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"I just hit her with the biggest lightning blast in the history of lightning. It did nothing!"
Thor (about Hela), Thor: Ragnarok

For whatever reason, some characters can ignore another character's powers, be it offensive or defensive.

They might be immune to every kind of magic, or their abilities are "too powerful" to be resisted but whatever the case, other characters' powers don't work on them and their own powers are not impeded in the least. If heroes attempt to use The Worf Barrage, they'll step out of the Smoke Shield and casually dust themselves off. When the Barrier Warrior tries to block their attacks with a Beehive Barrier, they'll break it into hexagons and knock them out. It can also take the form of a wrestler using their ultimate move and eliciting little more than a raised eyebrow from their opponent.

They aren't canceling their opponent's powers (not actively, at leastnote ), and they often aren't explicitly stated to be immune or resistant beforehand. They're just that good. It's almost as if it were a make believe children's game where one of the kids refuses to "play by the rules" and insists they're invincible and immune to their playmate's imaginary powers. That's impossible... Right?

Depending on execution, this can be a terrifying reminder of exactly why they're called the BIG Bad, or a very groanworthy way of adding Fake Difficulty for a hero. If a villain has benefited from No Sell for the first four acts, by the time the hero masters his powers/confidence in the fifth, it's likely that he'll be the one using No Sell along with a Super Mode or Heroic Resolve.

The trope's name is a term used in Professional Wrestling circles. In all types of acting, "selling" means an actor reacts as if he had been hit hard when the attack didn't make contact or was harmlessly light. Professional wrestling refers to it as a "no-sell" when the wrestler who was struck doesn't react to the hit (i.e. he just stands there, as if his opponent were punching a brick wall). Originally, this was usually a case of the wrestler taking the hit just being a dick, and was highly frowned upon because it was seen as undermining Kayfabe. But it also came to be used as a way to demonstrate that a wrestler is just that tough. Some wrestlers use no-selling as their main schtick.

Immunities to specific attacks and/or Status Effects are almost always present in Tabletop Games and are the main purpose of Damage Typing. See also The Law of Diminishing Defensive Effort.

A favorite of the Implacable Man and The Juggernaut. May cross with The Determinator. An Inversion is No Saving Throw.

When a video game boss can do this, it is often a Hopeless Boss Fight. An example where the boss can do this at first but a cutscene allows the hero to damage them is a Seemingly Hopeless Boss Fight. Attack Its Weak Point is where the boss no-sells everything except to one spot.

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    Card Games 
  • In Cardfight!! Vanguard:
    • There are units known as "Perfect Guards" who do Exactly What It Says on the Tin At the cost of a discard of another unit with the same clan as it, using a Perfect Guard to guard an attack will prevent the attack target from being hit at all, no matter how ridiculously powerful the attack is. It is for this reason that Perfect Guards are considered staples in any deck.
    • Cards can also have or be given Resist, which prevents the other player from choosing the resistant card as a target for attacks or abilities.
    • Vanguard gains its own Destroyer Deity in "Dragon Deity of Destruction, Gyze" with immunity from all card effects. It cannot be locked, retired, or dealt damage from effects allowing Gyze to ignore all card effects that might harm it or the player. This doesn't include the insane 30k base power making it a huge Stone Wall Vanguard that is difficult for the opponent to attack into conventionally.
  • Magic: The Gathering has a few variants:
    • "Indestructible" means a card can't be destroyed by damage or by effects that say "destroy". Other ways of affecting it still matter, though, as does, in the case of creatures, reducing toughness to zero. Creatures like Progenitus and Darksteel Colossus take it a step further; even if they somehow would die, they go into their owner's deck instead.
    • "Protection from X" means that a creature cannot be damaged by anything with property X, enchanted or equipped with anything with property X, blocked by anything with property X, or targeted by anything with property X. This can be a double-edged sword, though. Progenitus comes up again by having protection from everything. Apart from board-wipes and sacrifice-forcing effects, nothing can hurt it.
    • "Regenerate" works similar to indestructible with a few caveats and usually with a cost, although one badass creature automatically regenerates.
    • "Madness" means you can play it, for its madness cost, when you are forced to discard it. And a small number of creatures will automatically go to the battlefield if discarded.
    • Counterspells function as a No Sell to the opponent's attempt to use magic.
    • Uncounterable spells are, in turn, the No Sell to counterspells.
    • There are two cards that instantly end the turn and function as a No Sell to anything and everything that is currently happening.
    • Cards like Fog and Holy Day allow a player to ignore an attack from a whole army.
    • Lich's Mirror and Platinum Angel allow their control to ignore anything would make them lose the game. Angel's Mercy gives similar reprieve, albeit monetarily.
    • In story Nicol Bolas does this to Teferi in Time Spiral. He allows Teferi's disguised ultimate attack to hit, which should have put him in stasis for eternity. Nicol laughs it off and then rips him into tiny pieces.
    • Nicol Bolas does the same thing to the Gatewatch on Amonkhet. He is particularly unimpressed with Chandra unleashing fire magic against him, pointing out that she's trying to burn a dragon.
    • Ertai did it first.
    • Game objects that are phased out probably take it furthest, they are "treated as if they didn't exist" and ignore everything.
    • True-Name Nemesis No Sells anything a chosen opponent can throw at it short of a board wipe.
    • Creatures, and the very occasional player, with shroud or hexproof are immune to anything that would specifically target them. A player with Witchbane Orb, for example, can't be hit by "target player" or "target opponent", but stuff that says "each opponent" or "each player" will still smack you upside the head. As a pleasant bonus, Witchbane Orb also dispels any Curses you've had inflicted upon you.
    • Some creatures, most notably Tatterkite and Melira's Keepers, can't have either -1/-1 counters (Keepers) or any counters at all (Tatterkite) placed on them. Melira herself makes your entire army immune to -1/-1 counters. All three cards appeared in -1/-1 counter blocks.
  • In Red Dragon Inn, each character has an "I Don't Think So!" card, which can cancel any action by another player, including that player's "I Don't Think So!" card.
  • Sentinels of the Multiverse:
    • Baron Blade opens the game with a defence platform that makes him invincible until it's destroyed.
    • Ambuscade can't be damaged while in stealth mode.
    • Citizen Dawn can "merge with the power of the sun" for several turns of invulnerability.
    • Captain Cosmic's Cosmic Crest construct gives him and his entire construct lineup immunity to energy damage. Unfortunately there aren't too many enemies that deal energy damage, but it is quite helpful against the few who do.
    • Tempest's incapacitated side can make the entire team immune to one damage type for a turn.
    • Ra's Flesh of the Sun God makes him immune to fire, and can make the entire team immune to fire for a turn with a power use. This can lead to hilarious results against bad guys who rely upon the heroes damaging themselves (Plague Rat, for example), since Ra is also able to turn all the team's damage into fire with a different card.
    • Advanced Gloomweaver is immune to melee and projectile damage, as is Shu of the Ennead.
    • Mr Fixer with Jack Handle turns self-inflicted damage into a rain of blows on all enemies, and his Grease Gun is able to shut down all villainous damage for a turn. Even from an entire alien invasion.
    • Most of Grand Warlord Voss's minions are immune to the kind of damage they deal, and his flying battleships are unsurprisingly melee-resistant.
    • With Null-Point Calibration Unit out, Absolute Zero isn't just immune to ice damage, he actually heals from it. With Isothermic Transducer out as well, you can also fake fire immunity; unless it would outright finish you, the fire damage triggers the same amount of cold damage (possibly more with the right cards out) and lets you heal it back immediately. In the lore, he is also unaffected by Baron Blade's first Death Ray; the beam kills its target by affecting their molecular motion, but Absolute Zero doesn't have any molecular motion, so it just kind of fizzles out when Zero takes the shot for Legacy.
    • The Court of Blood can shut down all radiant damage, which makes Fanatic, who relies heavily on radiant damage to do any damage at all, very unhappy.
    • OblivAeon starts the game invincible because of his shield, forcing the heroes to deal with whatever inconvenient thing it does to them in order to start damaging him at all.
    • The grand prize, however, goes to Legacy. With Next Evolution out, Legacy can take an action to ignore one kind of damage; with a second Next Evolution and the Legacy Ring, two kinds. Throw on Danger Sense and Legacy also ends up immune to environmental damage. Then, for real comedy, add in Lead From The Front against an enemy who only deals one or two kinds of damage (or give him power uses from other heroes' abilities), and watch Legacy tank an effectively arbitrary amount of punishment. He can also protect all his teammates using Heroic Intervention, which causes him to damage himself a bit in exchange for no other hero taking any damage.
    • Guise can copy all of Legacy's Ongoings, which means that if Legacy is using Heroic Intervention to prevent all damage to his teammates, now he's sheltered by the copy of that and your entire team is invincible.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! has its own versions.
    • A pair of trap cards known as Spirit Barrier and Astral Barrier. Spirit Barrier prevents the player from taking damage, as long as they have a monster on the field, but monsters can still take damage. With Astral Barrier the player can take attacks for the monsters instead. Combined, the player can No Sell literally any attack for his monsters.
    • Similarly, Waboku No Sells all attacks for the rest of the turn while Negate Attack both No Sells the current attack and ends the Battle Phase, preventing any more attacks from coming.
    • Vennominga, the Deity of Poisonous Snakes has its own version. Like the anime's God Cards, it has protection from all spell, trap and monster effects, and can remove from play another snake from the grave to revive itself if it dies.
    • Some cards like the Xing Zhen Hu Replica or the Nordic Relic Laevateinn prevent other effects to be activated in reaction to them, effectively making them uncounterable once activated. A major offender is Super Polymerization. It performs a Fusion Summon using any monsters on either side of the field, and, as with the above examples, stops your opponent from being able to do anything about it.
    • Most Qliphoth have the effect that, when normal summoned, are unaffected by the effects of monsters with a lower level/rank. Exaggerated with Apoqliphoth Killer, who has the aforementioned effect and is Level 10, as well as being immune to spell/trap cards.
    • Anomalocaris and the Burgesstoma traps, when summoned as monsters, are unaffected by the effects of other monsters.
  • Digimon in the Digimon Card Game with the Jamming effect cannot be deleted in battle with Security Digimon. There are also several cards that inflict other Digimon with "Security -1", which means unless they were able to increase their number of Security attacks they'd check zero cards.

