and obliterated almost everything it fought.
  • Bite Force had a 7-0 record going into its match against Chomp in 2016. Chomp was predicted by fans and other competitors alike as more fodder for Bite Force due to its hammer being so powerful and unstable that the robot would fall over on its side every time it swung its weapon. Not long after the match began, however, Chomp swung its hammer and pecked through a ventilation hole on Bite Force, striking Bite Force's weapon drive chain and instantly rendering Bite Force's weapon useless. As of 2021, Chomp would remain the only robot to have defeated Bite Force, the latter having since expanded its record to 26-1.
• Doctor Who: General Staal of the 10th Sontaran Battle Fleet, known as "Staal the Undefeated", from "The Sontaran Stratagem"/"The Poison Sky". The Doctor addresses the lack of foresight such a name shows.
  The Doctor: That's not a very good nickname. What if you do get defeated? "Staal the Not Quite So Undefeated Any More But Never Mind"?
• The Grand Tour: On the trio's previous series, Top Gear, the Toyota Hilux pickup truck had gained a reputation for being completely indestructible, shrugging off the presenters' best efforts to destroy it, up to and including placing one on top of a block of flats that was then demolished. So when, during The Grand Tour's Namibia special, they come across the wheel-less carcass of a Hilux, they're absolutely aghast, with Jeremy exclaiming that the roads of Namibia have somehow managed to "kill the unkillable car".
• Lancelot defeats the unbeaten Arthur in Merlin by feigning defeat and then taking him by surprise.
• Penn & Teller: Fool Us is about magicians of different trades and styles trying their best to trick and fool two of the best and most learned magicians in the world: Penn and Teller. Those who can perform a magic trick great enough to make them not see through it earn a cute trophy and to open the duo's show in Vegas. Of the two hundred plus people who have gone onto the show, less than one quarter actually fool them. Contestant Shawn Farquhar was able to fool them twice in different seasons.
• Across the pond on Robot Wars there was the ultimate house robot, Mr. Psycho. 750kg of heavily-armed, heavily armoured hell on tank treads. Some roboteers mess with the house robots from time to time, but Mr. Psycho was the exception because even attempting to attack him was basically futile. Unfortunately for Mr. Psycho, nobody told Team Firestorm the meaning of "futile".
  • Fellow house robot Shunt would find itself humiliated further, getting itself knocked out by Tentoumushi, which sawed off Shunt's weapon and rendered it unable to move. It is thus far the only house robot to fall to a competitor lighter than the heavyweight class.
  • Sir Killalot was also treated as the strongest house robot, being described as invincible and having no weaknesses. However, in one of the 'Robot Rebellion' events, it turned out that this wasn't quite true, as while he was using his pike to impale and pick up another robot, his center of gravity became slightly off-balance, and a well-timed ram from Tricerabot caused him to fall into the pit and become immobilized. However, since he was too big to fit entirely into the pit, the hosts didn't consider it a true loss.
  • Razer, with its huge crushing beak and fearsome design, is one of the most impressive robots to have ever appeared on the show and had a win/loss record to match: 40 victories against 6 losses, four of which were immobilisation by technical issues and one being a controversial judges' decision. Razer has, however, been beaten by knockout twice by the same robot: Pussycat. And a third time by Pussycat's successor Kill-E-Crank-E in the 2016 reboot. Well, sorta.
  • After Series 9, horizontal spinner and reigning champion Carbide had redefined 'The Dreaded' for robot combat, absolutely annihilating every opponent it had faced with none lasting a round against it, and only runner-up Eruption even managing to last longer than a minute before being crippled. In the Series 10 Grand Final episode, however, an unexpected new challenger arose in the form of Nuts 2, whose whirling chain flails managed to land a precision blow on Carbide's weapon chain, disabling it and leaving the champion helpless! Nuts 2 wasn't able to disable Carbide completely, but easily won the judges decision, giving the champion their first setback since the start of Series 9. Carbide won the rematch against Nuts 2 by armouring up their weapon chain to make it back to the Grand Final match, but this time their old enemies Eruption managed to finally outlast them on their third attempt and beat them by decision for the championship.
• Theokoles, the Shadow of Death, from Spartacus: Blood and Sand, an undefeated gladiator who once killed one-hundred opponents at once. Oenomaus was the only opponent who survived a match, and that was only because he lasted so long that the crowd called for him to live. Spartacus and Crixus managing to defeat him is considered an in-universe Moment of Awesome.
  • This example works on both sides, as Theokoles's sole reason to accept the fight in the first place was for the glory of beating Crixus, The Undefeated Gaul.
• Walker, Texas Ranger: The fifth season episode "Warriors", where a criminal steals a genetic healing formula from a scientist (who was perfecting it for the benefit of good), and then uses it to develop a prototype muscleman that couldn't be stopped. Walker and Trivette find out firsthand how brutal this man-mountain is when nothing they do can so much as faze him. Eventually, during a final confrontation where the muscleman has Walker beaten to a pulp, the scientist comes to his aid after her captors are arrested and throws flammable liquid and a blowtorch in his face, and Walker is able to finally kick the stunned muscleman to his doom.

Folklore

• An important figure in the story of the Japanese hero Minamoto no Yoshitsune's life was the warrior-monk Benkei. His goal was to defeat a thousand warriors, but after 999 victories, his thousanth opponent was Yoshitsune, who bested him. Benkei swore loyalty to Yoshitsune, serving as his retainer and companion for two years, at which point Yoshitsune was betrayed, and committed Seppuku. Benkei died defending him from enemy soldiers while he did so, and was still standing and holding his weapon long after he had actually died from the onslaught of arrows. (Many of his foes actually thought he was a demon from hell., he was such a terror in battle.)

