No Man of Woman Born

"A prophecy that misread could have been..."

"...when it is prophesied that no man can defeat me, I will keep in mind the increasing number of non-traditional gender roles."

— Evil Overlord List #153

A character receives a prophecy or curse of the form "X cannot happen until Y," where Y is seemingly impossible. X is frequently (but not always) the character's death or defeat.

Of course, Y ends up happening somehow, usually through some trick of wording or a loophole, with X promptly following.

Over-reliance on this phrase by the baddie usually leads to a delicious Oh, Crap! moment. It often involves a "Eureka!" Moment, followed by the newly minted Magnificent Bastard drawing his sword and Cutting the Knot. Macbeth — the Trope Namer — was promised that he couldn't be killed by any "man of woman born;" alas, he was up against a man delivered by emergency C-section. When the clause includes an exhaustive list — neither by night nor by day, or neither by man nor by beast — a Liminal Being such as a werewolf or a Liminal Time such as twilight may slip through because, being half of each, it's neither.

As can clearly be seen from the Mythology section, this trope is definitely Older Than Dirt.

A subtrope of Prophecy Twist and Double Meaning; compare Prophetic Fallacy. Can be a form of False Reassurance. For some other instances of impossible conditions being met, see Impossible Task and Engagement Challenge. For when condition Y isn't really fulfilled but a half-assed excuse is used to justify X happening anyway, see Metaphorically True. Its more comic Sister Trope is Cue the Flying Pigs. Sub-Trope to Exact Words. See Prophecy Armor for the paradoxical protection that a prophecy of doom under circumstance X (which can be perfectly mundane) gives against circumstances A, B, and C.

Since this trope is frequently used as a surprise twist, major spoilers abound below!

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In the first Interspecies Reviewers novel, we're treated to Sleeptopia, a brothel that had been sealed in space and time by a previous demon lord that could only be unlocked by the semen of a god or angel. Cue the reviewers dragging Crim along for the ride.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! GX: Amon Garam/Adrian Gecko, late in the third season, gets his hands on the nigh-unstoppable monster Exodius the Ultimate Forbidden Lord, which cannot be defeated in battle and is immune to all of the opponent's card effects. Then he faces off against Yubel, who uses Armityle the Chaos Phantasm's effect to switch control of itself to the opponent for one turn, remove all of its new owner's cards from play, and then switch back. This bypasses Exodius' protection since Armityle was Adrian's card, and not his opponent's, at that moment.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL has a minor character, Charlie McKay, getting a powerful card that gives him supernaturally good luck that will only run out "when the sun is split in two" (or in the dub, it lasts "as long as the sun that shines stays complete"). When he faces off against Yuma, his incredible luck puts Yuma on the ropes until one of Yuma's cards reveals Charlie's Sun Scale card from the top of his deck, which happens to have a sun drawn on its artwork. Yuma then destroys Sun Scale, causing the card's hologram to split in half right down the sun in its artwork, and Charlie's luck immediately runs out.

Comic Books

• Batman: In the comic book version of Batman: The Brave and the Bold, Batman teams up with Kid Eternity, who has the power to summon great heroes of the past, to battle General Immortus. However, when Immortus reveals The Spear of Destiny prevents anyone born of woman from defeating him, Eternity can't think who to summon - "Even Hercules and Gilgamesh had mothers!" Batman suggests summoning the World War II hero G.I. Robot.
• Dagar The Invincible: In one issue, in a story very much inspired by Macbeth, the warrior takes on a warlord called Magg-Deth whose medallion is proof against sorcery, but whose guilty conscience over murdering Ban-Dro, his rival, to take his throne plagues him with visions of the rival's visage and a sword that will slay him one day. Three beautiful witches that Dagar becomes involved with visit Magg-Deth with a prophecy about how only an entire nation can slay him, and only after that nation has entered the Dark Fortress that the warlord calls home. But as Dagar reveals during the final showdown with him, he is the sole survivor of the nation of Tulgonia, which makes him an entire nation. Needless to say, Magg-Deth dies by Dagar's blade soon after.
• Les Légendaires: Used against Anathos, the God of Evil. Anathos states they can't defeat him because only a God can kill another God, thus him committing suicide would be the only option (as at this point no other God is around). He ends up being stabbed by Jadina with Danael's sword, which was forged with Danael's blood and as such counts as part of his body.
• Pixy: The indie comic tells the story of a couple who has an abortion — the titular Pixy — who likes to call them up from the afterlife when drunk. On a road trip with his dad, Pixy happens upon the source of all life and information in the world: The Holy Hot Dog Stand, He Who Writes on the Milk Cartons, and extorts Him for candy with a bazooka. The Holy Hot Dog Stand, He Who Writes on the Milk Cartons says, "I'm the almighty, no one of woman born can harm me." Then guess what happens.
• Spider-Man: Mr. Negative, a villain introduced in the One More Day storyline, is regularly quoted saying "Mr. Negative was never born, so he is ever living!" He loves saying things like that. The truth of the matter is that Mr. Negative wasn't born, he was made. The human trafficker who took on the identity of Martin Li is the one who was born, but that's beside the point.
• Superman: The first story from the very first issue of Superboy uses this. Superman encounters an old high school friend of his named Margo Griffiths; back when they were teens she was told by a fortune teller that "Margo Griffiths will cease to exist," on her 21st birthday. All his other predictions wound up coming true, and with her 21st birthday coming up she's scared out of her mind. Superman is able to help her out of her funk by convincing her to marry her fiancé. As the two are wed, he tells her "You don't have to worry about anything happening to Margo Griffiths anymore — you're Margo Vaughn now!"
• Thessaly: Witch for Hire: Thessaly is told that "no one and nothing" can defeat the monster coming after her... so she sends Fetch, a ghostly being who is quite literally no one and nothing.

Comic Strips

• The May 27, 2010 strip of Hägar the Horrible
  Hagar: I'm the rough and tough Hagar the Horrible, and I don't take any grief from any man!
  Helga: How about taking out the garbage for your wife?
• Thrud The Barbarian: The protagonists meet a beast that "cannot be defeated by the hand of a mortal man". A female character present thinks this will be a task for her to overcome, but Thrud manages to kick it to death instead.

Fan Works

• A Boy, a Girl and a Dog: The Leithian Script: In this The Silmarillion story, there was a prophecy that told that Huan would get killed by the greatest wolf that shall ever walk the world. Sauron tried to fulfill the prophecy by turning into the greatest wolf that had ever lived. Huan gleefully points out the loophole:
  Huan: Fool, did you not heed the words? Not — the greatest that walks the world, but — shall ever walk the world.
• The crisis in Buffy meets Star Trek is caused when an ancient demonic entity is released from its prison. The spell that trapped the entity stated that no born thing could read the spell for its release, and the key to its prison was even split in two and sent to two different dimensions. However, when Dawn Summers and Lieutenant Commander Data are brought into contact with the two halves of the prison, they are able to read the inscription as Dawn was created by a spell and Data was built, scenarios that the original spellcaster could not have anticipated.
• Colors and Capes: Discussed in one chapter, where Xander tells the Gotham City rogues at the Busted Flush about how he and his friends killed The Judge, who "could not be harmed by any weapons forged by man"... and on recollection, admits that with that in mind, he's not sure how the Judge was actually dismembered in the first place, since the limbs were cleanly severed. Catwoman promptly guesses the people who dismembered him got a female blacksmith to forge them weapons, which one of the others agrees is a good possibility. Xander in turn admits that he and his friends didn't think about as their own solution at the time (and didn't have time to get a woman to do the job anyway). With hindsight, he also speculates that weapons forged by a demon would also do the trick. He then points out that modern weapons aren't forged at all, hence the rocket launcher they used in the end.
• Celebrity Deathmatch fic, Final Stand of Death, Steve, Debbie, and even Gene Simmon all points out who can kill Marilyn Manson. The one has to be a female fallen victim of Manson who is foreign-born, with the same birth month and sign. Since Manson was born in January and is a Capricorn and all his female victims were British Nationals, Manson is the Macbeth, while his Macduff is Melanie C.
• Played with in Hellsing Ultimate Abridged. Rip Van Winkle assumed that since no man could defeat Alucard, it meant a woman could do it. It ends about as well as you'd expect.
• In A Light in the Heart of the Misfit, Justin, a Whitelighter-human hybrid, was cursed by the Elder Gideon to be hated by any human that see him, which includes mutants and augmented humans. However, it fails to work on the Dinosaucers since they are aliens^note Meanwhile, the magic rings they gave to the Secret Scouts also make them immune to Justin's curse, as well as The Blind Master, since he cannot see Justin. Thankfully, General Hawk invokes the Oath of Abraham to make Gideon release his curse on Justin.
• The Lost Kingdom has Morgana assume that an equivalent of this applies to how she was able to open a barrier spell that could only be accessed by a magical being of royal blood, speculating that her status as Uther's ward and Gorlois's loyal service to Uther means that she essentially qualifies as royal even though she believes at this point she's not actually a princess.
• The MLP Loops: Loop 69.1 revolves around this — the Witch-King of Angmar, who cannot be killed by any man, is confronted by a whole slew of Loopers who either aren't men (because they're women), aren't men right now, or are any of a number of non-human species. Twilight Sparkle herself is the first in the last category, nonchalantly saying "Not even human," when she reveals herself. Despite knowing he has no chance, the Witch-King charges them anyway because Sauron had forbidden him from retreating.
• The Marvel Cinematic Universe fic "mr. roper" sees Clint Barton meet and basically adopt Kate Bishop during his time as Ronin, with the result that Kate accompanies him to Vormir. When Thanos attacks during their time on Vormir, Kate is shot and jumps off the cliff, her injuries so severe that she "dies" for a moment before Clint can restart her heart, allowing him to claim the Soul Stone without either of them dying for good.
• The One Piece / Lord of the Rings crossover One Hat to Rule them All does the Witch-King's "No Living Man" from The Return of the King as talked about below, only to make it a Curb-Stomp Battle with the addition of Brook (an undead), Nami and Robin (women), Chopper (a reindeer), Jimbe (a Fishman), and Franky (a cyborg). The Witch King's expression after seeing them is very clear.
• Played For (Dark) Laughs in this post, where Ursa dares Ozai to find a husband for Azula, with one of the conditions being "someone she's murdered but not quite." Ozai's response several years later? Aang.
• In Superwomen of Eva 2: Amazing Amazon, the Olympian Gods choose Rei Ayanami to become Wonder Woman and stop Third Impact because the prophecy that they are following regarding their champion has a mention of this trope by name and Rei is a vat-grown clone.
• Things I Am Not Allowed to Do at the PPC: Attempting to bait Macbeth into fighting people who don't qualify as being "of woman born" is forbidden. The rule about it specifically mentions Boba Fett, Shinzon (clones), and Pinocchio (puppet brought to life).
• In the Daria fanfic The Thirteenth Man Mack develops godlike powers and is forced to fight another godlike being. When informed that his opponent cannot be defeated by any weapon made on Earth, Mack beats him to death with rocks from the moon.
• In "You're not Ten anymore (?)", Jessica Jones unwittingly restores Kilgrave's true identity and memories as the Metacrisis Tenth Doctor when she says those exact words to him. The Daleks were able to capture the Metacrisis, send him into another universe, and brainwash him to turn him into the kind of villain the Doctor always hated, but the Metacrisis was able to hack their programming at the last second and implant "You're not Ten any more" as a trigger phrase that would break the Dalek conditioning (easier-to-hear phrases had already been locked out by the computers).