    Comedy 

    Comic Strips 
  • Beetle Bailey: Sarge has a "Kick Me" sign on his back. So Beetle kicks him. All that happens is that he hurts his foot while Sarge keeps on walking without a reaction.
    "I'll be he put that sign on himself!"
  • In Calvin and Hobbes, Calvin's alter-ego Stupendous Man often has to resort to this as a pseudo-Watsonian excuse as to why Stupendous Man's powers never affect his foes... since his foes are "played" by real people in his life who are not playing by Stupendous Man's rules.
    "Gadzooks! Stupendous Man's amazing powers are of no avail in this cunning trap!"
    "Great Galoob! [Baby Sitter Girl] must have superpowers too!"
    "Great Zok! [Evil Mom Lady] affixed me with her Mind-Scrambling Eyeball Ray! I am suddenly filled with the desire to go upstairs and do her nefarious bidding [to clean my room]!"
  • This is one of Popeye's trademarks. The sailor's ability to take punishment has stymied more foes than his ability to dish it out. In one memorable instance, Popeye gets shot in the stomach at point-blank range, only to spit the bullets out into his hand. As he tells his stupefied attacker, "What, didja think I was a softy?"

    Films — Animation 

Disney Animated Canon:

  • In Aladdin: The Return of Jafar, the first thing Jafar does upon coming back to Agrabah is completely own Genie, ignoring everything the blue guy throws at him while singing "You're Only Second Rate".
  • Hercules:
    • Hades agrees to let Hercules dive into the pool of ghosts at the center of the underworld, so he can retrieve the soul of his deceased girlfriend, Megara. Hades casually "forgets" to mention the ghost pool applies Rapid Aging to anyone who enters. Hercules dives in, he becomes noticeably old and wrinkled, his lifespan shortens, the Fates prepare to cut his life thread... And then suddenly the aging stops, as he has become a god because of his heroic actions, and gods are immortal.
    • Hades laughed off Hercules's attempts to fight him, as a mortal cannot harm a god like him.
  • Home on the Range: Slim's hypnotic yodeling can control cattle at his command; however, it has no effect on Grace. When curious over why she wasn't effected afterward, Maggie and Ms. Calloway note it's because she's not on "perfect pitch" like the others.
  • Subtly in The Princess and the Frog: Dr. Facilier's charisma and persuasion is a No Sell on Tiana, while it was effective on every other character he used it on. The fact that Dr. Facilier inadvertently showed her father being happy with what he had at that time probably helped in Tiana's case.