Professional Wrestling and MMA

• This is a common angle in Professional Wrestling, where a wrestler is famous for being unbeatable, and is known as the most powerful wrestler of them all until that one Face can eventually defeat them.
  • An old and famous example of this type of gimmick is André the Giant (whose final "beaten" angle closed out his long career), and a few newer wrestlers who got their start this way are The Undertaker, Boogeyman, and The Great Khali (who is still relatively unstoppable even after being defeated). An older example would be Haystacks Calhoun, who does have a losing record against a handful of wrestlers, as far as the recovered records show, but for the most part had The Gimmick of a traveling baby face enforcer who'd draw some interest to the territory, win some matches and be on his way.
  • Nearly every Japanese promotion has one such "undefeatable" wrestler, referred to as the "ace." Aces range in Kayfabe ability from the relatively beatable Manami Toyota of Zenjo or Hiroshi Tanahashi of NJPW; to Rikidozanl who almost never loses one on one in his home promotion, but does pick up some time limit draws and Tag Team losses; to the staggering, unbeatable might of NOAH's Kenta Kobashi. All Japan's then NOAH's Mitsuharu Misawa was probably Japan's most consistently unbeatable wrestler— during any given year, Misawa's pinfall losses could be counted on one hand.
  • This trope was particularly noticeable in 80s WWF, where every new big bad heel destroyed everyone in his path until they finally got a shot at Hulk Hogan who took them down with his Five Moves of Doom. Hercules Hernandez, King Kong Bundy, and Zeus come to mind, but there were definitely others.
    • Vader was also an example of this in early '90s WCW, with faces lining up to take him down— and all failing, until Sting came along.
  • The Undertaker had a perfect 21-0 winning Streak at WrestleMania, and his then-upcoming Wrestlemania opponents (ending with CM Punk) would often talk about how they would become legends by ending said Streak; JBL once mentioned (prior to losing the opportunity to even face Taker) that ending the Streak would be a bigger accomplishment than winning a world title. Then came Wrestlemania XXX, and the Streak finally ended at the hands of Brock Lesnar, thus leaving the record at 21-1.
    • Even with the loss, defeating the Undertaker at 'Mania was still considered to be a big deal. Taker continued to win two more times at the showcase of the immortals until Wrestlemania XXXIII when he lost to Roman Reigns in what seemed to be his retirement match. However, he then won two more times at 'Mania before retiring for real.
    • Goldberg was also given one of the biggest streaks in WCW history, starting from his introductory match as an apparent Jobber against Hugh Morrus, going all the way to defeating Hollywood Hogan for the title. His 173 match winning streak ^note  According to The Other Wiki it was a 155 win streak that was exaggerated to 173. was finally ended by Kevin Nash, with the aid of his newly obtained booking superpowers and a taser by Scott Hall.
    • Samoa Joe's twenty one month reign as Ring of Honor Champion where he traveled around in between his obligated ROH dates challenging anyone to try and take to the belt so he could use their defeats to justify calling it a world title. He was eventually toppled by Austin Aries of Generation Next. Joe would later go on a much less dramatic 18 month undefeated streak that nonetheless produced TNA's most financially successful program ever when it was broken by Kurt Angle.
    • Nothing could beat Umaga. Not Viscera, not John Cena, not Jeff Hardy, not Kane, not even DeGeneration X. It got to the point his manager, Armando Estrada, began to refer to Umaga as "The Undefeated". It finally took having John Cena using a STFU with the detached ring ropes to defeat him.
  • MsChif's best known for her two year reign with both the NWA World Women's and SHIMMER Title belts. Particularly when Madison Eagles beating her for the latter resulted in Eagles being the first woman not working for a major and the first not based in North America to place on top of Pro Wrestling Illustrated's top fifty.
  • The Shield were never pinned/submitted in trios matches for seven months until finally bested by Team Hell No and Randy Orton in June 2013, upon which Lilian Garcia announced their first ever clean loss on the microphone.
  • Asuka went undefeated for her entire time in WWE NXT and well into her main roster run, even surpassing Goldberg's streak.
  • Bray Wyatt eventually developed a split personality called The Fiend and would alternate personas. As himself, he was defeatable, but the Fiend was pretty much unstoppable. He would No-Sell everything and almost always kick out at one. He was only ever defeated by Goldberg, Roman Reigns (in a Triple Threat Match where he pinned Braun Strowman instead), and Randy Orton twice (the first time by setting Fiend on fire).
• Not at all an unheard story in MMA, although all-around badass Fedor Emelianenko has had the most success at remaining undefeated, with a record of 31-1-1, the loss coming from a controversial stoppage due to a cut on his head and the no-contest from an accidental headbutt.
  • Unfortunately, the other side is that in a rematch the former "undefeatable" may show that the loss or draw was actually a fluke, leading to an unfortunate Curb-Stomp Battle. Cases in point: Matt Serra against Georges St-Pierre, Tsuyoshi Kousaka against Fedor (the cut loss), and Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira (the accidental headbutt no contest).
  • Pretty much Mauricio "Shogun" Rua's claim to fame in the modern UFC: after two poor first performances in the company, he showed renewed form in knocking down Chuck Liddell and slugging him out in the first round, then gave the performance of a lifetime against legend-in-the-making UFC light heavyweight champion Lyoto Machida, only to lose the highly controversial decision that almost everyone except the judges thought was Shogun's. He then goes on to knock out Machida in the first round in their rematch, winning the Light-Heavyweight title.
  • Frankie "The Answer" Edgar took the UFC lightweight belt from the previously considered "unbeatable" B.J. Penn at UFC 112. Penn hadn't lost in the lightweight division in eight years, but Edgar managed to upset the champ with a set gameplan; mixing up his offense, and pushing the pace with his speed.
  • It eventually happened to aforementioned Fedor Emelianenko after he received his first legitimate loss to Fabricio Werdum. Werdum was understandably excited.
    • It happened again the fight after that, with Antonio "bigfoot" Silva dominating him and beating him by TKO.
  • Most recently, Chris Weidman knocking out Anderson Silva, who had a 17 fight winning streak, with his last loss being a DQ.
  • It happened again in May of 2014: UFC Bantamweight Champion Renan Barao had not lost a professional fight since his very first one in 2005 and had been either Interim or Undisputed Bantamweight Champion since July of 2012. Then came unheralded underdog TJ Dillashaw, who proceeded to not only defeat Barao but thoroughly dominate him through the first four rounds before TK Oing him in the fifth to take the title.
  • UFC 193 on November 14, 2015 saw what most fans and experts considered the impossible: The defeat of "Rowdy" Ronda Rousey. 20-1 underdog and former pro boxer Holly Holm would shock the world by dominating Rousey en route to a shocking second round KO, becoming only the second person to win the UFC Women's Bantamweight Championship and handing Rousey her first MMA loss.
  • UFC 194 just under a month later possibly topped Rousey's loss with the long-awaited Featherweight title unification bout between Jose Aldo and Conor Mc Gregor. The fight had five months of hype behind it, it had an added stipulation that the winner would join Ronda Rousey on the box for the next game, and both men had long, ostentatious entrances. The fight? It lasted thirteen seconds, with McGregor knocking Aldo out with the first punch of the fight.
  • Unfortunately for McGregor, it happened to him as well: at UFC 196, he moved up to welterweight for a short-notice, non-title fight against Nate Diaz. McGregor did well enough in the first round but suddenly tired in the second, allowing major underdog Diaz to force him to tap out to a rear naked choke, handing McGregor his first loss in some time and first in the UFC. Earlier, the aforementioned Holly Holm suffered her first pro loss at the hands of another massive underdog: two-time Rousey victim Miesha Tate, who choked Holm out to win the Women's Bantamweight title.
  • Luke Rockhold had not lost in the UFC since his debut against a PED-aided Vitor Belfort. Since then, he had gone on a tear, finishing opponent after opponent, including taking the Middleweight belt from the aforementioned Chris Weidman in 2015, prompting many to proclaim him the true successor to Anderson Silva atop the divisional throne.. His first title defense was against short notice replacement Michael "The Count" Bisping, who had been submitted by Rockhold almost two years earlier. The heavy underdog Bisping would exact his revenge by K Oing Rockhold to win the title in the first round.
  • Joanna Jędrzejczyk had dominated the Women's Strawweight division with an iron fist, with many experts wondering if she would do what Ronda Rousey couldn't and retire as champion. Few gave her UFC 217 opponent, Rose Namajunas, a chance of pulling off the upset despite Namajunas' skills growing by leaps and bounds during her time in the UFC. But pull it off she did, TK Oing Jędrzejczyk in the very first round to capture the championship.
  • Demetrious Johnson had been the only champion the UFC's Men's Flyweight division had ever known since winning the belt in 2012, reeling off a record eleven consecutive title defenses, including a knockout of Olympic gold medal wrestler Henry Cejudo. But when the two rematched at UFC 227, "Mighty Mouse" was finally toppled from his throne via a hard-fought split decision. The man who did so? Henry Cejudo.
  • After losing her first pro fight in 2005, Cristiane "Cris Cyborg" Justino became an unholy terror in the Women's Featherweight divisions of Strikeforce, Invicta, and the UFC, winning titles in all three organizations. At UFC 232, she defended her championship against UFC Women's Bantamweight Champion (and the woman who retired Ronda Rousey) Amanda Nunes, but despite being the overwhelming favorite, she fell to Nunes via knockout in a staggering fifty-one seconds.