Films — Animation

• At the climax of The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea, Morgana, having claimed Triton's trident, claims dominion over "all things with fins". Unfortunately for her, Melody has just turned back into a human.
• Disney's The Princess and the Frog:
  • Dr. Facilier convinces Naveen to make use of his services by saying "Naveen needs green" in order to fix his life issues. Naveen is broke at that point, and "green" is used by Facilier as if it means "money". But Facilier's spell, instead of giving Naveen money, turns him into a frog; technically, Facilier did what he promised, as Naveen now does have more green in his life, but Facilier sure did not do this to help Naveen, but to get rid of him. This first seems to be an awful situation for Frog!Naveen, but him being turned into a frog is what makes him ultimately happily married to Tiana and living a new, better life in New Orleans at Tiana's new restaurant. So Facilier's words "you need more green in your life" actually were completely true for Naveen (as the green did fix his life), but unintentionally on Facilier's part, as when he spoke them, he intended them as a lie.
  • Prince Naveen, turned into a frog, can only be freed of his curse when he kisses a princess, which is not impossible, but princesses are rather difficult to come across in New Orleans. Any non-princesses he kisses (like the female lead, Tiana) get turned into frogs as well. Of course, it then turns out that any princess will do. The daughter of the person elected King of a Mardi Gras parade counts, even though she has no royal blood. It doesn't work out because the parade ends before she can kiss him. Naveen and Tiana decide to get married as frogs. As the wife of a prince, she's now a princess — meaning her kiss turns them both back to normal.
    Chester A. Bum: It's like a fairy tale that was written by a lawyer!
• In Rock and Rule, the villainous Mok's computer predicts that the demon can only be turned back by "the magic of one voice, one heart, one song," but then adds there is "no one" who can stop his plan. Mok doesn't count on Omar and Angel singing together as one voice, one heart, and one song.

Films — Live-Action

• Bedtime Stories (2008), which revolves around Skeeter telling seemingly-prophetic stories, has a couple of examples. One story he tells involves Abraham Lincoln suddenly appearing out of nowhere, which is later fulfilled by a Lincoln penny dropping off of a bridge he's standing under. Another, which involves him being set on fire, comes true when he is "fired" from his job.
• In the Russian Disney film The Book of Masters, the golem army of ardars will serve Countess of Stones until "the stone cries and human pities the stone". But Countess herself counts as creature of stone too, even after her soul is restored, and she herself fulfills the prophecy by crying and being pitied in the end. The twist is that ardars don't turn on her after it, they're just free, and still decide to follow her.
• Bulletproof Monk features a trio of prophecies that determine the one most worthy to protect a scroll that grants great power. These prophecies, performed off-screen by the nameless monk protagonist at the movie's beginning, are defeating an army of enemies while a flock of cranes circled overhead, fighting for love in the palace of jade, and saving his brothers whom he did not know. Later in the film, the monk watches while the other protagonist, Kar, performs modern-day versions of these prophecies. Fighting a street gang under a circle of mechanical cranes. Fighting his Love Interest, Jade, in her mansion. Finally, he saves several of the monks' brothers from the Big Bad. The real kicker, however, is that Jade also performed all three, as shown during the flashback when Monk was explaining it. She lured away Funktastic and his crew after Kar beat his ass (then dropped his weapon). She equated love and respect while defending her lifestyle in her own house. And she was the one who rescued the monks, while Kar was fighting the Big Bad with Monk. Thus both of them become the scroll's next guardians. Mind you, this twist requires that the prophecy knows that in English, "crane" can mean either a bird or a lifting vehicle. It's magic after all... although possibly not too much, as the mechanical hauling devices were named for their cursory resemblance to the bird.
• Drive Angry has a subversion: Jonah King is crazy and there's actually nothing special about him. While Milton and his weapon are indeed supernatural, they didn't need to be to kill Jonah.
  Jonah King: No man of this Earth can kill me!
  Milton: I'm not of this earth!
• In Excalibur, "no weapon forged by man" can hurt Mordred. He's killed by Excalibur. Mother Nature would like to add that a large icicle, rock, tree branch, or angry boar passes the test, so this prophecy is less difficult to get around than one would think (however, all of these aren't exactly an advantage when fighting a good swordsman). Additionally, there's also poison, slings, non-metal arrows, garrote wires, fire, fisticuffs, starvation...
• Not fully impossible, but close. In a German film Haunted Mill, said mill is haunted by evil ghosts who can only be destroyed by "snow in the summer". The heroes spend half of the film figuring how to lure the ghosts onto a REALLY HIGH mountain, only to discover that a fire extinguisher also works.
• In Ladyhawke, a curse can be lifted only if two lovers confront the bad guy in human form, which is impossible because one is a wolf by night and the other is a hawk by day. Then their monk ally foresees "a day without a night; a night without a day" and the exact time it will happen. It turns out to be a solar eclipse. Complicating things is that one of the characters is near his Despair Event Horizon and has decided to just kill the bad guy, deciding revenge is a better option than relying on some prophecy.
• Macbeth (2015): As in the source material, Macbeth is prophesied to be undefeatable until Birnham Wood moves upon his castle. Macduff sets Birnham Wood on fire to cover his army's advance, with the wood therefore reaching Dunsinane as floating ashes.
• In The Scorpion King, Cassandra tells Memnon that Mathayus cannot die by his hand or any other hand he commands. Memnon gets around this by burying Mathayus up to his neck in sand and leaving him to be devoured by hungry fire ants, although Mathayus manages to escape.
• Used symbolically in Wonder Woman (2017). When Diana and Steve arrive in No Man's Land, Diana wants to help some of the civilians who are being abused in the village across the way. Steve tells her that they can't help them — after all, the place got its name because no man could ever cross it. But Diana is no man... Cue one of the most awesome moments in the entire movie: Diana being the first person to cross No Man's Land, armed only with her bulletproof bracelets and her shield.