Dreamworks Animation

  • How to Train Your Dragon:
    • In How to Train Your Dragon 2, baby dragons like the Scuttleclaws hatchlings are immune to the Bewilderbeasts’ mind control. Also closing off a dragon’s senses of sight and hearing can also diminish the mind manipulation effect.
  • Kung Fu Panda:
    • In Kung Fu Panda, Tai Lung and Oogway's nerve strikes are devastating to their targets, completely paralysing them. Po's layer of body fat, however, neutralizes those attacks, which comes in handy during the final fight. Unfortunately, it also neutralizes Mantis's acupuncture.
    • In Kung Fu Panda 2, Tigress mentions that she has spent the last 20 years punching ironwood trees both as a way to work out anger and to toughen up. When she spars with Po, he punches her outstretched palm and hurts himself, and she doesn't even blink.
    • In Kung Fu Panda 3, Po attempts to send Kai back to the Spirit Realm using the Wuxi Finger Hold that he used to defeat Tai Lung, but unfortunately it only works on mortals. However, there's nothing stopping him from sending the two of them to the Spirit Realm by using it on himself.
  • Monsters vs. Aliens: The Deflector Shields on Gallaxhar's giant robotic probe make it Immune to Bullets, along with just about everything else the U.S. Army can throw at it.
  • Puss in Boots: The Last Wish: The Wishing Star is surrounded by a technicolor field that disintegrates anything it touches. The Wolf, being The Grim Reaper, can simply walk through it without so much as blinking.