Roleplay

• Destroy the Godmodder: The godmodder is well defined here, despite being able to take down things like massive battle fleets and Chuck Norris himself with minimal effort, the godmodder has already been defeated twice.

Tabletop Games

• Changeling: The Lost: Though very, very difficult, it is possible for a Changeling to permanently kill their Keeper in Arcadia. Tricking a True Fae into breaking an oath sworn on their True Name is the most sure-fire way to do this, as their true name is effectively their vow to exist and losing it renders them Deader than Dead.
• Exalted is all about doing this to the extremely powerful people you don't like. You can even do this to The Unconquered Sun. Unconquered does not mean Unconquerable.

Video Games

• The Ace Attorney series (especially the original trilogy), being based largely on the heavily prosecution-biased Japanese legal system, has several prosecutors with perfect win records... until they meet Phoenix.
  • The first is Miles "Demon Prosecutor" Edgeworth, who never lost a case until Phoenix successfully defended Maya Fay over the murder of her sister Mia^{note- spoilers!}although the 3rd game reveals his first case, while not technically a loss for him, finished without a verdict and had been going in favour of the defence, so it definitely wasn't a win for him either. After his Heel–Face Turn, he turns it around as one of two prosecutors (the other being Klavier Gavin, who was an Unwitting Pawn in a plot to frame Phoenix) to defeat Phoenix Wright in court.
  • Franziska von Karma is Miles' adopted little sister, and she's never lost a case since she began prosecuting at age 13. Until Phoenix once again gets Maya acquitted for murder.
  • Manfred von Karma is the gold standard for this, as he's the reason both Edgeworth (his adopted son) and Franziska (his daughhter) are so obssessed with perfect prosecution records. He maintained his spotless record for 40 years before facing Phoenix in case 1-4, and it's ultimately that case that gets him busted for murdering the one defense lawyer to ever give him a penalty- Edgewoth's real father.
  • Subverted one time, when Godot announces that he's never lost a case... and then reveals that that's because he's never prosecuted a case before.
  • The Great Ace Attorney subverts it again with Barok van Zieks. Ryunosuke is told that no one can save a defendant from the Reaper of the Old Bailey shortly before he wins an acquittal against him. The next day, Ryunosuke learns his client is dead, and Inspector Gregson sets him straight. Plenty of defendants have won a case prosecuted by the Reaper. None of them were saved because they all died in mysterious circumstances shortly after him- which is what happens to Ryunnosuke's client (thankfully an Asshole Victim).
• ANNO: Mutationem: Amok is described as a supernatural being of mass destruction that can unleash devastation, possessing immense power that makes her untouchable. The Post-Final Boss has Ann battling Amok and finally defeating her to forever seal her away.
• Armored Core:
  • Nineball is known for having held the position of #1 pilot the longest, thus those who can beat him are famed as "Ninebreakers".
  • Ace, the arena champion from Armored Core 3, reached his position without suffering a single loss.
• In Asura's Wrath, the Seven Deities are repeatedly described as undefeatable gods. Well, Asura puts them to the test on his Roaring Rampage of Revenge....and finds them wanting. Shortly afterward, he goes up against Ghoma Vlitra, which is described as a force so powerful it cannot be killed, only subdued temporarily. No prizes for guessing what Asura does to it. Finally, the game's last, DLC-specific chapters, culminate in Asura fighting Chakravatin, who is effectively God, and is so powerful that his supreme fortress is literally larger than entire galaxies and he uses stars and planets as projectiles. Three guesses what happens to that theoretically indestructable asshole.
• BioShock Infinite goes to a great deal of effort to emphasize how invincible Songbird is. Elizabeth refuses to even let Booker fight him, insisting that it would be a completely hopeless fight. In the end, she's right. It's a deconstruction of the standard player expectations when hearing about an invincible enemy. When Elizabeth says "You can't beat Songbird," the game isn't setting up an awesome boss fight, it's setting up the fact that you can't beat Songbird. Elizabeth does eventually kill him in a cutscene though, but only after her Power Limiter has been destroyed and she's basically a Physical God.
• In BlazBlue, we have an interesting variation of this trope: How do you beat a supercomputer with three omniscient minds that has manipulated the countless Groundhog Day Loops the world has gone through to its own perfectionistic ends in a game of chess? Believe it or not, Hazama/Terumi Yuuki knew how to cheat his way to victory, and we, the players, are left to ask ourselves: Why him? Why, of all people, him? Why, of all the possible outcomes, did HE, the embodiment of the worst possible outcome, have to win the Continuum Shift? Why? Because he ensured that there was no other possible outcome aside from his victory.
• The Borderlands series:
  • Crawmerax the Invincible from Borderlands. The mission for beating him is called "You. Will. Die." and the achievement earned for putting him down is called "Vincible". Borderlands 2 and Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! keep up the Theme Naming for their raid bosses, including the Invincible Son of Crawmerax the Invincible.
  • In Borderlands 2 everyone is really impressed when you go toe-to-toe with Jack's Brute, Wilhelm, and come out not just alive but victorious, possibly solo, given that Wilhelm had previously taken on the four original Vault Hunters and forced them to Run or Die. In cut audio, it turns out he went down so easily because Jack poisoned him as part of a greater plan.
• Devil May Cry 5 starts with Dante being curbstomped by a new Demon King named Urizen, after which Nero is forced to flee and find a way to at least get on his level if he wants to make a difference.
  Morrison: This can't be happening... Dante lost?
• Dynasty Warriors: Lu Bu serves this role in most games. In early battles on a character's route, he's a juggernaut who's too powerful for you to possibly beat so you have to flee when he appears. Later you'll be tasked with actually fighting him. Actually defeating him before you're supposed to be able to is sometimes the key to unlocking rare, powerful items or hidden routes.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • Throughout the series, the main quest Big Bad (as well as the Big Bads of the major expansions) tend to be something along these lines. Morrowind and its to expansions have you killing two outright Physical Gods^note One of whom is actually invincible and cannot be killed directly...you have to destroy his power source and the aspect of a Daedric Prince. Oblivion and its expansions force you to defeat two Daedric Princes (the main quest one being a Destroyer Deity) and an ancient Sorcerer-King of the Abusive Precursors who is empowered by a third Daedric Prince. Skyrim and its expansions pit you up against the draconic Beast of the Apocalypse (with several characters outright stating that it may not be "right" to stop him given his duty), an ancient Vampire Lord, and your own Evil Counterpart (the First Dragonborn) who serves as the champion of a Daedric Prince.