Folklore

• French folklore is full of tales about canny peasants outwitting Satan at his own game, essentially through the use of this trope.
  • For example, one story tells of a peasant who, in the middle of the worst famine the country's ever seen, asked the Devil to make his lands rich and fertile for one year. The Devil agrees, on the condition that he gets everything that's above the ground, but the peasant plants carrots. Furious, the Devil comes back and says he'll make the land fertile for one more year, on the condition that he gets everything grown below the ground. Of course, this time the peasant plants corn. Fed up, the devil agrees to a final deal: he'll make things grow miraculously, but at the end of the year he gets everything above the ground AND everything under it. So the peasant plants trees and hunts in the forest...
    • There's a similar story in black American folklore about a black sharecropper and a white landowner. The landowner promises to give the sharecropper the bottom half of the crop, assuming he will plant cotton. The sharecropper plants potatoes. The next year the landowner asks for the top half, and he plants carrots. The third year, he asks for the top and bottom parts of the crop, and the sharecropper plants corn, so the landowner only gets the tassels above and the stalks below, and the corn in the middle is for the sharecropper.
  • In Quebec, a similar tale involves a bet between the Archangel Michael and Satan, where the farmers of Quebec and their crops are the object of the bet.
  • Another example has the devil appearing in a town and challenging the inhabitants to bring him a clock he cannot fix. No matter the state of the clocks they bring, the devil is able to fix them, even making missing parts appear out of thin air. Finally, one person brings him a clock that works perfectly, which means there is nothing for the devil to fix.
• Ireland has one that reads like something out of the mind of Terry Pratchett. In it, a woman sells her soul in exchange for a flourishing family farm. When the Devil comes to collect, she gives him the sole of her shoe. Because it was a verbal contract, the devil couldn't contest it.
• A Polish legend tells of a nobleman called Twardowski:
  • Twardowski made a deal with the devil to gain magical skills. In exchange, the devil had agreed for Twardowski to give over his soul when he visits Rome. Of course, for many years afterwards, Twardowski didn't even get close to Rome. His career ended, though, when he visited a certain inn: the devil then popped up and pointed out that the inn was called... guess what.
  • A followup legend (and poem) has Twardowski tricking the devil into three last demands. The last one is for the devil to live with Twardowski's wife after he's taken to Hell for a year. The devil high-tails it.
  • In another version, his initial wish was to visit the Moon but forgot it due to all the other great places the devil took him. However, when the devil was about to take his soul, he reminded him of the original wish, and since the Moon is a heavenly body, denied of demonic creatures, the devil was forced to break the bargain. The man still ended up on the Moon, somehow, and apparently became immortal in the process.
  • Alternately, as he's being dragged down to Hell, Twardowski remembers a song about the Virgin Mary his mother used to sing to him. He sings the song and the Devil has to let go due to the holiness of the song. God then puts Twardowski on the moon because even though he used this deal with the Devil to do good things for people, he still sold his soul and can't get into Heaven.
• There is a Russian story about some lad who is stuck in a foreign land until his new boots (received at entrance) are gone, but they cannot be worn out, burned, or thrown away. The lad gets rid of them by feeding them to the host.
• A high number of stories that involve selling souls to the Devil in exchange for work invoke this.
  • In an example from French folklore, the Devil builds for a town an indestructible bridge in one night across a river that destroyed all previous bridges, in exchange for the soul of the first one to walk on it. Naturally, the mayor makes his dog pass first, since, As You Know, dogs have no soul.
  • Devil's Bridge in Kirkby Lonsdale, England. Legend holds that the Devil appeared to an old woman, promising to build a bridge in exchange for the first soul to cross over it. When the bridge was finished the woman threw bread over the bridge and her dog chased after it, thereby outwitting the Devil.
  • There are several similar legends all over the place, for instance also about the building of the chapel palatine (now cathedral) of Aachen. Here they chased a she-wolf inside when it was finished.
  • And in Quebec just about any bridge or church has at least even odds of invoking a similar legend - either an animal crosses first, or the Devil specifies in the contract "First soul to enter the completed church" and the priest decides that he can make do with a church that's missing just the one stone.
    • Another variant is that the devil (or some trolls) has to complete the work before the rooster crows. Cue waking the rooster just before the last stone is set in place.
  • When trying to build a bridge over the Schöllenen Gorge in Switzerland, the locals are said to have failed so often that they called for the Devil to build their bridge, and he did so in exchange for the soul of who passes the bridge first. They sent him a billy goat.
• There's a popular historical legend (though very little evidence) that the Christian clergy was prohibited shedding blood (sine effusione sanguinis), so during the troubled times of the Middle Ages, the spears and swords were a no-no, even for self-defense. Nothing is said about staves and blunt weapons (such as maces), though...
• There's an Irish story in which a farmer sells his soul to the Devil for enough money to send his three sons to school as a doctor, a priest, and a lawyer. Come the end of his life, the Devil shows up to collect, and the farmer begs for just one more day to say goodbye to his sons. The Devil agrees, and the doctor arrives to send his father off but begs just one more hour for his brother. The priest comes in and begs another hour, but come the third son the Devil says no more hours, so the lawyer asks him to refrain from taking his father's soul until the candle stub in the corner burns all the way down. When the Devil agrees, the lawyer blows the candle out and pockets it.
• There's a widespread fairy tale ("Clever Greta" is one title) in which a ruler is determined to throw a man into prison for some reason. However, he will let the man off if his famously clever daughter can show up "neither clothed nor naked, neither walking nor riding, not on the road but not off it, and bearing a gift that is not a gift". The exact terms vary. The answer to this version is: wrapped in a fishing net, one leg thrown over the back of a goat that is walking in a huge rut, with a fly in a basket that flies away as soon as the lid is taken off. Some versions add that the ruler is so impressed that he marries her. She uses her wits to help someone challenge one of his verdicts, so he kicks her out in a rage, saying that she can take whatever she likes most from his palace, but it's over. She hosts a farewell dinner in her chambers, then leaves in the carriage with a fat roll of carpet. The ruler wakes up the next morning, hungover, in her father's farmhouse. Well, he said she could take what was most precious! Charmed, he forgives her and takes her back.
• The ancient Aztecs had a prophecy stating that their greatest capital would be built at a place where an eagle was sitting on a cactus and holding a snake in its mouth — possible things, but looking for it would be like a needle in a haystack. Eventually, they finally found it, and it became the site of Tenochtitlan. The Mexican flag has a picture of this on it. One tiny snag though — it happened on a rock in the middle of a lake. So they built their new city, Tenochtitlan, on the lake. (When the Spanish showed up 200 years later, they recognized the value of the city but didn't care for all the water. They drained the lake bit by bit, creating Mexico City.)
• There is a legend that Seleucus I Nicator was warned by the oracle to avoid Argos. He avoided all cities with that name. However, he failed to avoid every single altar with that name...
• The Roman Emperor Domitian believed a prophecy that said he would die at noon on a certain day. On that day, he locked himself in his room with a servant and allowed no one to enter. He asked the servant several times what time it was (Roman hours depended on sunrise and sunset, so it could be difficult to tell), but the servant lied and said it was past the hour he was fated to die. Relieved, Domitian allowed other people in the room. One of them was the assassin who killed him, almost precisely at noon.
• Confederate Brigadier Micah Jenkins survived several brushes with death after proudly proclaiming he could not be killed by Yankee bullets. Ultimately, he's killed by Confederate fire.
• The Indian Maharatta fortress of Gawilghur, sometimes called "the Sky Fortress" was reputed to be the finest fortress in all of India and had served the Maharattas very well as a "Holy shit, we're about to lose, bug out" escape point since no enemy would dare assault Gawilghur, which let the Maharattas negotiate an end to any war they were in from a position of relative strength. To add to its formidable military defenses, it was also subject to a prophecy that "Gawilghur shall never fall to any army of India". Then the British arrived...
• In the Brazilian War Of Canudos, this seemed to be a recurring thing. Mystic Conselheiro said there would be four fires, and that he guaranteed that they'd survive at least three. Sure enough, the village was destroyed by the fourth army siege. When the army besieged the city of Canudos for the second time, the Colonel in charge was said to be Immune to Bullets with the exception of a bullet made out of a goat's horn. When he died, it was discovered that a bullet made out of a goat's horn killed him.
• King Henry IV of England was told by a psychic that he would "die in Jerusalem", so he refused to go on any crusades. Then, while taking communion in Westminster Abbey, he had a massive heart attack. He was carried into one of the side chapels, known as "the Jerusalem Room"; he revived briefly and asked where he was; told "The Jerusalem Room", he cried out, "Jerusalem? Noooooo......", and died.
  • A similar legend is told about Pope Silvester II (999-1003) who was reputed to have had a pact with a female demon called Meridiana, with whose help he managed to ascend to the papal throne. According to the legend, Meridiana told Silvester that if he should ever read a mass in Jerusalem, the Devil would come for him. The pope then cancelled a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, but when he read mass in the church Santa Croce in Gerusalemme ("Holy Cross of Jerusalem") in Rome, he became sick soon afterwards and died.
• Legend has it that Queen Catherine de Medici, wife of King Henry II of France, once received a prediction that she would die "next to Saint-Germain". During fifteen years, she did her best to keep away from the numerous castles, cities, and parishes bearing this name. She eventually got sick with a pleurisy so bad a confessor was called in. His name: Julien de Saint-Germain.
• One traditional Hawaiian folktale tells of a formidable bully who always boasted that no man would ever kill him. When he threatens to usurp the reigning king's throne, the king tricks him into becoming stranded on a small island with no water save an already-drained well, and only an elderly couple for inhabitants. When he bullies them too, the couple baits him into descending the well-shaft in search of its last dregs of fresh water; once he's at the bottom, though her husband fears to act, the elderly wife pushes a large rock down on top of, and kills, the bully.