Others

  • In Batman vs. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Donatello and Batgirl are pitted against Bane, who boasts about being "The Man Who Broke the Bat", and proceeds to demonstrate this by attempting to break Donnie's spine. However, since Donnie is a turtle, his spine is actually a hard, outer shell, so all Bane ends up doing is taking out his own kneecap.
  • Played for laughs in The Book of Life, when Xibalba launches Manolo with enough force that when he hits Luis, they both go flying until they hit Carmelo, who barely flinches.
  • The Frog Princess: None of Ivan's weapons works against Koshchei. The arrows bounce off, and the sword breaks at contact.
  • A Bug's Life: Dot, during her final confrontation with Thumper, refuses to even flinch when he flares his body and shrieks at her. She even proceeds to Dope Slap him afterward!
  • Despicable Me: Gru manages to do this to four heat-seeking missiles and a shark when he breaks into Vector's fortress to get the girls back, leaping over the missiles (which blow up the gate) and getting rid of the shark with an Offhand Backhand.
  • Hotel Transylvania:
    • Whoever is wearing contact lenses (ie. Johnny) will render them immune to Drac's Hypnotic Eyes. Other vampires will also be immune, such as Dana the counselor of Camp Winnepacaca.
    • In the series, Mavis gains the same hypnotic powers as Drac and Lydia, but it doesn't work on anyone (except for Donald, who's weak of mind) due to just getting it and she isn't old enough for it to work properly.
  • The Secret of the Magic Potion: When Sulfurix attempts to hypnotise Asterix by circling a small flame around, the latter simply blows it away, as it only works on the Weak-Willed. Sulfurix even admits he didn't expect it to actually work.
  • The Super Mario Bros. Movie: The climax shows the effect of the Super Star. Mario and Luigi stand before Bowser, having just survived his fire blast. Bowser responds by stomping them, with enough force to crack the asphalt under and behind them. The brothers are utterly unaffected, they don't move or flinch. A few seconds later, a Hammer Bro strikes Mario, only for his hammer to shatter.
  • Transformers: The Movie: Unicron no-sells a Detonation Moon. As Spike put it, he isn't even dented by the blast. You know you're in trouble when that kind of thing doesn't work.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • In the party at the beginning of Aleta: Vampire Mistress, a robber tries to shoot Aleta when she starts approaching him. It doesn't work. Also, the stake-through-the-heart thing doesn't work on her either. She justifies this by stating that it only works on her underlings, but not her.
  • Back to the Future Part II: In 2015, Marty McFly tries to use the "Hey, what's that?!" move on Griff Tannen, Biff's grandson, who simply intercepts his fist thanks to bionic implants. Marty only escapes by kicking him in the groin.
  • In Batman & Robin:
    • Poison Ivy uses her pheromone powers to get others to obey. When Mr. Freeze takes the diamond from her and she tries it on him, Freeze points out it doesn't work on a coldhearted individual like himself. Though Freeze is mostly being dramatic. The real reason it probably doesn't work is that he's wearing his refrigeration armor with a sealed helmet.
    • Later in the film, Robin survives a kiss with Poison Ivy by protecting himself with rubber lips. He's the only character in the film to survive an on-screen kiss with her.
  • Batman Returns: Mild example. The Penguin twirls an umbrella with a black-and-white spiral pattern in front of Max Shreck who asks if it's supposed to hypnotize him. Realizing it's having no effect, Penguin says, "No, just give you a headache." Shreck comes back with, "It's not working."
  • Ben 10: Alien Swarm: The Hive Queen tries to put Ben under her control since he is in the form of an alien of her species. Ben shakes it off very easily.
  • Near the ending of Con Air, Poe walks towards the Big Bad who destroyed his peaceful ride home. A nearby con raises his gun and shoots at the striding Poe, who gets hit in the upper arm. He just keeps walking and kicks the con's ass.
  • Similar to the comic of the same name, Eric in The Crow is a walking example of this, since he's a dead man come back to life; while it's implied he still feels the pain from being wounded, at least briefly, said wounds eventually heal themselves. Subverted near the film's end when Top Dollar and his gang realize that by taking out the crow itself, they'll be able to finish off Eric, as the crow is Eric's link to our world.
  • Bane in The Dark Knight Rises is fond of doing this. At the start of his first fight with Batman, he doesn't even try to block or dodge his first punches, and just shrugs them off. Batman's attempts to use smoke grenades and hide in the shadows are similarly unsuccessful.
  • In the DC Extended Universe:
    • Man of Steel:
      • Clark's shirt catches on fire after saving workers from a failing oil rig. The fireproof Clark remains unfazed.
      • Zod barely notices being hit by falling debris. Bullets simply bounce off all the Kryptonians without even making them flinch. However, the A-10's Gatling guns were able to temporarily stun all three caught in their path.
    • Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice: Clark no-sells being hit by the Batmobile going at full speed. Later, during Clark and Bruce's Battle in the Rain, Bruce is able to block Clark's blow after Clark has been hit by a Kryptonite gas, leaving Clark shocked. However, as the Kryptonite begins to wear off, Bruce's punches have less and less effect on the Man Of Steel, until a punch just bounces harmlessly off Clark's chin.
    • Zack Snyder's Justice League: Steppenwolf is about to deliver a strike from his electro-axe on the hapless Cyborg... then a CLANG! is heard — it's Superman bodyblocking the strike like it's nothing!
      Superman: Not. Impressed.
    • Suicide Squad: Harley hits Big Bad the Enchantress over the back of the head with her trusty baseball bat. It simply bounces off with no effect... but it does get her attention, with painful results for Harley.
    • SHAZAM!:
      • Shazam and Freddy figure out through trial and error that the former is Immune to Bullets, fire, blunt force, and slices. Dr. Sivana later confirms to Shazam that normal humans and their weapons can't harm him; only magic can overcome magic. Since Sivana is possessed by the (magical) Seven Deadly Sins, this applies to him too, and the most important parts of the climax involve 1) Billy and his foster siblings trying to figure out a way to get all seven Sins to leave Sivana's body so he's vulnerable and can actually be defeated, and 2)Billy figuring out that he can share his Shazam powers with his siblings, so they can join the fight too.
      • The Sins themselves seem to be immune from any lasting damage, and can turn into smoke to avoid being hurt, which Wrath does twice during his fight with Shazam. At best, the most that Shazam or his siblings are able to do is temporarily stun/incapacitate them.
  • Jason Voorhees of Friday the 13th films is practically unstoppable, and becomes even moreso as the series progresses and he becomes an undead menace. Bullets barely phase him. Shovels to the head result in the shovels breaking to little effect on him. Trying to run him down will only wreck the car and piss him off. The only thing that is shown to put him down on a long-term basis is in Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday when the FBI blows him to bits, and even then, the loss of his corporeal body is only a temporary inconvenience.
  • Fright Night (1985): "You have to have faith for that (a crucifix) to work, Mr. Vincent!"
  • The Funhouse Massacre: Rocco The Clown is able to take knife stabs to the back and being shot like it's nothing. It takes a barrage of bullets to take him down. And even then, he just gets out of the body bag he was in in the second Stinger.
  • Ghost Note: When a man sees Eugene Burns, he tries to shoot him with his gun. Eugene just shrugs off each shot.
  • Ghosts of War: One the Helwigs are brought Back from the Dead, they're able to shrug off gunfire like it's nothing.
  • The Dragon in The Girl Who Played With Fire can't feel pain, so he tends to do this to any attacks against him.
  • In Gods of Egypt, Hathor can compel anyone to do anything she tells them unless their heart belongs to another, with the result that her powers cannot work on Bek as he truly loves Zaya. Hathor's powers even don't work on Horus, who truly loves Hathor herself.
  • Many a monster in the Godzilla series has done this at least once.