  • In Oblivion's "Imperial Arena" faction questline, you can engage in a series of Gladiator Subquests, working your way up the ranks against stronger and stronger competition. At the end, you must defeat the Gray Prince, the undefeated Grand Champion of the Arena. (However, there is also a sidequest that allows you to kill him without any fight and claim the title, Subverting the trope...)
• In Emerald City Confidential, Petra defeats Mombi, the resident champion of the wizard arena. Mombi, who is a Sore Loser, calls Petra out after the match for using parlor tricks rather than just magic to win.
• Falling somewhere between Video Games and Real Life is the defeat of Kerafyrm the Sleeper in EverQuest. Having never intended gamers to challenge it, the programmers gave Kerafyrm 10 billion HP (for reference, a standard dragon has 100 thousand and gods top out at 2 million). It took almost 200 of the best players in the game over four hours to kill it. On the second try.
  • The first try ended at 27% life when Kerafyrm disappeared. Sony reset the entire scenario. According to them, they thought the scenario was bugged because Kerafyrm wasn't supposed to be that close to death ever. Gamers called them out for their repeated lies.
• Fate/Grand Order: In the Seventh Lostbelt, the game's heroes find themselves faced with one of the most powerful known beings in the Nasuverse: ORT, the Ultimate One of the Oort Cloud. A huge amount of emphasis is placed on just how undefeatable it is, which nearly drives them to despair over the fact they now have to fight it. Nasu himself compared the heroes trying to fight this thing to a group of early game characters in an RPG trying to take on a post-game Superboss. Despite putting up a truly stunning battle against ORT, and only managing that through multiple Deus ex Machina, tremendous sacrifice, and a metric ton of pure luck, ORT is simply too powerful to be truly killed. In the end, it has to essentially be forced to commit suicide, as the only thing powerful enough to kill it is itself.
• Five Nights at Freddy's has a meta example. The game's version of Harder Than Hard, "4/20 Mode" (accessed by using Custom Night to set all animatronics to their highest difficulty), is extremely brutal to the point where Scott Cawthon, the developer, thought it was flat-out impossible. Then Let's Player BigBug went and beat it. As of now, 27 people have done so and been able to prove it. This has since become series tradition, with players completing the games at the hardest possible difficulties, though usually without Scott specifically believing it was impossible up until he was all but certain Ultimate Custom Night was impossible at those settings. Then some players conquered that one too.
• From Iji, Annihilator Iosa, who is known as "Iosa the Invincible" for surviving a Planetary Extinction event.
• The Ravager is the undisputed champion of the arena in Jade Empire... he gets a lot of hype, and it's all freaking justified. The bastard is the second/third hardest fight in the game.
• In the original Knights of the Old Republic, you can rise all the way up in the gladiatorial ladder on Taris, eventually, defeating and killing the undefeated champion who killed every challenger in the last decades, so that nobody dares to challenge him any more.
• Mass Effect presents the Reapers as undefeatable. They've spent countless millions of years wiping out all advanced organic life in the galaxy every 50,000 years. Finally, at the end of Mass Effect 3, Commander Shepard ends their reign potentially at great cost, depending on the strength of their forces.
• This is a large part of the main plot of the first Mortal Kombat game. Goro had dominated the competition for centuries prior, and was a seemingly unstoppable force, and defeating him was a vital step in paving the way for Shao Kahn's defeat. Ultimately, his defeat came at the hands of Liu Kang.
• The Elite Four fill this role in every Pokémon game (as well as the anime), while Red, the protagonist from the first game, fills this role somewhat in the game in which he appeared as a boss.
  • Giovanni from the Special Manga fits this trope extremely well, as it is said that no one has ever defeated him in his time as a gym leader. The Elite Four in the Kanto Arc also fit this trope as they are constantly called undefeated more so than in the games. The Legendary Pokemon in the anime and games are constantly implied to be undefeated as well. And then we have Pikachu. Giovanni is even stronger in the Pokémon Origins special. How strong is he? In their first battle, his Nidoqueen (not his most powerful Pokemon) trounces Red's Charizard with barely an effort. In the following battle at the gym, Giovanni decides to use his two strongest Pokemon against Red's team made specifically to take on the invincible Ground-type gym leader, and the first one, Rhyhorn takes down four of them before being eliminated in a Double Knockout (said opponents were a Victreebel, a Kabutops, a Snorlax, a Jolteon (taken down by a single electric attack), and an Hitmonlee). Then Charizard, now stronger, faced Rhydon, and managed to scrape a victory.
  • Volkner has this reputation as a gym leader. It translates to the anime as well, where he eventually got bored of crushing everyone's dreams and started giving away his badges for free.
  • This is the main objective of any trainer who enters the Galar league inPokémon Sword and Shield as Leon, the current Champion, has never lost a single match since he started his own journey.
  • This is the main plot of the "Victory Road" storyline in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. Nemona easily wins every fight she finds and is trying to find someone who can at least match her. When she realizes the potential in the player, she begins acting as a mentor to nuture that potential so she can get a good battle.
  • Deconstructed in the Scarlet and Violet DLC "The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero" as Kieran constantly loses to the player, not only in battle, but also in befriending Ogerpon, and goes off the deep end. His efforts to defeat you lead to him almost accidentially destroying the Paledea region when he loses control of Terapagos after Terastalizing him.