Literature

• The Roger Zelazny story "The Bells of Shoredan", from the Dilvish, the Damned series, features a prophecy to the effect that "eyes will never see the weapon" that will kill a particular character. He is killed by an assassin with an invisible sword.
• In the final book of Lloyd Alexander's The Chronicles of Prydain, a prophecy states that the Big Bad will be vanquished only when such things as "rivers burn with frozen fire", "night turn to noon", and "mute stone and voiceless rock to speak" occur. Some characters set a natural dam on fire to melt a frozen waterfall, another uses magic to light up an entire valley in the middle of the night, and they are clued to the location of the lost Empathic Weapon needed to do the deed by the sounds of the wind blowing through hollowed-out rocks.
• In Kate Eliott's Crown of Stars series, Sanglant cannot be killed by 'any creature, male or female'. He ends up getting run over and killed by an out of control wagon being driven by a hermaphrodite. He got better.
• In the Diablo Expanded Universe novel Demonsbane, the Big Bad has a glyph on itself that makes it invincible to all living creatures. The twist, then, is that the hero of the novel turns out to have been Dead All Along.
• Deverry:
  • The sorcerer Nevyn did some selfish things which resulted in his fiancée killing herself. When he learns that she will be reincarnated, he rashly swears "never to rest" until he has made restitution. It takes him 450 years to fulfill his promise, during which time she is reincarnated seven times. Nevyn's name literally translates to "no one" and this is played on several times. Including once when a guard tells Nevyn his lord will see no one. "Well then, tell him No One is here to see him!"
  • In Daggerspell, there is a prophecy concerning the villainous lord Corbyn. "He shall not die in battle except by the sword, and no man's hand can slay him." He is eventually slain by a seventeen-year-old girl. Nevyn later notes that an elven swordsman, or even someone with a non-human parent, would have counted.
• In Diary of a Wimpy Kid, the school's resident urban curse is the "Cheese Touch", which stemmed from someone touching a really mouldy piece of cheese left in the playground and was afflicted by the "Cheese Touch", where the holder would be a school pariah until they managed to touch someone else and pass it onto them. This would've made it extremely hard to pass it on until Greg (who was the holder at the time) passed it onto a newcomer who had no idea about the Cheese Touch, and then moved away shortly after for unrelated reasons, essentially taking it away and ending the curse for now.
• From Discworld:
  • The Unseen University has books filled with Things Man Was Not Meant To Know. But since the Librarian is an orangutan, he has no problem with them. Specifically:
    Legend said that any mortal man who read more than a few lines of the original copy of the Necrotelicomnicon would die insane. This was certainly true. Legend also said that the book contained illustrations that would make a strong man's brain dribble out of his ears. This was probably true too. Legend went on to say that merely opening the Necrotelicomnicon would cause a man's flesh to crawl off his hand and up his arm. No one actually knew if this was true, but it sounded horrible enough to be true and no one was about to try any experiments. Legend had a lot to say about the Necrotelicomnicon, in fact, but absolutely nothing to say about orang-utans, who could tear the book into little bits and chew it for all legend cared. The worst that had ever happened to the Librarian after looking at it was a mild migraine and a touch of eczema.
  • Monstrous Regiment: Upon his oath, Sergeant Jack Jackrum is not a dishonest man. Or any kind of man at all.
  • In Sourcery, Ipslore bargains with Death that the latter can't claim him or avert the conquest he predicts until the day his son Coin throws away his magic staff. Ipslore gloats that no wizard would ever conceivably do such a thing. Coin is a sourcerer and actually more powerful than his father; moreover, he's not a wizard at all. Once he realizes his father's spirit has been cruelly manipulating him, he does throw the staff away—twice. It is noteworthy that, at the time the prophecy was made, Death noted that reality wouldn't allow a prophecy unless it had a chance, however small, to come true.
• The Elder Scrolls In-Universe Books: The Hope of the Redoran tells the story of a Dunmeri noble named Andas, of whom it was prophesied that his blood will never be spilled, and that he cannot be harmed by magic, illness, or poison. Indeed, the prophecy seems to come true, leading people to call Andas "The Hope Of The Redoran," in accordance with the wording of the prophecy. When he grows up, he lords this over his friends and peers as a sign of his superiority in combat, and it gives him the arrogance to challenge his cousin Athyn to a duel for an important political position. Athyn beats him to death with a wooden club.
• In Empire of the East by Fred Saberhagen, one character threatens to slay another "not by day or night, neither with the staff nor with the bow, neither with the palm of the hand nor with the fist, neither with the wet nor with the dry." This is said to be a repeat of an old prophecy in which the god Indra slew the demon Namuci "in the morning twilight, by sprinkling over him the foam of the sea." The repeat comes true when its target is asphyxiated by the foam of a fire extinguisher at sunset.
• The Big Bad of K.A. Applegate's Everworld series, Senna never heard the prophecy that claimed that "no man's sword or arrow" would kill her, but it still worked out when she was killed by her half-sister with an upgraded Swiss Army Knife.
• In Edmund Spenser's Elizabethan epic The Faerie Queene, a knight named Marinell receives a prophecy from his mother stating that a maiden was destined to do him harm. Thinking that this meant that a woman would break his heart, he vehemently avoids falling in love throughout his life. Unfortunately for him, what the prophecy actually meant was that a maiden would literally beat the shit out of him, which came to pass when he was defeated in battle by the female knight, Britomart.
• In volume 5 of The Faraway Paladin, Will and Menel challenge Kittelsen, a giant from the age of the gods who is blocking a crucial road and keeping a nearby village from accessing a spring. The giant is invulnerable to all damage that doesn't come from something that both has a definite form, and is bigger than him—which would be a neat trick since Will doesn't come up higher than his ankles. On their second attempt, Will and Menel bet him that they can overcome his invulnerability, and if they win, he'll hear them out. They then trip him so that he's damaged by the only available material thing bigger than him: the ground.
• The Finder's Stone Trilogy: When the ancient elves imprisoned the dark god Moander, they placed a condition that he could only be freed by an "unborn child". To get around this, the villains of the first book created an Artificial Human, the protagonist, and maneuvered her toward Moander's prison so she would end up freeing him.
• In Isaac Asimov's George and Azazel stories, one person is supposed to die one year after accepting some important position. His friend calls the eponymous demon, and the latter makes it so nothing on Earth can harm him. Once the person is convinced that's the case, he accepts the position. One year passes and he gets a meteorite through his heart.
• Goblin Slayer: The main party once faces an evil wizard protected by a prophecy that said he can't be slain by mortal hands, and as such he automatically resurrects when given a lethal injury by an opponent. They finish him off by booting him off his tower, so gravity kills him.
• In the first Gotrek & Felix novel, a Champion of Khorne is told that she cannot be slain by any warrior. She ends up dying at the hands of a child, who picks up a dropped sword and stabs her in the back.
• Simon R. Green has used this trope at least twice with the same loophole.
  • Forest Kingdom: In the Hawk & Fisher spinoff series' book 2 (Winner Takes All), the Lord of the Gulfs tells the main characters that it was promised at creation that neither the living nor the dead could stop it. It gets defeated by a sorcerer turned lich.
  • In the Nightside novel Paths Not Taken, a cocky 6th-century thug sneers at Suzie's drawn weapon, boasting that he and his gang are supernaturally protected against all magical and edged weapons. Suzie, a time traveler, sneers right back and blows his head off with her (mundane) shotgun.
  • In Shadows Fall, likewise, an entity is foretold to be unstoppable by any foe, living or dead. It's defeated by an undead hero.
• In the backstory of the Heralds of Valdemar series, there is the tale of Sun and Shadow, about two lovers who are each under a curse, the woman's active by day and the man's by night. They meet with each other at dawn and twilight, the only times when neither curse is active.
• In Diana Wynne Jones's Howl's Moving Castle there's an entire poem (that a couple of the characters take to be a regular spell but Howl realizes is a curse) of things that must happen before the Witch of the Waste can locate him. They all eventually come true, frequently by Sophie accidentally making things happen in unexpected ways. The poem is Song, by John Donne. Though it's a good thing Howl stops the third verse from being read.
• In the Net of Dreams has a villain who is protected from "stone and steel, iron and incantation", and "any poison administered by the hand of man". He is killed when a female dancer ejects a poisoned ruby from her navel into his wine glass. She specifically uses this method so that even if the 'man' part of the protection applies to all humans, she did not use her hand to deliver the poison.
• In Russian fantasy novella "Jack The Mad King", the evil sorceress claims that "No one can kill [her]". Yeah, sure. In the end, she was impaled with a sword held simultaneously by a warrior, a monk, and a woman - since they did it together, neither of them counted as the one and only one to kill her.
• A story within a story, set in Megan Whalen Turner's King of Attolia tells of a deal a man made with the moon to allow the area to become prosperous, and in return, he'd cover the hills with silver. She agrees on the condition he never lies by moonlight. The silver is olive trees, which have silvery leaves, which then feed the starving people in the area, directly and indirectly. The man becomes famous for his honesty. When he is about to tell a lie in the moon's light, a friend bashes him on the head. The king accepts that the trees will die, but the moon says he told no lie.
• Lady Meng Jiang: A traditional Chinese tale about the construction of The Great Wall of China. Her husband Wan Xiliang was Press-Ganged into a crew on the wall, died, and was buried inside it. This trope gets added to to the tale - a cruel Emperor is told "ten thousand must die for the wall to stand" - and Wan can also mean ten thousand. The tale has the Emperor meet her, be taken by her beauty, and marry her - only to have her get revenge and denounce his cruelty for entombing her late husband in the wall.
• In The Lay of Paul Twister, when a wizard Paul has dealings with receives an oracular prophecy that makes him appear to be invincible, Paul actually tells him an abbreviated version of Macbeth, focusing on the witches and their Prophecy Twist, to try to dissuade him from his planned course of action. The chapter is even titled "None Of Woman Born" to drive the point home.
• In The Light Bearer, a novel about the Roman Empire's conquest of Germania, an evil Germanic warrior is told "you shall not die by the sword." He is killed in the Coliseum by the female protagonist, who strangles him with her own hair.
• Mabinogion: Lleu Llaw Gyffes cannot be killed during the day or night, indoors or outdoors, while riding or walking, clothed or naked, and by any weapon lawfully made. His unfaithful wife tricks him into demonstrating his conditions (at dusk, under a free-standing roof, wrapped in a net, with one foot on a goat and another on a cauldron, using a spear forged when everyone else is at mass), and Lleu is nearly killed by her lover.
• Inverted in Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, in which a trap of this nature is used to lure the heroes into becoming the villain's Macguffin Delivery Service by means of a prophecy purporting to offer the means to defeat the Storm King. Near the end, a "Eureka!" Moment reveals the truth: the prophecy is actually written for the Storm King, telling him how to return to power. Cue a massive, collective Oh, Crap! on the part of the heroes and a delicious You Are Too Late moment from the villains.
• In Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy, in the language in which the prophecy about the "Hero of Ages" was originally written, said Hero of Ages was always referred to with a pronoun whose closest English equivalent is "it": one that's usually applied to things without genders, and not to male or female humans. The main characters spend a little bit of time wondering about this because it would have been helpful to know if the Hero was going to be a man or a woman. Why is this an example? The character who ends up becoming the "Hero of Ages" is a eunuch.
• Moby-Dick:
  • There's several in Moby-Dick, all by Fedallah, but the one that sticks out most poignantly is him saying, "I go before thee, my captain." No, Ahab, that doesn't mean you're invincible while Fedallah's alive, it just means he'll die before you.
  • Another is that Ahab can only be killed by hemp. He assumes this means he will only die if he is hanged. Not, say, that he should be careful around rope in general. And in fact, rope does him in, tying around him and dragging him under when the whale submerges.
• This is quite literally the plot of Moonsword by Diana Hignutt. A druidic prophecy states that "no man and no born woman" can wield the Applied Phlebotinum which will kill a demon, so the druids turn The Hero into a woman much to his chagrin. Les Yay ensues.
• Mostly Harmless: Due to an accident of Time Travel, Arthur Dent knows that he can't die until after he's visited Stavromula Beta (which he takes to be a planet, but can't ever find any description of). It turns out to be the second, or "beta", nightclub owned by Stavro Mueller, which he only realizes after he's already there.
• Though it isn't prophecy-related, there's a variation of the gender-switch in the Nancy Drew mystery The Curse of Blackwood Hall. When a woman's jewels are stolen, she is warned by her husband's spirit (read: con-artists) that she must tell no man or woman about the theft. Her jeweler finds a loophole and takes her to see Nancy; neither man nor woman, but a nineteen-year-old girl.
• Ana Mardoll's Short Story collection No Man Of Woman Born is named for this trope, mostly breaking the various prophecies in question with genderqueer protagonists. For example, in "Tangled Nets", a dragon extorting human sacrifices from a village proclaims after killing a would-be dragonslayer that "No man or woman can kill me", only for a nonbinary fisherperson to then stab the dragon in a major artery with a filleting knife. Another story features a Genocide Backfire where a warlord killed all the "sons" of a man whose son was prophesied to kill him, but missed the trans man.
• Receiver of Many: Demeter swears by Styx that no Olympian will have her daughter. What she forgets is that Hades, against whom she intends to protect Persephone, is no longer an Olympian.
• In Alexander Grin's The Scarlet Sails, there is a barrel of wine belonging to the aristocratic Grey family that will only be drunk by "a Grey in Paradise", and for generations, the owners had been trying to guess what it could mean. One of the Greys decided to build a country estate called Paradise and drink the wine there but died of a heart attack before even opening the barrel. Arthur Grey ends up drinking the wine at his wedding when both he and his bride feel themselves in an earthly paradise.
• In The Shattered Sea, Gorm-gil-Grom, King of Vansterland has a prophecy that says no man will kill him. So, surely shieldmaiden Thorn will be able to kill him, right? No, but it still works out - Thorn is nearly killed by the much more experienced Grom, but the envoy of the High King treats him as a servant one too many times ordering him to kill her. This causes Grom to snap, finally deciding he's willing to join Gettland to fight against the High King. Ultimately, Grom isn't killed by any man: he's killed by being poisoned.
• In James Clavell's Shogun it has been prophesied that Ishido will "die an old man with his feet firmly planted in the earth, the most famous man in the land". So Toranaga has him executed by being buried up to the neck in an upright position, and passers-by are invited to saw at the most famous neck in the land. "Ishido lingered three days and died very old."
• In-universe example in A Song of Ice and Fire — the impending apocalypse has several characters running around looking for The Prince Who Was Promised, a prophesied savior who can avert it. It isn't until the fifth book that one of them realizes that Valyrian, the language the prophecies were written in, is gender-neutral and they should be looking at female candidates too. (It's as yet unclear if he was right; the two most likely candidates are a man and a woman and it could possibly be both of them, or maybe neither.)
• One of the Star Trek: New Frontier books does a variation on the old "No man can defeat you" one: "No man or woman" can defeat the Big Bad, but one member of the Excalibur crew is a hermaphrodite.
• In Stardust by Neil Gaiman, a character is imprisoned "until the moon loses her daughter, if that occurs in a week when two Mondays come together". She is freed when Robert Monday marries Victoria Forrester (making her Victoria Monday), and Yvaine, who is a star and therefore the daughter of the moon, admits that she's fallen in love. Yvaine, being in love, gives herself entirely to Tristran; from then on, she belongs to him and no one else.
• Tolkien's Legendarium:
  • One of the Trope Namers (specifically, the "No Man" part): In The Lord of the Rings, the Witch-King of Angmar is the subject of a prophecy made by the Elf-lord Glorfindel, who foretold that he would not fall by the hand of man; naturally, he was slain by Éowyn, a woman who entered the battle in disguise, with the aid of Merry, a hobbit. This was intentionally based on Macbeth, where the prophecy that "none of woman born" could harm Macbeth was fulfilled by a normal dude who was cut from his mother's womb (by C-section) and thus was not technically "born" — a pay-off which Tolkien considered an eye-roll-inducing cop-out. Same thing with the prophecy that Macbeth should not fall until "the Great Birnam Wood" marched against him - this being fulfilled by Macbeth's enemies putting some twigs in their caps. Tolkien resolved to do things properly: the latter with Ents (actual walking trees), and the former by having the killing-blow struck by a woman.
  • J. R. R. Tolkien has a prophecy theme in The Silmarillion. One involves the death of Huan, the Hound of Valinor, which will happen only when he fights the greatest wolf ever to live. So at one point Sauron the shape-shifter (yes, that Sauron) decides to try to play the prophecy by turning into the greatest wolf in the world... and it doesn't work, because the greatest wolf ever to live won't be around for another three pages or so. So Huan kicks Sauron's ass.
• In Mercedes Lackey's Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms, Godmother Elena and her army of Champions know at least three ways to get around a "No Man Shall Enter" clause — send a woman, send a nonhuman (e.g. a dwarf), or have someone change his name to "Noman." Notable in that the spellcaster meant to say "No One Shall Enter", but The Tradition altered the words as he said them, to leave a loophole.
• "Vampires Taste": An evil vampiric Baron, terrorizing the town, was prophesied to die "not by human's or inhuman's hand, but in the maw of the iron fire". Protagonist at some point considers just stuffing him into blast furnace, but doesn't get the need to do it - Baron tries to flee from a duel and accidentally picks a booby-trapped car for that.
• The Wheel of Time:
  • There are two seemingly contradictory prophecies surrounding The Stone of Tear, a massive fortress that has never been breached. The first says the Stone will never fall until the People of the Dragon come to it, while the second says that it will never fall until the Dragon Reborn wields Callandor, a "sword that is not a sword" which is housed within the Heart of the Stone. So why would the Dragon ever be allowed inside the Stone if it is destined to fall after his people come, but how can the Dragon gets his hands on Callandor without the fortress it's inside falling to people under his command? By sneaking in. The Aiel, known historically as the People of the Dragon even though almost no one remembers that, raid it on the same night. Both prophecies are fulfilled at the same time: Rand takes Callandor, proving that he is the true Dragon Reborn, and the Aiel are able to capture the Stone, revealing them to be the People of the Dragon.
  • As prophesied, the Dragon Reborn is born to a maiden. In this case "maiden" does not mean virgin but refers to the Aiel warrior society, the Maidens of the Spear.
• World of the Five Gods:
  • The titular curse in The Curse of Chalion can be broken only by someone who would lay down his life three times for the royal family. When Cazaril breaks the curse, there turn out to be two distinct twists involved. More obviously, he doesn't have to die as the result of laying down his life, just to expect that he will. More subtly, it's sufficient if the person he lays down his life for eventually becomes a member of the royal family: the first time he lays down his life, it's for the princess's future husband, before they even meet. Most interestingly, it's not just a prophecy for prophecy's sake: it's necessary. As Cazaril realizes, this has to happen "for the practice," so that when the important events occur, he's not freaking out about dying.
  • In an arguably closer example, in the backstory, Arvol dy Lutez received a prophecy that "he should not drown, except upon a mountaintop." As mountaintops are not known for their resemblance to large bodies of water, he considered himself immune from drowning. He was later drowned in the cells of the Zangre, a huge, mountainous fortress, with sheer walls larger than most cliffs.