    • In Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster, Rodan shrugs off Godzilla's Atomic Heat Ray without any visible damage whatsoever; Instead he shakes his head and then begins laughing at him.
    • Hedorah is a walking No-Sell, thanks to his amorphous and liquefied body. Any attempts by Godzilla at using his Atomic Breath prior to the JSDF rolling out the Giant Electrodes is rendered useless as it is incapable of drying Hedorah out and weakening him, while attempting to attack Hedorah with physical techniques is a really bad idea.
    • In Godzilla (2014), the MUTO's are only mildly annoyed by even the heaviest ordnance the military can bring to bear. Godzilla, on the other hand, simply doesn't even notice when humans are attacking him.
    • InGodzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), the US military attempts to use the Oxygen Destroyer on Godzilla and King Ghidorah while the two are busy fighting to kill both of them in one fell swoop. While it does succeed in wiping out all sea-life in the bay and nearly kills Godzilla, it has absolutely no effect on Ghidorah, because, as it's later discovered, he's an extraterrestrial organism which does not need oxygen to survive. And now with his chief rival out of the way, Ghidorah takes his place as the new monster king unimpeded.
  • Cain in He Never Died is getting repeatedly pounded in the face by thugs in his apartment, but each hit, to their confoundment, barely registers more than an annoyed "Don't...!" Later he will be shot point blank in the forehead and remain unfazed, and after killing the mooks responsible, he simply pulls the bullet out of his head with pliers, explaining that if he leaves it in, it will give him migraines.
  • In Hudson Hawk, Anna Baragli pulls a gun on Kaplan's crew; but the agents, particularly Almond Joy, are completely unthreatened, and Almond Joy calmly disables Anna with a knockout dart. Almond Joy and the rest of the crew know that Anna is a nun and wouldn't shoot anyone.
  • The aliens in Independence Day are able to shrug off all of humanity's weapons. Even nuclear bombs, despite a brief Hope Spot, prove completely ineffective. At least, until they find a way to get through their energy shields. Independence Day: Resurgence takes this even further, with the alien queen taking a point-blank nuclear detonation to the face and walking out unscathed.
  • In Jurassic World, the Indominus rex brushes aside blows that would cause serious injury to a similarly sized theropod, them being a direct tail club strike from an Ankylosaurus, minigun rounds and the attacks of Velociraptors. Only when the Tyrannosaurus is released does the hybrid finally meet her match.
  • In Kick-Ass 2, Hit-Girl's fight with Mother Russia turns into this. Hit-Girl brings out literally every trick in her arsenal and none of it does anything. It takes an adrenaline shot and several dozen glass shards for her to do anything.
  • Kung Fu Hustle: In the midst of showing off just how much of a Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass he is, the Beast ends up getting dropkicked in the face, and then punched and kicked on either side of his head in tandem. Other than his face deforming around the offending extremities, he doesn't even budge.
  • Master Pain/Betty's Establishing Character Moment in Kung Pow! Enter the Fist has him being struck repeatedly. Especially in the balls. Multiple times. And he shrugs it off. Then, asks for a towel to wipe himself off. When The Chosen One tries this, it goes horribly wrong.
  • Little Dead Rotting Hood: Late in the movie, bullets start becoming ineffective against the Savage Wolves.
  • The Lord of the Rings: When Gandalf confronts Saruman in The Return of the King, Saruman blasts Gandalf with a fireball. Gandalf emerges from it completely unscathed.
  • Marvel Cinematic Universe:
    • Captain America: The First Avenger:
      • During their first meeting, the Red Skull is completely unfazed by Cap's punch to the jaw. And then he punches the Captain's shield so hard that he dents it. No wonder he got a better shield afterwards.
      • Then at a later confrontation, Red Skull pummels the crap out of a restrained Cap who retorts that he can "do this all day".
    • Iron Man 2: After James Rhodes presents his superiors with Tony's "War Machine" armor, Justin Hammer augments the suit with his own weapons tech, including a bunker-buster missile he calls "The Ex-Wife"; in Hammer's words, "It takes everything." During their final battle with Ivan Vanko, Rhodes fires the Ex-Wife at Vanko, only for the missile to bounce off Vanko's armor and sputter once it hits the ground.
      Tony Stark: Hammer tech?
      Rhodey: [dejected] Yeah.
    • The Avengers:
      • In their fight in Stuttgart, Captain America's best blows barely faze Loki.
      • Loki attempts to brainwash Tony Stark by touching his staff to his chest, only for it to harmlessly bounce off the arc reactor keeping Tony alive instead. Tony is, to say the least, supremely unimpressed. It even makes a loud clink when it hits. After a Beat Loki tries again. Clink.
        Loki: [confused] This usually works...
        Tony: Well, performance issues... it's not uncommon... one out of five— [Loki just throws him out the window]
    • Guardians of the Galaxy: Ronan emerges unhurt regardless of who attacks him or with how much ferocity.
    • Captain America: Civil War:
      • Black Widow finds out her wrist-mounted paralyzing gadget doesn't work on Crossbones, as his nerves are all messed up after having a Helicarrier crash into his face.
        Crossbones: That don't work like that no more!
      • A helicopter opens fire on the Winter Soldier and Black Panther. The bullets have no effect on Black Panther since his suit is laced with vibranium.
      • Hawkeye comes out of his "retirement" to seek Scarlet Witch at the Avengers compound. Vision gets in his way, and none of Hawkeye's attacks manage to even make the vibranium-made being budge. It takes Scarlet Witch's powers to incapacitate Vision.
      • Bucky's normally devastating punch with his prosthetic arm is caught casually by Spider-Man, who proceeds to gush over how cool it is, while just as casually twisting the arm. Bucky is understandably confused when he hears the superhero who just caught his punch speak with the voice of a teenager.
    • Thor: Ragnarok: Hela draws her power from Asgard itself, and so is virtually invincible. Even after over 1500 years imprisoned in a limbo dimension, she’s able to catch and crush Mjolnir with a single hand, and only grows stronger from there.
    • Avengers: Infinity War: Thanos shrugs off nearly everything the Avengers throw at him, to the point of tanking blows from the Hulk. The Titan team only does any damage to him by attacking him all at once, nonstop, and even then they only succeed in temporarily pinning him down. It takes Iron Man unleashing his entire arsenal on Thanos to score a tiny cut on his cheek. The only hero who manages to fight him on almost-equal terms is Doctor Strange, whose reality-warping spells give him a halfway decent counter to the Infinity Gauntlet. The only one who manages to actually do significant damage to him is Thor who manages to drive Stormbreaker straight through his chest. This seriously wounds Thanos who falls to his knees in agony but even this isn't able to kill him.
    • In Avengers: Endgame, Thanos finally ends up on the other end of this when he headbutts Carol Danvers as she's stopping him from using the Infinity Gauntlet. She doesn't even flinch and he has to resort to a trick (popping the Power Stone out of the gauntlet and using it in his off hand to blast her) to get her off of him.
    • In Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Wanda no-sold everything launched against her. Best example is when America fight Wanda, America's punches literally fails to do something beyond annoying her.
  • For the most part of the first movie, the agents in The Matrix, then Neo during and after the climax, and throughout the series until he fought the Oracle-empowered Smith.
  • The Mighty Ducks: In D2, the Icelandic goalkeeper manages to glove-save the titular team's power-hitter Fulton Reed's legendary slap-shot (which, at this point, has been shown to tear nets, smash plexiglass and knock out referees on the third bounce). This is treated as a super-human feat and major Oh, Crap! moment... until the goalie removes his glove and shows an enormous puck-shaped bruise on his palm. Later, when Reed is taking a penalty shot at the same goalie, the goalie is visibly shaking with fear.