• Pony Island: Asmodeus.exe boasts that he has never lost his mind-bending quiz game. Should you manage to see through his tricks, you become the first one to beat Asmodeus at his own game.
• Punch-Out!!: The final fight in the series is about defeating the undefeatable.
  • Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! on the NES does this by making the final opponent Mike Tyson, who was undefeated at the time the game was made. Same with Tyson's replacement Mr. Dream in Punch-Out!! Featuring Mr. Dream.
  • In Super Punch-Out!!, Nick Bruiser has a 42-0 record before losing against you. To add insult to injury, according to Official Nintendo Magazine, he then lost again. To Glass Joe. His twin brother Rick is almost undefeated, having lost to Nick.
  • Punch-Out for the Wii does this for the Final Boss Mr. Sandman. Not only does he have a whopping 31 wins - 0 losses record, but his introduction cutscene shows him knocking out every other boxer in the game like it was nothing. But of course, Little Mac goes on to claim the championship from him.
• Punch-Out!! clone Super KO Boxing 2 makes KO Kid fight the Executioner, a menacing fighter out of Portugal, who has a 1000-0 record. Only one managed to escape his KOing wrath. For reference, Executioner single-handedly dwarfs the experience and win record of all 16 boxers in the SNES Super Punch-Out!! combined.
• In Shin Megami Tensei games, this happens a lot, as you will be seeing yourself defeating many seemingly undefeatable creatures in various myths and religion. Your enemy in this game can range from a simple fairy to out-and-out OMNIPOTENT GODS, and you can win against them, storyline and gameplay-wise. The games go to great lengths to make sure you will be defeated a lot, though, and some games do not permit this.
• In Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, by the end of the game Starkiller, in the canonical Light Side Ending, becomes the only character in the entire Star Wars franchise to take on, physically overpower and defeat both Dark Lords of the Sith, Darth Vader and Darth Sidious respectively in a climactic Throne Room Throwdown aboard the first Death Star. Justified, in that as a powerful Sith Apprentice he was directly trained in a grueling manner in the Dark Side and Sith arts since childhood by Darth Vader, for the purpose of assassinating Vader's enemies, including remnant Jedi, as well as to help him overthrow the Emperor. Furthermore, during the battle on the Death Star both Sidious and Vader are evidently hoping to use Starkiller to kill and replace the other Sith Lord, thus not both facing him at the same time, in which case they almost certainly would have beaten him.
• In Street Fighter, this role is filled by Sagat in the first game, The King of Muay Thai (alternatively, the God or Emperor of Muay Thai), who, at the end of the game, is eventually defeated by Ryu, and, afterwards, loses his entire reputation, joins the Big Bad's organization, and, after a little soul searching, does a Heel–Face Turn and focuses on becoming stronger. Storyline-wise, he's still one of the most powerful characters in the game, and he's only lost three times, and each time he technically didn't lose giving his all (the first time, Ryu was consumed by his desire to win, briefly losing himself to Satsui no Hadou and sucker punching Sagat with a Metsu Shoryuken, which is how Sagat has that scar across his chest, and the other two times he either was too distraught to give his all ^note his fight against his former disciple Adon; Sagat, despite losing, was in such a blind rage that he put Adon in traction for several months, or let the opponent win ^note his fight against Dan; Dan's desire to avenge his father Go's death years ago at Sagat's hands was a big factor in Sagat's Heel Realization and eventual Heel–Face Turn).
  • Gameplay wise, he has consistently been top tier in every appearance, to the point that many fans have labeled it either a "tradition" or a "running gag" for Capcom.
  • Akuma has also only been "defeated" once, by Gouken in his youth. He would later turn up for a rematch in which he killed Gouken (well, not quite), and hasn't outright lost a match since (he has, however, forfeited against people who have potential to get stronger if he leaves them alive, since his honour code won't let him fight people who aren't at their strongest).
    • Speculation has it that Akuma did lose to a Not Quite Dead Gouken upon their reunion in IV (given that Gouken No Sold the Shun Goku Satsu with the Power of Nothingness), which is why he no longer hounds Ryu by the time of III.
• Street Fighter III essentially puts Gill in this place. While there are Shin Akuma and Q depending on which game you play Gill is portrayed as this in all games. In the comics Gill is able to put not only the majority of the cast but even Evil Ryu and Oni in their place all at the same time, only being initially defeated by Alex with the help of Urien.
• In Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune, you get special titles for defeating a player with a long-enough win streak.
• The Gear fighting champion Rico in Xenogears.
  • In addition, the whole point of the game is to kill God. Well, technically, it's a superpowered war machine that happens to fulfill the typical purposes of 'God' for the planet the game takes place on.... yeah, it's a little confusing. Still, the fact that it's not technically a god doesn't make the task any easier.
• Yandere Simulator: Raibaru Fumetsu was the former leader of the Martial Arts club and had a 100 win streak, thanks to overconfident rivals mistaking her cute exterior for weakness. She's actually relieved when Budo Masuda unexpectedly defeated her, since she had wanted to retire from martial arts to pursue other interests, but felt obligated to stay on as club leader because of her Indestructable Rival reputation. She promptly resigns, hands leadership to Budo, and makes friends with the first rival Osana.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh! Capsule Monster Coliseum, losing to Yugi's friends makes them incredulous that they actually won.
  Tea: I won! I can’t believe it! I actually beat Yugi!
  Joey: Yugi, I won, but I’m sure it was just luck. A miracle, even.
• In Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links, Yami Yugi and Kaiba can lose to anyone in the game, leaving their opponents incredulous that they won.
• Zeus: Master of Olympus: When a monster comes to town, you're allowed to build a hall for the appropriate hero, who will come once the necessary conditions are met (which is far easier said than done, as some requirements seriously interfere with your city plans or your ability to even complete the mission) and instantly slay the monster. Or, you could send a unit or two of basic combat units at the monster, who replenish over time and will eventually kill the beast after several in-game years and countless deaths. They don't react to this, unfortunately.