Live-Action TV

• One Blood Ties (2007) episode featured Pandora's Box, which no living person can resist opening. Since Henry, as a vampire, isn't a living person, the box doesn't affect him.
• Discussed in one episode of Bones, when Bones and Booth discuss whether they could catch each other if one of them committed a murder. Booth boasts "I always get my man," and Bones replies smugly, "I am a woman."
• Buffyverse:
  • In season 3 of Angel, a prophecy states that Darla's baby will not be born. ("For surely in that time, when the sky opens and the heavens weep, there will be no birth, only death.") The prophecy comes true when she stakes herself to dust, leaving the baby behind. The trope namer is even mentioned in the following episode — "Macduff was from his mother's womb untimely ripped."
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
    • From "Prophecy Girl". We learn early on that there is an unalterable, unavoidable prophecy that Buffy will die during her battle against The Master. Because of this, he goes into their fight full of confidence and kills her without difficulty. However, the prophecy says nothing about cardio-pulmonary resuscitation, and his victory is very, very short-lived.
    • Of the Judge in "Innocence", it's said that "No weapon forged can kill him". Which may still be true, but even in the ancient times when he first walked the Earth it was possible to stop him with a big enough army — eventually his arms, legs, and head were cut off and kept separate. Modern technology offers some far more efficient ways of turning people into little bits, such as...
      The Judge: You're a fool. No weapon forged can stop me.
      Buffy: That was then.
      [Buffy shoulders a bazooka]
      Buffy: This is now.
      The Judge: [confused] What's that do?
      [Buffy proceeds to demonstrate]
• One episode of The Charmings had people from fairy tales transported to the modern day. An Abhorrent Admirer character asked for another character's hand, and she made a number of demands that would not have worked in their own time period but were easy in the present day. One example was to capture a maiden's smile. He took a picture.
• A First-Episode Twist for The Last Man on Earth is that Phil is the last man on Earth, but Carol is the last woman. Eventually, their group expands to include many other members, each of whom thought they were the last person on Earth before meeting the others.
• In the Merlin (1998) mini-series, Vortigern consults a soothsayer to find out why his castle keeps falling. The Soothsayer (taking false information from Mab) tells him to mix the blood of a man with no mortal father into his mortar and the castle will stand. Merlin, who was the only candidate found, knows that there's a spring under the castle, so he's basically building on water.
• In the BBC Merlin series, you cannot kill a High Priestess by any mortal blade. However, the show does show how easy it is to poke holes in this: one high priestess is killed by lightning, another is smashed into a wall and left to die from her injuries^note technically she died a year later with a magical blade in a Thanatos Gambit, but the wall-smashing was still her cause of death, and the last is killed by Excalibur. In addition, all three were killed by Merlin, who is an immortal.
• The Relic Hunter episode "Roman Holiday" concerned the search for an enchanted breastplate that could make its wearer completely invulnerable to any "living man (or woman)." The villain who rediscovers it dies from being impaled by a spear that was being held aloft by a skeleton.
• Revelations: When a mystically empowered villain boasts that he "shall not age a day, miss a target or receive a wound until a dozen angels sheer their wings into the sea and it weeps tears of gold back up to heaven," Damien sneers and throws him into a vat of wet concrete. "Guess you better hope that happens, then," is all Damien bothers to say about the prophecy as the immortal magician is trapped inside.
• A very Macbeth-like example in The Sarah Jane Adventures at the climax of the "Secrets of the Stars" story. The villain is using ancient astrological magic to mind-control everyone in the world one star-sign of birth at a time. Pity that Luke is an artificial human being who was never "born" in the usual way.
• Played with in an early episode of Wings. An elderly man arrives at the airport and stays for several days creeping out the cast. When Fey finally talks to him he tells her that he was flying around the world solo, but years ago he made a prayer to god that if he some day fulfilled that dream he would become a priest. He has only 1 small leg of that flight left, from Nantucket to Boston, but he doesn't want to become a priest so he's going to end the trip there (and stay with Fey as they had become attracted to one another). Fey finally convinces him to finish the trip, but he's still there the next day. His new plan is to retrace his flight so that he'll be back in Boston but still won't have completed a round-the-world flight, but from then on Fey will need to come see him in Boston because if he flies to Nantucket it will be finishing his backward trip around the world and he'd have to become a priest.

Music

• The Riddle Song is composed of four of these:
  • A cherry that has no stone: A cherry blossom.
  • A chicken that has no bone: An unborn, or "pipping", chicken.
  • A ring that has no end: The ring is rolling.
  • A baby that is not crying: The baby is asleep. (Easily the weakest of the four)
    • A variant of this song replaces the last two with "a blanket without a thread" (wool on a sheep's back) and "a book that no man could read" (the book's still in the press).
• There's a song where a woman sings she will not marry until streams run uphill, and a few other conditions. Of course, she then falls in love, and finds her conditions are met.