  • During the Final Battle in Mission: Impossible – Fallout, Ilsa tries to take down Lane with her signature jumping scissor move only for Lane to throw her off and start strangling her. She does it again after Benji distracts him, with much more success.
  • In Nightmare at Noon, Ken punches Charley, who has been turned into a mindless killer. Charley barely reacts. Ken yells, "Oh shiiiit!" as Charley throws him over a table.
  • Pirates of the Caribbean:
    • Davy Jones does this, even going so far as to disarm Will in At World's End after he stabs Davy with a rapier, by reaching round and bending the point of the rapier so it couldn't be drawn out of his body.
      Jones: Missed!... Did you forget? I'm a heartless wretch!
    • Barbossa does something similar in the first film after Elizabeth stabs him with a kitchen knife.
      Barbossa: I'm curious: after killin' me, what was your next plan?
  • Parodied when The Man In Black attacks an unmoving Fezzick in The Princess Bride.
    Fezzick: I just wanted you to think you were doing well! I hate for people to die embarrassed.
  • Variation in Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indy is fighting the massive German mechanic at the airfield. The mechanic obviously feels the punches and grunts with each hit, but he doesn't even move despite Indy throwing his fists full-force into his jaw. Then the mechanic delivers a single jab that knocks Indy on his ass.
  • Return of the Scarecrow: The scarecrow is shot in its middle with a rifle, and it does nothing.
  • RoboCop:
    • A perp tries to kick Murphy in the balls while resisting arrest. Since his entire body is covered in metal armor, obviously this doesn't work.
    • When out on his first patrol, an armed robber turns his gun on Murphy who reads the robber his rights while calmly walking over to apprehend him.
  • RoboCop 2:
    • Murphy calmly walks out of his burning patrol car and calmly guns down the gun store robbers who riddled his car with bullets and two RPGs.
    • Later, after Robo-Cain goes on a rampage, he scans the crowd looking for Murphy, while being shot at by the Detroit P.D., and O.C.P. security. Eventually he gives up his search, and only fires back because the hundreds of rounds hitting him are causing a minor annoyance.
  • Inverted in Serenity, when Mal sells a nerve-cluster blow that doesn't actually affect him in order to fool his opponent.
  • At the end of The Shadow, Big Bad Shiwan Khan wakes up in a straitjacket at a mental hospital. He immediately attempts to use his mind-control powers on a passing doctor, who seems to comply with Shiwan's orders ... only to burst out laughing when told to remove his restraints. Two consecutive shifts in camera angle reveal that 1) Khan has undergone cranial surgery to extract a mirror shard from his brain, destroying his mental powers in the process, and 2) the doctor is one of the Shadow's many contacts, who only "obeyed" the villain's initial commands to troll the guy.
  • In Sonic the Hedgehog (2020), during the Bar Brawl, not only does Sonic try to take down a thug by hitting him in the head with an unbreakable bottle, he also tries to do some Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs. Nothing works.
  • Played with in Spaceballs. When Lone Star tries to give the Vulcan neck pinch to one of the Spaceballs, it has no effect. The Spaceball then says "No, no, no, stupid. You've got it much too high. It's down here where the shoulder meets the neck." Lone Star then tries again at that location while asking "Like this?", and the Spaceball says "Yeah!" and passes out. And again when Lone Star's Schwartz repeatedly and ineffectually bounces off Dark Helmet's Schwartz-proof helmet. He has to wait until Dark Helmet raises his faceplate to gloat so he can punch him in the face instead.
  • Star Trek:
  • Star Wars:
    • The Empire Strikes Back: Han shoots first when he sees Vader. The Dark Lord just catches the blaster bolts in his hand; depending on who you ask, he either had an invincible glove or was using the Force.
    • In the Radio Drama adaption of Episode V, Han exclaims (paraphrased) "No way, you can't just block a blaster's fire with your hand!" Right before Vader force-summons his weapon as well. Perhaps this applies to the film as well.
    • There is a Call-Back to this in Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor. Being shot at by an army is a concern for Luke, but being shot at by one man is not.
      "Please don't shoot me, either." He turned the palm upward in a friendly shrug and let the astonished troopers stare at the only effect of the Force-blunted blasterfire: a faint curl of steam that trailed upward from his unmarked palm. "Let's try to end the day with nobody else dying, shall we?"
    • The novel I, Jedi shows that one Force power Jedi have is to absorb energy. Corran uses this ability at one point to no-sell a stun baton (by absorbing the shock and dissipating it in the surrounding environment), and it's implied that Vader may have been using the same ability in The Empire Strikes Back. An even more impressive no-sell happens later, when Corran absorbs the energy of an explosion, redirecting much of it and the debris directly upwards and away from civilians. It completely exhausts him and leaves him without clothing, but he survives (with relatively little injury), and there are very few casualties.
    • Return of the Jedi: Jabba the Hutt is unaffected by Luke's Jedi Mind Trick, and says, "Your mind powers will not work on me, boy."
    • The Phantom Menace: Watto doesn't fall into the classic Jedi Mind Trick, as Qui-Gon discovers the hard way:
      Watto: "What you think you are, some kind of Jedi, waving your hand around like that? I'm a Toydarian! Mind tricks don't work on me, only money."
    • In the prequel trilogy, both Count Dooku and Palpatine try to use Force lightning against Yoda, who just absorbs it with his hands. (This appears to be a rare ability; Obi-Wan and Mace Windu have to block it with their lightsabers.) They also try to use telekinesis to throw heavy objects at him, but he easily catches them and tosses them aside (or in Palpatine's case, throws it right back at him).
    • At the climax of The Last Jedi, Luke Skywalker does this twice, first with a Worf Barrage and then when Kylo Ren personally tries to slash him in half with his lightsaber. It's because he's not actually there, but simply projecting his presence across the galaxy using the Force. Unfortunately, the effort required of him to do that does succeed in killing him where Kylo Ren failed.
  • In Superman Returns, one criminal tries to shoot Supes in the eye. The only effect is a little 'doink' sound. And a flattened bullet.
  • During the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' first fight against Tokka and Rahzar in The Secret of the Ooze, Donatello tries to baseball swing his bo into Tokka. It not only fails to do any damage, but the recoil of the blow knocks Donatello senseless.
    Don: All right you overgrown, ugly excuse for a turtle! (WHACK!) Ga-a-a-ah...! Y-you know, maybe that "ugly" crack was a little bit out of line...
  • Once per Episode in the Terminator films. For example, in the second film, when the female security guard at the psychiatric clinic attempts a forearm shiver with her gun, all she manages to do is damage the Terminator's glasses. He gives her an annoyed look, grabs her face, and throws her down a hallway.
  • In The War of the Worlds (1953), the U.S. government authorizes the dropping of the latest atomic bomb model on the Martian warships in a last ditch attempt to stop them. When the smoke clears, the warships are seen surrounded by their protective blisters, floating towards their next target unfazed.
  • In War of the Worlds (2005), when Ray's family is walking towards safety, they witness a large battle between the U.S. Army and the tripods. The military acknowledges that their weapons have no effect whatsoever, but their efforts are just so that the civilians can get as far away from the tripods as possible.
  • White Chicks has two sisters who get passed over for a modeling gig and try to seduce the fashion designer, only for him to sneer at them:
    Designer: You are so barking up the wrong tree.
  • Wrong is Right: When several assailants attack Unger's car, he barely reacts as they shoot his bulletproof window, and then proceeds to pull ahead of them, lower his window, and toss out a grenade to eliminate his pursuers.
  • X-Men: Days of Future Past: The Bad Future sentinels' design is sufficiently advanced to be impervious to most mutants' powers and even worse, counter them.