Web Comics

• Old Man Death in Girl Genius, a Badass Normal human who used to ride with the Blood Knight Jagers and never lost a fight. Due to his reputation, Jagers constantly try to defeat him for his hat, but never managed to do it even in his old age. He finally lost the hat when Maxim challenged him for it, and even then, Maxim only succeeded by being "sottle", ordering a hat sandwich to go, forcing Old Man Death to prepare the hat and hand it to Maxim lest the old man risk his reputation as the Supreme Chef of his gourmet sandwich shop.
• Kill Six Billion Demons: God-Emperor Solomon David holds a fighting tournament known as the Ring of Power every five years, where the champion gets to face Solomon himself in a one-on-one duel. In the centuries he has held the tournament Solomon has never lost a final bout despite the rules being Victory by First Blood for his opponent while Solomon can 'only' win by ring-out, submission or the opponent being unable to fight. This ends up backfiring on Solomon, as his duel with 82 White Chain ends with the audience of the tournament proclaiming her the victor simply for landing a blow on Solomon even though she fails to actually make him bleed. Forced between falsely proclaiming his opponent the victor or looking like a petulant Rules Lawyer in front of his nation, Solomon chooses the former and forfeits.
• The Arena Champion in The Order of the Stick, who has a perfect win record and has killed 37 gladiators in a row, including a stone giant with PC Class Levels. Naturally, Roy has to try to beat him in a death match, a chance that he looks forward to when he learns that the Arena Champion is Thog.
• Bun-Bun is like this throughout Sluggy Freelance. The main characters seem confident he can beat just about anyone or anything, including immortal assassins and world-destroying demons. He gets beaten a few times over the comic's run, however.

Web Original

• DEATH BATTLE!:
  • In one death battle, there's a case for Flash (Wally West) vs. Archie Sonic where Wally manages to defeat Sonic, something that was deemed impossible by Sonic's foes and who Fate practically bends it's back over to ensure his victories. Turns out the only way to defeat someone as overpowered as Sonic in the here and now is to be just as overpowered as he is, and the hosts note in the after-analysis even admit they were so matched in most circumstances the fight would effectively be a coin flip.
  • A second instance of this occurs in Saitama vs. Popeye where TWO undefeatable individuals duke it out. Popeye ends up winning, primarily because while Saitama was unbelievably strong his power could still be measured while Popeye's abilities couldn't be measured at all putting the sailor on a whole different level of ridiculousness.
• In Pokémon Gold (Fanmade), Whitney has a well-deserved reputation for being an unbeatable Gym Leader. Whether Trainers are challenging her for their first badge or their eighth, she flattens all challengers with teams built around her freakishly strong Miltanks, with Gold losing to her almost a dozen times while attempting to get his third badge. It's not until Gold takes the time to study Whitney's tactics and build a team specifically to counter them that he finally emerges victorious, and even then, her Miltank still took down five of his six Pokémon before being defeated.
• One episode of The Rap Battle Parody has the supposedly unbeatable Supa Hot Fire experiencing his first and only loss at the hands of Soulja Boy. However, in a later episode, one of Supa's rhymes is considered so good that it erases his previous loss.