Myths & Religion

• In Celtic Mythology, Cú Chulainn is immune to a curse that renders all fighting men of Ulster crippled for nine days and nights when needed most, owing to the fact that he is not an Ulsterman, and is technically still a boy, anyway. Thus, when Medb invades, he remains as Ulster's defender. His death is prophecy-related too: he's undefeatable so long as he doesn't break any geasa that have been placed upon him. Unfortunately, one of them was to never eat dog meat, and another was to never refuse hospitality. An old woman offers him dog stew, so no matter what he does he's breaking one of them.
• Classical Mythology:
  • Althaea was told by the Fates that her newborn son Meleager wouldn't live any longer than it took the log in her hearth to burn up. She smothered the log, preserving his life. Decades later, when Meleager murdered his uncle (on his mother's side, naturally), she threw it in the fire. Meleager died once it was consumed.
  • Legend has it that Aeschylus was prophesied to die from the [walls of] a house falling on him. Naturally, he stayed outdoors all the time. Then an eagle mistook his bald and shiny head for a stone and dropped a turtle on him (to crack its carapace), and a turtle can be said to wear its house on itself.
  • Agamemnon couldn't be killed in his house or out of it, naked or clothed, feasting or fasting. He was killed in his bath house, covered with a net, while eating an apple. The name for such a condition is "liminality", being between two different or contradictory states.
  • The Oracle of Delphi was quite fond of this trope:
    • When king Croesus of Lydia asked if it was a good idea to invade Persia he was told that if he did a great empire would fall. When he asked how long his kingdom would last, he was told that when a mule was the king of the Medes it would not be shameful to flee. At the time the king of the Medes and the rest of Persia was Cyrus, who was half Mede and half Persian and therefore a mule. And the great empire that fell was Croesus' own.
    • Later the emperor Nero experienced something similar. When the oracle told him (after insulting him for having his mother killed) that the number 73 would mark the hour of his downfall, he thought that he would have a long reign and die at the age of 73 (and burned the oracle alive for the insult). He was overthrown the next year when the 73-year old Galba rose up in rebellion.
  • There's a story about the siege of Troy in which it was prophesied that the first Greek to land on Troy's beach would be killed. Odysseus solves that problem by tossing out a shield and jumping on that instead, tricking other men to jump behind him.
  • The giants Otos and Ephialtes could not be killed by anyone except themselves. Indeed, Zeus' thunderbolt bounced off them. They tried to storm Olympus and take it over. After Apollo figured it out, he had Artemis turn into a deer and run between them. The brothers threw their spears, missed, and killed each other.
  • It was prophesied that the son of the goddess Thetis would be greater than his father, so Zeus, remembering what happened to his father, and his grandfather, realized it was a bad idea for him to mate with her (Poseidon had also courted her until he learned the same prophecy). In what must have been an epic show of self-control from Mr. Can't-Keep-It-In-His-Chiton, Zeus decided to get her hitched with the mortal Peleus. The result was the nigh-invincible, but still mortal, Achilles.
  • One of Zeus's cousins and many mistresses, Leto, was cursed by Hera to not be able to give birth to their children on any land under the sun. She eventually gives birth to the twins Artemis and Apollo under an olive tree on a floating island not connected to the sea floor — and thus technically not "land".
  • Poseidon raped a woman named Caenis, but afterwards was so satisfied that he offered to grant her a wish. She wished to be turned into a man. He granted it, and Caenis changed her name to Caeneus. Poseidon was in such a good mood that he made Caeneus invulnerable to weapons. Caeneus became a mighty warrior who seemingly couldn't be harmed, but was eventually killed when the centaurs crushed him under a pile of logs and boulders.
• Older Than Dirt: In Egyptian Mythology, The Sun God Ra decrees that Geb and Nut (God of the Earth and Goddess of the Sky) will be unable to give birth on any day of the year, for fear that their children will be powerful enough to usurp his place as the king of Egypt. Thoth, God of Wisdom, later tricked the moon god Khonsu into gambling away a small amount of his light every day, until eventually, Thoth had saved up enough light to add five days to the calendar. Nut bore Osiris, Isis, Set, and Nepthys on four of these five days. Isis would go on to learn Ra's true name, essentially gaining total power over him.
• Hinduism just loves this trope.
  • Asura Hiranyakashipu obtains a boon from Brahma that makes him unkillable by human, deva, or animal, during night or day, by anything animate or inanimate, on earth or space, inside or outside. He was slain by Vishnu's avatar Narasimha, a demigod with a lion's head (the avatar's name means "Man-lion" - neither wholly human nor animal), at twilight (neither night nor day), by being disemboweled with Narasimha's claws (neither animate nor inanimate), and having his guts spilled into Narasimha's lap (neither earth nor space) on the threshold of a courtyard (neither indoors nor out). Vishnu also surprised the Asura by bursting out of a pillar in his own palace. That was not part of the prophecy; Vishnu is just that badass.
  • Also, in Ramayana, the rakshasa king Ravana asked Brahma for invulnerability to gods, spirits, and animals — but not humans, because he wasn't afraid of them and considered them beneath his notice. He was subsequently killed by Rama, a human avatar of Vishnu.
  • Perhaps the oldest version of "It is fated that no man can kill me so I got killed by a woman" (older than the The Lord of the Rings version) is the Hindu myth of Mahishasura and Durga. Mahishasura received a boon from Brahma that stated that he could not be defeated by any man or god, including Brahma himself. After defeating the great trinity (Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu), it would seem that no one could defeat him until, of course, the three of them sent their "divine feminine force" to Shiva's wife, Parvati, transforming her into the badass Action Mom (it is stated that she is very beautiful) Durga. Needless to say, being a woman and being so badass, she easily defeats Mahishasura.
    • Also involving her is the Hindu myth of the battle with the asura Raktabija, who received a boon that any blood spilled by him would become another copy of himself. After defeating the trinity (again), he fought Durga. When she was unable to kill him, her rage spawned her into becoming Kali, the even more badass version of herself. After drinking all of Raktabija's blood, therefore spilling none, she went into a crazy frenzy and began a dance so powerful it threatened to split the earth itself apart. She calmed down only when she accidentally stepped on her husband, Shiva, and wounded him. Realizing what she had done to her love, Kali bit her tongue in shame and quelled her fury.
    • In another version, Kali instead strangles Raktabija, killing him without spilling any blood.
• Norse Mythology:
  • Baldr and his mother Frigg had dreams of his death which they took as prophetic. Frigg, in a display of motherly concern, extracted promises from just about everything on earth that they would not harm him (Baldr was pretty popular). However, she neglected to ask mistletoe, either considering it too young or too non-threatening to pose a threat^note alternatively, Frigg was an earth goddess and the mistletoe never touches the earth. Then all the gods thought it would be terribly clever to have fun throwing things at Baldr that would normally kill him but now wouldn't. Loki, being a complete bastard, made a spear out of mistletoe, gave it to Baldr's blind brother and had him kill Baldr with it. Then all the gods went to the underworld, and asked Hel, goddess of the Underworld, to let him come back to life. She said that she would do it only if they could get literally every living thing on the planet to say that they wanted him back. So they go around and eventually get everyone except for one person to agree. They go to this person, who is actually Loki in disguise, and ask him. And Loki tells them to fuck off. So they don't get Baldr back.
  • Another one occurred back when Loki was still favored by the other Norse Gods. The story goes that Loki was mouthing off about how the Sons of Ivaldi were great craftsmen and that the other dwarves could not create anything beautiful or useful. A Dwarf by the name of Brokkr, who was in Asgard at the time, declared that his brother Eitri could indeed do better and had bet his head as part of the wager. Loki agreed to the bet and needless to say lost. When Brokkr came to collect on his wager ("Betting your head" was slang in Old Norse for betting a large sum of money. Brokkr meant it literally), Loki weaseled out of it by saying that if Brokkr took his head, he'd also damage his neck, which was not part of their wager (the idea of Brokkr only cutting off most of Loki's head apparently didn't occur to anyone). However, Brokkr would have the last laugh by sewing Loki's lips shut.

Podcasts

• The RiffTrax of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King takes the trope even further than what's already in the original; the Riffers tease the film about the fact that the Witch King boasts that he could not be killed by any man — and then Eowyn, who is not exactly seen as the tough type, is able to kill him, after pulling off her helmet and announcing, "I am no man!"
  Commentator: Wait, seriously? Anything not a man could have killed him? A squirrel? Zac Efron?

Pro Wrestling

• Antonio Cesaro said that no American would be able to defeat him for the WWE United States Heavyweight Title. Cue the Ghanaian Kofi Kingston.
• Going into CHIKARA's 2015 Season Finale Top Banana on December 5, 2015, CHIKARA Grand Champion Hallowicked, who defended the title in a Triple Threat Match against the two former Champions Eddie Kingston and Icarus, claimed that his "master" Nazmaldun had assured him that no man would be able to defeat him for the title. Cue Princess Kimberlee running in to cash in her Golden Opportunity^note from her team Crown and Court (herself/Jervis Cottonbelly/Los Ice Creams [Ice Cream Jr. and El Hijo del Ice Cream]) defeating The Wrecking Crew (Max Smashmaster/Blaster McMassive/Flex Rumblecrunch/Jaka) earlier in the night in the final of the season-long Challenge of the Immortals tournament and defeating Hallowicked for the title with the CHIKARA Special in under three minutes to become the fourth, and first female CHIKARA Grand Champion.
• When The Ultimate Warrior debuted on WCW Monday Nitro on August 17th, 1998, it was shortly after "Hollywood" Hulk Hogan declared in the middle of the ring "There's not a WARRIOR in the world that I can't beat to get my belt back..." Cue The Warrior's dramatic entrance, a long & rambling promo, and him vanishing in a cloud of smoke, with no physical contact between the two, which may make this an aversion.
• WWE:
  • There is a sure-fire way to get your ass kicked: Go to the ring, and at any point in your speech say the words "and there's not a MAN ALIVE who can stand in my way!" As Paul Heyman found out when he uttered these words, The Deadman will show up, and you will get your ass handed to you.
  • Replace "man alive" with "mortal man", and you get the same result. Only this time, with "The Immortal" Bobby Lashley, as Omos found out.

Radio

• Mixed with False Reassurance on Adventures in Odyssey: A trickster dressed as an Indian medicine man comes to Whit's End and prophesies to Connie, Eugene, and Lucy that Whit will die when four things happen that sound impossible:
  • "flying horses made of rock" (Connie's soft rock album by the group Pegasus)
  • "from a pit that can swallow a man, comes a pit that a man can swallow" (Whit's End receives a large delivery of cherries, which contain pits that a man can swallow and grow from a tree in a pit big enough for a man to fall into)
  • "water traveling up" (a new satellite dish, made by Aqueous Technologies, is hoisted onto the roof)
  • "forest comes to building" (Nathan Forest, a radio station manager, comes to Whit's End)
• A skit on John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme has Macbeth and MacDuff arguing mid-battle about whether MacDuff was "of woman born" or not ("You have a birthday!") Eventually one of the noblewomen in MacDuff's party kills Macbeth, and MacDuff promises he'll make sure everyone knows her part in it...