    Literature 
  • In the children's chapter book Aleca Zamm Is A Wonder, those with superpowers are known as "Wonders." Each Wonder has a different type of power, such as always knowing when someone is lying or talking with animals, but the power will not work on someone else who is a Wonder. For example, the main character, Aleca Zamm can stop time. Her great aunt, who is also a Wonder that can teleport, realizes her great niece is a wonder because she notices that time has stopped around her.
  • In the Apprentice Adept series, Adepts' magic cancels each other out, on a one-on-one basis. Protagoinist Stile (the Blue Adept) finds this out when he hits Adept White with a series of near-spells designed to fizzle out immeditately, and White informs him that the real thing would not have done her any more harm. He's also informed that this is not the case should two or more Adepts gang up on him. He also realizes that this put an extra degree of mystery to the death of his Phaze counterpart, the previous Blue Adept; He should've been able to fend off the booby trap that ultimately killed him, but instead allowed himself to succumb.
  • Area 51: Most of the Airlia artifacts and deflector shields can withstand even the most powerful human weapons, such as a direct hit by a nuke.
  • This is the basic nature of the primary form of the phenomenon known as "resilience" in the The Bartimaeus Trilogy books, the ability to resist and survive attacks by spirits. The power varies from being able to withstand minor attacks to being able to shrug off very strong magic. Those with additional abilities can also do things such as negate the ability of spirits to hide themselves from human sight and sense things like magical objects.
  • Bazil Broketail: Ribela's spells are unable to harm Gog Zagozt in the slightest.
  • The Brightest Shadow: The end result of any sufficiently superior ability, most directly Xetsu simply ignoring entire groups of people attacking him.
  • In "The Double Shadow" by Clark Ashton Smith, this is the primary power of the Eldritch Abomination that Avyctes summons. None of his magic has the slightest effect on it, and none of his usual familiars can even perceive it.
  • The Dresden Files:
    • This was Lord Raith's power, in addition to the usual abilities of a White Court vampire; he's basically immune to magic. As it turned out, Harry's mother managed to get through his protection with her Death Curse, and used it to make him unable to feed.
    • Outsiders, the local eldritch abominations, are immune to everything. Harry's mother seems to have known how to beat this one, too — Harry is one of the only people who can hurt them due to something about the circumstances of his birth, which she is implied to have deliberately engineered.
    • A lot of powerful sidhe are partially or completely immune to magic. This can be gotten around, such as the time Harry lit an ogre on fire by lighting a can of Sterno and throwing that at it, or by using a power source that does affect them, as when he channels the fire of the Summer Court to blast the everloving bejeezus out of a powerful Winter fae.
    • In Battle Ground (2020), Harry gets roped into a duel with a fire giant named Svengar. Harry, who, at that point is running on adrenaline, caffeine and pure unbridled cussedness, acts on instinct and hits Svengar with his default attack, a nice big blast of fire. Svengar asks him what he thinks he's doing, seemingly genuinely confused about why Harry thought hurling fire at a being made of fire was a good idea.
  • The jordain from Halruaa (The Magocracy in Forgotten Realms), are almost totally immune to magic — only the strongest spells can penetrate their resistance. And, of course, they have Magehounds capable of piercing a lot of magic resistance, in case some jordaini goes rogue. One of protagonists of Counselors and Kings is the product of a jordaini birth gone awry: she possesses both magic and resistance to it. Of course, Game-Breaker and much Hilarity Ensues.
  • The Faerie Queene: The first half of the battle between Redcrosse Knight and the dragon ends when Redcrosse lands a blow directly on the dragon's head... only for his sword to just bounce off the dragon's scales. Cue Breath Weapon.
  • The iridium-armored hovertanks fielded by mercenary regiment Hammer's Slammers are invulnerable to all but equally exotic high-tech weaponry. As some of the side-exposition notes, few planets can afford to own or produce such behemoths themselves, while 'renting' them (and their operators) is much more affordable. As a result, wars are commonly fought entirely with mercenary forces on both sides, because failing to produce an effective opposition would be an instant curb stomp.
  • Harry Potter:
    • In at least two instances in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Fleur Delacour is seen trying to use her Veela charm on Cedric Diggory. Both times he's completely unaffected, which, given how unimpressed she is with boys who are, may have been what she was aiming for. Harry also learns in the same book that he's able to resist the Imperius Curse — a possible but difficult and rare feat. He also spends the entire series countering and surviving all of Voldemort's attempts to Avada Kedavra him. On another occasion in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Fawkes intercepts the same Killing Curse when Voldemort fires one off at Dumbledore, but (being a phoenix) he isn't finished off permanently: rather, Fawkes swallows the curse and is immediately reborn as a phoenix chick.
    • Also in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Hagrid is able to completely no-sell Stunning Spells from multiple Aurors when Umbridge tries to arrest him, with the spells simply bouncing off him. This is explained as a byproduct of his being a half-giant, as giants are naturally resistant to many spells. Other magical creatures such as trolls, dragons and Acromantula also have similar resistance to magic, with dragons requiring a large number of simultaneous Stunning Spells to take them down and Acromantula needing at least two combined spells.
  • In the climactic cyborg fight of Heart of Steel, Alistair receives a vicious kick between the legs — to no great effect because everything from the hips down was made of metal.
  • In the Imperial Radch novel Ancillary Mercy, a Presger translator (a human created by the alien species of the Presger so that they can communicate with humans) is shot with a gun constructed by the Presger, and her reaction is to vomit up some things she has eaten previously, including a living fish. As the translator states, it would be foolish to construct and give to other species a weapon that can be used against them. Interestingly enough, Presger translators can be killed by rather mundane means otherwise.
  • Valek in Maria Snyder's Ixia and Sitia books is immune to all magic, but has no magical power himself.
  • In the Journey to Chaos, this happens most frequently when someone tries to use the Evil Eye technique on someone who either has a stronger spirit or has experienced greater suffering. They don't have to block or do anything; it just doesn't hurt them. They just get goosebumps.
  • In The Lord of the Rings:
    • Tom Bombadil is shown to be completely immune to the corrupting powers of the One Ring, as well as its more practical effects like invisibility. In fact, when Tom briefly holds the Ring in his hand he is downright amused by it, treating as it as nothing but a harmless curiosity, and even performs a couple of palour tricks with it before he casually hands it back to Frodo. This turns out to be a case of Blessed with Suck for Frodo and the other Hobbits; they can't ask Tom to keep the One Ring safe for them, because he's so disinterested in its power that he'd likely just forget about it and misplace it, if not outright throw it away without a second thought.
    • Impressively, Faramir isn't tempted by the Ring's power either, even when he learns Frodo has it and is in a position to easily take it from him. This is in stark contrast to his older brother Boromir, who was always seen as stronger than Faramir but was corrupted by the Ring.