Western Animation

• Ben 10 (2016)
  • Ben Tennyson
    • Downplayed: both the first two season's finales have him stopping some of the most feared creatures of the universe, but in both cases, he needed help from others and some kind of All Your Powers Combined. Plus he didn't technically defeat them, more like stopped them from getting what they wanted.
    • This goes further in season 3, as he still didn't defeat Forever Knight (or at least, in a way where Forever Knight wasn't pulling the strings) and only managed to restrain him before Kevin kept him from capturing Ben and Gwen inside the timestream.
• Danny Phantom: The Ultimate Enemy: Dark Danny was shown to be a juggernaut that seemed unstoppable, with Future Valerie, Danny's enemies, and even an army of ghost fighters unable to stand against him. He was like this to such a degree that the Observants believed that killing Danny was the only way to keep him from coming into existence. However, through the use of some Fenton weapons and his newly acquired Ghostly Wail, Danny was able to at least weaken his evil self enough to trap him in the Fenton Thermos.
• Hazbin Hotel: The events of the first season are kicked off after an Exorcist angel, who are known at this point to be virtually untouchable by the denizens of Hell, is found dead after the latest Extermination. The who, why and how are slowly uncovered as the repercussions of such a feat threaten everything Charlie is working for.
• Warhak, the villain from the Grand Finale of Kim Possible, claimed to be 'the most fierce warrior in the galaxy', indicating that he had conquered hundreds of planets with little resistance. He even managed to knock out both Kim and Shego with a single punch. In the end, both he and his battlemate Warmonga^note who herself had proven tough enough to take on both Kim and Shego (while the former was wearing her battlesuit), and was defeated by trickery rather than combat in her previous appearance were destroyed by Ron Stoppable when he called upon his Mystical Monkey Power.
• In Season 3 of The Legend of Korra, the four active members of the Red Lotus are described as undefeatable, with no single person having a chance of defeating any of them individually, much less the four of them together. However, Tenzin actually comes close to proving this wrong in his one-on-one battle with their leader Zaheer, as he seems to have the upper hand thanks to his years of experience and mastery bending air outmatching Zaheer's skilled but inexperienced style, but Zaheer's reinforcements show up before the battle is over. In the finale, Mako actually does manage to defeat one of them, Ming-Hua, in single combat, through using his lightning to electrocute her, taking advantage of the fact that she was submersed in the water she used for her own bending.
• Molly of Denali: In "The Funny Face Competition," Tooey pulls out a win against Aunt Merna, the funny face champion of legend.