Tabletop Games

• In Betrayal Legacy, the Greater-Scope Villain can be defeated only by "a weapon not of this world". Fortunately for the heroes, they find a meteorite in the penultimate chapter that can be forged into a spear.
• Star Munchkin has a monster called "Thing Man Was Not Meant To Know". It's harmless to women characters.
• In Warhammer 40,000, the imperial Decree Passive forbids the Ecclesiarchy to "gather, train, promote, sustain, or in any way command any force of men under arms". While they complied, they did not disband or disarm the warrior orders of the Adeptas Sororitas. Whether this was Loophole Abuse or the decree was phrased that way deliberately to allow it depends on the author and the edition of the game. The Sisters of Battle are pretty much the Trope Codifiers of the Amazon Brigade.
• The Tragedy Of Mcdeath, an early Warhammer Fantasy campaign (and their take on Macbeth, in case you hadn't figured it out), states that the title character cannot be defeated until Klinty's Wood comes to his castle, and that he cannot be killed by any man of woman born (he really takes no damage from any attack made by such a unit). Unfortunately, this is Warhammer, so the Treemen led by Klinty are more than willing to rise up and attack the laird who's been chopping down their forests, and the armies assembled against him include a Dark Action Girl, a man born by C-section, the aforementioned treemen, a knight's female squire, and a few dwarves, none of which are subject to the prophecy.

Theater

• A minor plot point in Henry IV is a prophecy saying King Henry "should not die but in Jerusalem", which he takes to mean he will die on Crusade. He falls ill before he gets the chance, and dies peacefully in his bed. In the Jerusalem Chamber at his palace.
• One of the Trope Namers (specifically the "Of Woman Born" part): In William Shakespeare's Macbeth, the witches tell Macbeth he can only be defeated when Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane Hill, and also that none of woman born can harm him (hence the name of the trope). He ends up being defeated by an army that chops down the wood and carries it with them to conceal their numbers, and killed by Macduff, who was born by Caesarean which meant that, in Jacobean times, he would not have been considered to have been "born" in the same sense as most men.
  • In one BBC modern-day adaptation, the quote is "pigs will fly"; Macbeth is stabbed after the police land on the building in a helicopter.
  • Oddly, the original quote is hardly translatable into French. So the French version actually says "no man of woman born".
  • One adaptation set in the future changed the prophecy to 'no human'. In the end, Macbeth is killed by an android.
• Once Upon a Mattress: The musical comedy is set in a land ruled by Queen Aggravain and her husband King Sextimus the Silent— King Sextimus being cursed to remain mute until "the mouse devours the hawk". Attempts are made at forcing the conditions in a literal fashion, but the curse is only reversed when the meek and mousy Prince Dauntless the Drab finally stands up to his vicious and overbearing mother Aggravain.
• In Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore, the Baronets of Ruddigore have been cursed since time immemorial to commit a crime every day, or else die in frightful agony. The latest Baronet Logic Bombs the curse simply by being aware of it but ignoring it — since willfully defying the curse amounts to attempting suicide, which was a crime in Victorian times...
• Discussed in the musical based on The Scarlet Sails. The prophecy goes that Assol will marry a guy named Grey. Menners, who is infatuated with Assol, suggests she uses "Grey" as an Affectionate Nickname for him.
• In Alexander Pushkin's Scenes From A Time Of Knights, the main hero, after an unsuccessful rebellion against evil knights, is condemned to imprisonment "until the wall of this castle will go in the air and blow away." Then his friend, a monk, invents gunpowder.

Video Games

• The final boss of Angry Birds Epic has a passive skill stating that he cannot be defeated by any bird. However, it says nothing about pigs, and it just so happens that Prince Porky joins the party for this.
• In Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, Cesare Borgia tries pulling this... so Ezio drops him off a wall. Notably, all indications are that Cesare was just delusional, and Ezio did this just to troll him. Ezio would lampshade this in the sequel when disguised as a minstrel with these little ditties:
  Ezio: Young Cesare, I heard him say, could not be killed by man. So I tossed him through the air. To see where he might land.
  Ezio: Cesare, oh Cesare, a man of great depravity. Believed himself immortal 'til he had a date with gravity.
• At the beginning of Dragonsphere, the protagonist receives an amulet that can only be invoked by a man already dead. The presenter even points out that this makes it pretty useless and that it's just meant as a symbol to wish him luck. When the King's treacherous brother confronts the Hero for the finale, he helpfully taunts: "You don't even know how to hold a sword. You Are Already Dead!"
• Fire Emblem:
  • This is utilized during gameplay in Fire Emblem: Awakening. Naga is the Divine Dragon; Grima is the Fell Dragon. Even when Naga blesses the divine blade, Falchion, with her own power, her power cannot destroy Grima for good; destroying Grima with the Falchion will only put him in a millenium-long sleep. Only Grima can destroy himself. This is a "Eureka!" Moment for the Avatar (a.k.a you) - the Avatar is the vessel of Grima, and during the final fight with him, the Avatar can kill himself/herself to destroy Grima for good. Not that the Avatar stays dead.
  • This can play out with Quan in Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War. Quan confidently asserts that no one can defeat him whilst he wields the Gáe Bolg, the legendary spear bound to his family's bloodline. However, in the Yied Desert, it is very likely that his wife Ethlyn will die before him when they are ambushed by Travant's forces. Quan, with his daughter now Travant's hostage, has to surrender the Gáe Bolg ...
• When trying to get to the Stygian Well in Full Metal Furies, a Mini-taur miniboss will warn you that it's ground not meant for man to tread. Furies leader, Triss the Tank, is gleeful to inform him than she's no man.
  Miniboss: I was being colloquial. God, you guys suck.
• In God of War (PS4), after Atreus falls ill after awakening his Spartan Rage for the first time, Kratos must go to Helheim to retrieve a rare ingredient needed to save his life. However, Freya warns him that "no magic in all the Nine Realms" can start a fire in the deathly cold realm. Fortunately (and unfortunately), Kratos knows where to get fire that wasn't born in any of the Nine Realms: the Blades of Chaos, given to him by the god of war before him, Ares.
• Guacamelee! 2: During the boss fight with Salvador, he boasts that Juan will never be able to so much as scratch him because he has invented a new shield that no man can break. Juan just so happens to have the ability to transform into a chicken...
  Salvador: COME AND FIGHT ME!! DON'T BE A CHICKEN!!!!
• Guild Wars 2: Shows up in the personal story for sylvari characters who choose to join the Durmand Priory. During the final part of the mission, the character is carrying the sword Caladbolg (grown by the Pale Tree from one of her own branches).
  Mazdak the Accursed: Know this before you die: no weapon forged can harm me. You face your doom!
  Character: I carry a weapon that was never forged, Mazdak.
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1984): Arthur must have both tea and no tea, and present them at the same time to a door for it to open. The computer mocks him constantly about the impossibility of the situation. The way you do this is by going into your own mind and removing your common sense, at which point you can simply type "get no tea" and the puzzle is solved.
• In Odin Sphere, a prophecy tells the player which enemy each of the characters should face in the final Boss Rush to get the good ending, each element being one of these and detailing which character to use to thwart each disaster. In the order they are carried out...
  • "A fiery six-eyed beast speeds the guiding hand of salvation. The one who removes the torment is mine own son." The spell of transformation into the three-headed Beast of Darkova was a secret of the Titanian royal family, now stolen and used by Ingway. For him to be calmed and released from his hunger for human flesh, he must be defeated by someone of Titanian royal blood. Fortunately for Prince Cornelius, the beast has no hunger for pooka flesh.
  • "The Lord of the Netherworld emerges in a triumphant march of death. One that threatens the darkness is the shadow of the lost master." With Queen Odette slain, King Gallon of Titania, who had been imprisoned in the underworld and cursed into eternal torment by Odette after he transformed himself into the Beast of Darkova and ravaged his own kingdom until slain by his son Edmund, is free to lead the Halja into the world of the living. As with the other Darkova, only someone from the Titanian royal family can put him down - but it also takes someone with Odette's power of death to undo the curse that traps him in his undead body. Oswald, as both the Shadow Knight whose soul was sold to Odette for power and the unwitting orphan son of Titania's exiled Prince Edgar, is the only one capable of killing him for good.
  • "The looming blaze cometh, burning down the forests. The flood of fire that man cannot withstand is halted by the world tree and vanishes." King Onyx, his home in Volkanon extinguished by Armageddon's ravages, travels to Ringford to buy his people more time and sets the fairy's home ablaze. Do not feel ashamed at being trumped by this one - even Onyx believes no world tree exists. However, the observant may notice that Elfaria and Melvin had True Names from Norse mythology - Fimbulvetr and Nidhogg, respectively. With that knowledge, it's reasonable to assume that Mercedes has one as well - Yggdrasil, the World Tree. Pit the two against each other, and they will strike each other dead.
  • "Though blades and arrows are unleashed, the flooding fire cannot be stopped. It can only be chained." This refers to the chain Psypher, Graveryl, and its wielder, Velvet. She managed to use Titrel to shut down the Cauldron and avert Armageddon; clearly, it is best if she finishes the job. Especially since her Uncanny Family Resemblance to her mother is the only thing that can make King Valentine hesitate in his insanity.
  • "The Lord of Snakes consumes all left behind. Born in chaos and fire, sleep in mother's arms, life disappears from the land, all comes to an end." There are three women in the party, but two are already indisposed with other tragedies. The mother in this case refers to Eve, the mother of humanity - and since Velvet is cursed and Mercedes slain, it falls on Gwendolyn to repeat her victory against the Lord of Snakes - Leventhan. The spirit of Princess Griselda offers an additional clue for this one: "Knock down the crown."
• Yves the Tale-Chaser in Planescape: Torment can tell a story of a man who received a terrifying blessing from his hag mother: anyone who struck him would die instantly. For a long time, he reveled in his invincibility, picking fights and goading people into attacking him, until the Mercykillers captured him (with nets) and sentenced him to death. Of course, he scoffed at that, because there was no one who would try to execute him. They lowered him into a pit where he couldn't fight anyone and gave him a cup of poison, but he refused to take it and laughed that they couldn't kill him that easily. Then he realized they weren't feeding him anymore...
• RuneScape:
  • The quest "Recruitment Drive" involves having to beat an enemy who cannot be harmed by any man. If you're playing as a woman, no problem. If you're playing as a man, the Makeover Mage just outside of town will turn you into a woman for a small fee, and the quest rewards include reimbursement for that and the change back.
  • In "Evil Dave's Big Day Out", Evil Dave forces a "Freaky Friday" Flip on you and sets out to redo all your quests and gain your glory so he can take selfies with Zamorak. When he redoes "Recruitment Drive", he immediately figures out the intended solution is to become a woman... then realizes that becoming something that isn't human would work... or bringing a random cat to battle Sir Leye for him. We next see Dave in the Sea Slug quests, which are gated by Recruitment Drive, so apparently the cat won.
• Attempted in Soul Hackers by Nemissa when trying to pass a barrier that says "No man without the Entry Scroll may pass." It fails.
• In Byleth's trailer for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Byleth gets his arse handed to him by every other sword fighter in the roster. When he stumbles before Sothis, she quips "Too many swordsmen, are there?", then asks what he intends to do. When Byleth is seen again, they become a swordswoman. In recognition of their cleverness, Sothis rewards them with the Sacred Relic weapons to even the odds.
• In the Hearts of Stone expansion for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt the player winds up luring Olgierd to a moon-goddess' temple, to stand on a giant mosaic of the moon and fulfill the final part of his contract with O'Dimm (effectively, the devil) that they would meet on the moon. The player can then choose to stand by as Olgierd's soul is taken, or stake their own soul in a riddling game.
• In an event leading up to the Cataclysm expansion for World of Warcraft, the Darkspear trolls and their allies try to liberate the Echo Isles from the control of the witch doctor Zalazane. When he's finally run to ground, Zalazane boasts that the magical barrier around him can't be breached by any living thing. Cue the laughter of Bwonsamdi, a powerful spirit of the dead... ^note  Oddly, due to either an Obvious Rule Patch or a case of Gameplay and Story Segregation, neither Death Knights nor the Forsaken can breach the barrier, despite being undead and thus not living things.

Webcomics

• Discussed in Existential Comics with John Locke and Roland Barthes debating over whether Eowyn's declaration that she is no man is valid. Locke is adamant that because the prophecy clearly meant that no human being could kill the Witch King, Eowyn is powerless, while Barthes, following his Death of the Author philosophy states that once a prophecy is made, it can be interpreted anyway you like. Eowyn interrupts their bickering and immediately kills Witch King.
  Barthes: Is it just me, or was he a bit overconfident that no man could kill him when he can die from getting stabbed in the face?
  Eowyn: Yeah, I was a bit surprised that was all it took, to be honest.
• In The Heroes Of Middlecenter, the evil Lord Baltimore parodies the Witch-King as such:
  Baltimore: Well heroes, I'm impressed that you've made it this far. But all for naught! For you see, no mortal man —
  Kiki and Darklight: (who are female mages) Ahem!
  Baltimore: — or woman... can strike me down!
  • And after a Hopeless Boss Fight, he's promptly taken out by the elf of the group.
• Housepets! plays upon this during the Imaginate of Macbeth. Peanut, who plays Macduff, says he doesn't count as "of woman born" because, being a dog, his mother is a dog. Maxwell, who is playing Macbeth, chastises him for breaking character.
• In Nodwick, a scroll is known as "That Which Man Was Not Meant To Know" because reading it makes one's head explode. However, women can read it just fine, and find it ridiculous.
• Parodied in Val and Isaac: the prophecy says no weapon on this world can slay the beast, but...
  "We're from space. Our weapons are from space."
• Parodied in xkcd: "The Legend of Gnome Ann".
  "Fool! No man can kill me."
  "I am Gnome Ann!"
• Subverted and lampshaded in Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic, where on page 1558, a princess concludes that since it is said "he who enters... must face his inner demons" she is clearly exempt for being a woman. On page 1561 her inner demons point out that it was a stupid plan.

Websites

• Invoked in this Not Always Learning story, in which a student whose birthing parent has since transitioned to male tells another student who was bullying him about it, "I think You're Just Jealous I can kill Macbeth and you can't."

Western Animation

• The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo: In episode 2 ("Scoobra Kadoobra"), Daphne is put under a Sleeping Beauty-style spell that can only be broken by a kiss from "a great Danish prince." Fortunately, a lick from a Great Dane dog dressed as a prince fulfills the condition, and Scooby breaks the spell.
• In Disney's Ariel, a curse of a werefish can be healed by "living silver." It turns out that silverfishes qualify.
• An episode of Batman: The Animated Series features Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn fleeing in a car and boasting that "no man can take us prisoner!" Seconds later, Officer Renee Montoya, GCPD shoots out their tires and arrests them both.
• In one episode of Biker Mice from Mars, a reality-shifting experiment resulted in a Macbeth spoof:
  "Where is the one not born from a woman?"
  "My mother was a mouse!"
• In the Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers episode "Seer No Evil", the Rangers get a set of predictions from a gypsy moth named Cassandra. Chip's was the most elaborate, and the most ominous: "Before the next sun rises, Chip will follow a bear with two tails who will dance with a tiger. He will fall from a circle of light, and only a flying horse can save him. Finally, he will walk under an elephant, and the trunk will fall, and... *slashes throat* then, all is darkness!" As the Rangers investigate their next case, all the predictions start coming true, one by one. And just when Chip thinks he's avoided his fate by walking under an elephant, a steamer trunk lands on him. Luckily, he's saved by a Prophecy Twist when he slips through a hole in the floor and so ends up underneath it, where it is very dark. The throat-slashing gesture was made by the bad guy's pet monkey.
• On Codename: Kids Next Door, Heinrich's kidnapper Black John Licorice declares, "No man has ever out-sugared Black John Licorice!" Stickybeard smirks, "Now, who said anything about a man?" before revealing his challenger as Numbuh 5. It proves true anyways though; she doesn't out-sugar him, she just keeps the contest going long enough for the sun to rise and activate their curse.
• Most of the spells used in Gargoyles have escape clauses like this.
  • The first example in the series is actually a subversion: the spell that traps the gargoyles in stone stasis will not end "until the castle rises above the clouds," which seems primed for a No Man of Woman Born twist resolution. Instead, David Xanatos buys the whole thing, dismantles it, ships it to New York, and reassembles it at the top of a skyscraper tall enough to raise the castle literally above the clouds, in a sort of Magic A Is Magic A version of Screw the Rules, I Have Money!.
  • Nor is this the only time that he uses the application of modern technology and a lot of money to create a literal solution to a seemingly figurative problem. In "City of Stone" he enlists the gargoyles to help him lace the sky above Manhattan with flammable gas and set it on fire in order to break Demona's spell, which can only end "when the sky burns."
  • Meanwhile, "The Price" presents a straight use of the trope when Xanatos obtains a magic cauldron with the power to make the person who bathes in it live "as long as the mountain stones." Which is true, for a certain value of "live". However, Xanatos and Owen were wise enough to suspect a twist. They were planning to test it on Hudson but he escaped, so Owen tests it with his fist, which emerges from the cauldron petrified.
  • Due to magical meddling, neither Macbeth (a human) nor Demona (a gargoyle) can die unless they perform a Mutual Kill on each other. While the correlation is never made explicit, this means that Macbeth cannot be killed by "one of woman born" because gargoyles hatch from eggs. Weisman has stated that this was the original reason for the pair's immortality but was scrapped for some reason (if memory serves, it was one of those "one more things that needs to be explained").
• On The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, Grim gives Billy a cursed knight armor, which the boy is unable to take it off (which becomes an issue when Billy has a Potty Emergency for the rest fo the episode) unless he defeats someone in a challenge. Billy loses every challenge he tries (not helping by Grim sabotaging them just so he can see him suffer), but eventually he wins against Mandy... by default because she forfeited the challenge (a breakdance competition) since she thought it was ridiculous, which was enough for the armor to finally come off.
• He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (1983): In "Origin of the Sorceress", the villain Morgoth protected his Soul Jar with a forcefield that he claimed no living thing could penetrate. Indeed, not even He-Man could break it. Fortunately, the robot Stridor was not a living thing and could pass through the forcefield.
• In The Mummy: The Animated Series, Alex and his friend Yanit were faced with a challenge: A bridge that had many giant axes attached to pendulums swinging across them. An inscription near the bridge declared that "No man could pass alive." After confirming that that was exactly what it said, Yanit crosses the bridge without activating the traps and admits that "he" has been a Sweet Polly Oliver the whole time.
• The Phineas and Ferb episode "The Doof Side of the Moon" revolves around a building that the boys built in the backyard; at one point, a minor character assures Candace that "There's no force on Earth" that could move the building. What ends up moving the building? The moon.
• The Powerpuff Girls (1998):
  • Straw Feminist bank robber Femme Fatale robs the Townsville Bank of all its Susan B. Anthony coins. As she leaves, she boasts there is "not a man alive who can stop [her]." This cues the arrival of the Powerpuff Girls, and she clearly realizes she's in trouble.
  • There's a variant in another episode: HIM put the girls up to various challenges, including forcing them to "bring tears to the citizen's eyes", hoping they would do something bad enough it made them literally cry. They end up making it rain, which made it look like the citizens were crying (Blossom reasons this is "bringing tears to their eyes" instead of making tears come from them, and is technically what the challenge required; HIM accepts it).
• Invoked in the Trollhunters episode "A Night To Remember"…
  Angor: The weak human thinks she has the will to power the Skathe-Hrün... [a] staff of such power is not meant to be wielded by man!
  Claire: I am not a man!

Real Life

• During the Spanish-American War, Captain Bucky O'Neill boasted the "Spanish bullet hasn't been made that will kill me!" The Spanish had gotten some of their bullets from Germany. He was shot to death.
• This was how the criminal underworld in Sydney in The Roaring '20s came to be dominated by women. They exploited a loophole saying that no man was allowed to profit from prostitution — meaning that, while men were banned from pimping, women could still become both prostitutes and madams. Two women — Kate Leigh and Tilly Devine — exploited this loophole to develop connections throughout Sydney's drug and alcohol trade and build rival criminal empires built on prostitution, liquor, and cocaine. This article by Abraham Mireles for Cracked even compares them to Eowyn in that regard.

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Bring it on, Trope-tan; no mere man can kill me! I mean, really, how does that — Oh, Crap!

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