Real Life

• Tiger Woods was 14–0 in golf's four major championships when he held the lead (by himself or with others) after 54 of 72 regulation holes... but that came to a stunning end when he lost the 2009 PGA Championship with a two stroke 54 hole lead to unheralded Y.E. Yang. And then three months later Tiger crashed into a fire hydrant outside his home in Florida, and the rest has been history.
• Mike Tyson was the undisputed heavyweight boxing champion who was mowing down everyone who came into his path, including previously unbeaten champions like Michael Spinks... in 91 seconds. James "Buster" Douglas was supposed to be just another speed bump to the champ (in fact, the February 1990 fight was held in Tokyo because no American venue would have it). No one told Douglas, though, who proceeded to knock out Tyson in the 10th round and become one of the unlikeliest heavyweight champions in boxing history.
  • Another famed boxing upset is the Rumble in the Jungle between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. Ali was considered over the hill, while the younger, unstoppable champion Foreman came into the bout with a record of 40 wins, 0 losses. ^note Moreover, some of those wins were routs of boxers who'd beaten Ali before... Big George himself later recalled that he had no worries... until he went down in the 8th round, worn out from several minutes of steady chipping from Ali. Not only was this his first defeat, it was the first time Foreman had ever been knocked down.
• The Miracle on Ice, where the USA ice hockey team of the 1980 Winter Olympics manage to defeat a Soviet team that was nigh-unbeatable in the world scene for more than a decade. For bonus points, the USA team was made up of collegiate ice hockey players and had been crushed by the Soviets in an earlier exhibition game 10 to 3. "Do you believe in miracles? YES!!"
• The "Miracle of Berne" (4 July 1954) in which the West German team came back from trailing 0-2 against the "Magical Magyars" to win the FIFA World Cup by 3 goals to 2. This ended an undefeated run by the Hungarian football (soccer) team lasting four years and 32 matches, during which they won the Olympic gold medal in 1952, the 1953 European Cup of National Teams (precursor of the UEFA European Championship), became the first continental European team to defeat England in Wembley Stadium (6-3) and defeated West Germany 8-3 in the opening round of the 1954 World Cup.
• Tennis star Rafael Nadal entered the 2009 French Open as the World No. 1 and 4-time defending champion who had never been beaten on French clay ever since his debut at the 2005 French Open, not even by the legendary Roger Federer, and had just set a record streak of 31 wins at the French Open. His fourth-round opponent, Robin Söderling, was all set up to become yet another one of his conquests as the 23rd seed who had never even reached the quarterfinals of a major tournament before and had been steamrolled by Nadal in all of their previous matches. Söderling apparently hadn't read the script, however, as he proceeded to turn in the game of his life and defeat Nadal in one of the biggest upsets in tennis history.
  • And it happened to Nadal again at Wimbledon 2014. Back at number 1 in the world and the current French Open and US Open Champion and runner-up at the Australian Open, he played Nick Kyrgios, a 19 year old Australian ranked 145th in the world, in the fourth round. Nadal was defeated in four sets.
• In the 2007-08 Super Bowl XLII match between the New England Patriots and the New York Giants the Patriots had an undefeated regular and playoff season. They had the best offense and defense ever assembled in NFL history, or so the many sports commentators kept saying. Superstar quarterback Tom Brady completed 50 touchdowns throughout the season, running up the score and completely dominating most defenses he faced, and wide receiver Randy Moss went from washed up back to completely unstoppable. The whole country believed they'd be the second team since the 1972 Miami Dolphins to have a a perfect NFL season, complete with a Super Bowl victory. At the same time, the New York Giants had had an up and down season, even being narrowly defeated by the Patriots in the last game of the season. There were times when the fans demanded that the managers fire coach Tom Coughlin and replace quarterback Eli Manning, whom many football fans regarded as not being as talented as his older brother Peyton Manning. However they fought and clawed their way to the playoffs and the Super Bowl game. During the game, millions who watched were left in shock as not only did the Giants stop the Patriots dominating offense, but they were able to only hold them to 14 points, winning the game. Eli finally escaped from his brother's shadow by matching him with a Super Bowl win and MVP title, and Coughlin had his coaching contract extended. And just to show the win wasn't a fluke, they beat the Patriots again in Super Bowl XLVI at the end of the 2011-12 season, and Eli Manning surpassed his brother with two Super Bowl wins and MVP titles (until Peyton won his second ring at Super Bowl 50 at the end of the 2015-16 season).
• When chess grandmaster José Capablanca was defeated by fellow grandmaster Richard Réti in the 1924 grandmaster tournament in New York, it was his first loss under tournament conditions in eight years.
  • Capablanca's loss in the World Championship match to Alexander Alekhine was also an example, as he was considered so dominant that no one expected him to lose.
  • Vladimir Kramnik defeating Garry Kasparov in the year 2000 was a similar situation.
  • Correspondence Grandmaster Arno Nickel managed to win a match against Hydra, the strongest chess computer of the time (this was a computer significantly more advanced and powerful than Deep Blue).
• In a way, the Miami Heat vs the San Antonio Spurs in 2013. Up until that point, the Spurs never lost in the NBA Finals; they never even trailed in a Finals series. They were up 1-0, 2-1, 3-2, and were literally 28 seconds away from winning their fifth championship... and then the Heat improbably forced overtime in Game 6, took that game by the slimmest of margins, and proceeded to defeat the Spurs in Game 7, becoming the only team to have beaten the Spurs in the Finals. This is especially poignant since the Spurs proceeded to defeat the Heat in the Finals in 2014.
• Rulon Gardner winning the gold medal in Greco-Roman wrestling in overtime, against 3 time defending gold medalist Aleksandr Karelin at the Sydney Olympics in 2000. Until that victory, Karelin had been undefeated for 13 years (out of a 18-year-long career), the last 6 years during which he didn't give up a single point to his opponents, and had never lost a match in international competetion, period. Gardener by contrast was a skilled but relatively unknown wrestler whose previous experience was primarily on the high school and collegeate level.
• Happened again with LeBron James, who was the star of the 2013 Miami Heat team, when he went back to the Cleveland Cavaliers and reached the finals in the 2015-16 season. This time he took on the Golden State Warriors in the finals after losing to them the previous year during the 2014-15 season. The Warriors seemed like the new superstar team in the West Coast, after the Spurs and the Lakers, to win multiple back to back titles and become a dynasty. The team's roster was stacked with great starter and bench players, with a superstar point guard in Stephen Curry, whose ball handling and shooting skills seemed inhuman. Everything seemed to good as planned with the Warriors taking a dominating 2-0 lead. Everyone was predicting a NBA finals sweep, until LeBron James and his point guard Kyrie Irving played some of the greatest basketball in NBA history, especially Irving who, while good, wasn't seen at the time as an elite player. They would be the first team in NBA history to turn around a 1-3 disadvantage during the finals, finally winning the title LeBron promised the city of Cleveland since he turned pro as a teenager.
• Serena Williams went into the 2015 US Open having won the last four tennis majors and being the overwhelming favorite to complete a calendar-year Grand Slam (i.e. winning all four tennis majors in a single year). Everything seemed to align for her in the semifinals with her opponent being 43th-ranked Roberta Vinci who had a 0-4 record against her and Flavia Pennetta taking out 2nd-seeded Simona Halep in the other semifinal...then Vinci won in one of the biggest sports upsets of all time.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender's victory in the Favorite Cartoon category during the 2008 Kids' Choice Awards, making it the only time since 2003 that a cartoon other than SpongeBob SquarePants walked home with the award.
• Since its launch in 2004, World of Warcraft has been the undisputed king of the MMORPG genre, with so many competitors hailing themselves as 'WoW-killers' popping up only to be crushed under WoW's heels and quickly forgotten. Things started to change around 2019 with the launch of the "Shadowbringers" expansion of Final Fantasy XIV, an MMO that, ironically, launched in a broken state and was so panned that it threatened to possibly end the lawsuit-filingly popular Final Fantasy franchise until it was scrapped, rebuilt, and relaunched under the subtitle of A Realm Reborn. Since then, FFXIV has managed to keep up with WoW and prove to be a serious rival and contender to WoW's throne. The turning point came in 2021, where a combination of factors — the eminent release of the "Endwalker" expansion, growing resentment from the playerbase of WoW over the game's increasingly panned gameplay and story changes, several prominent WoW players jumping ship for FFXIV, a class-action lawsuit that cast developer Activision-Blizzard in a less-than-flattering light, and a subsequent halt to WoW's development — led to WoW's playerbase hemorrhaging while FFXIV saw an explosive growth to its own playerbase, such that the game's servers struggled to keep up.

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