    • Sam is likewise unaffected despite much longer exposure. In his case we actually see the ring try to corrupt him, only to utterly fail when it can't think of anything to tempt him with that he actually wants. The Ring tries to tempt with the idea that he could use it to overthrow Sauron, and use his powers as the new lord of Mordor, to transform it into a large garden tended by enslaved servants. Sam rejects this idea, because he only wants to tend a garden on his own, not to lord it over others and force them to do the gardening. The Ring then tries to amend the suggestion, telling Sam that he could still make Mordor into a large garden and just tend to it himself. Sam rejects this idea too, as he points that he is just one person, and he possibly couldn't take care of such a large place alone.
    • There's also a Too Broken to Break variation: Éowyn is able to stare down the Witch-King of Angmar and shrug off the crippling despair his presence inspires that reduces most men to sobbing piles on the ground. She's not able to do this because she's "just that badass"; but rather because she's been living in despair for literal years while taking care of her ailing uncle and doing her part in trying to make sure his kingdom didn't fall apart: She is just used to feeling utterly hopeless and acting in spite of it.
  • Fanny Price of Mansfield Park is the only woman in the world so far whom Handsome Lech Henry Crawford finds immune to his charm (although "she felt his powers"), leading to I Love You Because I Can't Control You (this being Jane Austen, though, she picks the actually moral, reliable Edmund). The parody mash-up Mansfield Park and Mummies expands on this and makes Fanny the only human immune to Mary Crawford's (now a vampire) hypnotic powers.
  • In Midnight's Children, Shiva is the only person who can block Saleem from prying into his thoughts.
  • Moongobble and Me: Book 5 has Oggledy Nork be completely immune to spells that would alter people's perception of him.
  • The Plant That Ate Dirty Socks: At one point in book 1, the family goes out to dinner, and Norman puts on his gorilla head to surprise their waitress (having already been popping out of places while wearing it to surprise people earlier in the day). When the rest of the family orders a large pepperoni pizza, she's completely unphased by Norman's appearance, asking only "And what will your gorilla have?"
  • In Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain, Lucyfar (who may or may not be the Archangel Lucifer) is only mildly annoyed when she gets cursed twice in quick succession.
    Lucyfar pulled herself up completely straight and plucked the penny free of her dress. A black, burning crown roared into existence above her head, and she announced in a strained but just barely calm voice, "I don't know if I've mentioned this, but I am the morning star, the fallen one, the first and most damned child of creation. Magic is the power of creation, children. It cannot harm me."
    In case she hadn't made her point, she clenched my penny in her fist. Flames leaked between her fingers, and a painful knot twitched in my belly. I heard a girl's voice shriek in the distance. My voice.
  • In The Outside, Enga fires thirty-seven shots at an Outside monster in 3.3 seconds, using every suitable weapon in her arsenal exactly once. None of them have any effect.
  • At the climax of Shards of a Broken Crown, Tomas, Pug, Miranda, and Nakor need to get to the enemy stronghold. Standing in their way is the second-largest army in the world. Being the most powerful warrior and the three most powerful magicians in the world, they walk through men and fortifications almost as if they weren't there: arrows bounce off of magical shields, soldiers get pushed out of the way by waves of energy, barred doors are pushed open as if they were unlatched, and so on.
  • In the Rivers of London series, Peter eventually becomes all but immune to mind control and mental manipulation — because it's a running joke that every magical creature he encounters tries to glamour him at some point, so he's gotten very good at resisting.
  • In The Shepherd's Crown, it turns out Granny Weatherwax's self-proclaimed rival Ms. Earwig is so astoundingly self-absorbed she's completely immune to Elf glamour.
  • Sookie Stackhouse is a telepath, but she is unable to read the thoughts of vampires. Conversely, vampires can glamour people, but Sookie is immune to their powers. However, Sookie finds out that if she gets a power boost from the blood of a particularly old vampire, she can read their thoughts. She wisely keeps this to herself.
  • In The Spirit Thief, Den has taken the art of Master of Your Domain to the point where he completely no-sells another character's Super-Strength-level punch.
  • In the Star Wars Expanded Universe, the Yuuzhan Vong are immune to the Force. They can't be sensed, the Jedi Mind Trick is useless, and they can't be touched by telekinesis. However, Force Lightning works just fine, and experienced Force-users can simply attack them indirectly with telekinetically thrown objects. This is because the sentient planet that they lived on forcibly stripped the entire species from the Force. You can use the Force to, say, throw something at them, because you are using the Force on the object but you can't, for example, sense them because there is literally nothing to sense. Though a few Jedi eventually find a way to do so anyway by tapping into a different facet of the Force. And occasionally their being a Force blank actually backfires: if a Jedi can see a disguised Yuuzhan Vong but can't sense him with the Force, the infiltrator may consider his cover blown.
  • Star Trek:
    • In the Next Generation novel "Vendetta" Delcara's Planet Killer easily demolishes the first Borg ship it comes across. The Tholians then ensnare Delcara's Planet killer in one of their infamous webs. For exactly 19 seconds the Tholians believed they had her trapped until she opened up with her anti-proton beam, frying the two Tholian ships still connected to the web and causing the web itself to disintegrate a few seconds later. The Planet Killer then flies through the Tholian system's sun without suffering any damage. Then the giant ship faces down three Borg cubes. While the Borg cubes put up more of a fight, Delcara is able to defeat them with help from the Federation.
    • The X-Men crossover novel Planet X features the Enterprise-E being attacked by a powerful alien ship, with their only hope of victory being to ask Nightcrawler to teleport onto the enemy vessel. Storm notes that this plan is difficult as Kurt lacks experience in alien technology and anyone they send with him will be fatigued from the strain of the jump, but Riker suggests that they send Data with the mutant, as Data doesn’t get tired in the first place and has all the technical expertise they might need.
  • Later books in the Sword of Truth series have people immune to magic turn up. The infamous evil pacifists fit into this category.
  • Tempest (2011): In Tempest Revealed, Tempest blasts the Leviathan with enough magic to kill any other creature, but the Leviathan barely seems to notice it.
  • Third Time Lucky: And Other Stories of the Most Powerful Wizard in the World:
    • The spells which Tristan casts against Magdelene are completely ineffective due to her power.
    • Five wizards attempt to remove her magic. Magdelene's unaffected, but acts like she has been, even not using it for six weeks, since this sets a trap for attacking demons.
  • In the Twilight novels, Bella is immune to Edward's telepathy, although he can sense everyone else. This is part of her allure for him. When Bella becomes a vampire, she gains the ability to project her immunity to mind-altering effects to her allies, including shielding both wolf packs by only shielding their alphas.
  • A non-power example in A Twisted Tale: Conceal, Don't Feel; in a world where Elsa and Anna were separated as children and practically nobody knows Anna even exists, Hans attempts to court Elsa and then Anna as part of a scheme by the Duke of Weselton to get a king on the throne who would make a better trading deal with Weselton, but Hans' efforts to win them over fail as Elsa never sees him that way and Anna's already into Kristoff by the time Hans learns she even exists.
  • Universal Monsters: As discovered late in book 1, the monsters are "not of this world" and cannot be killed in the standard methods (like a stake through the heart for Dracula) — they heal automatically from them. The heroes have to instead find a way to trap them back in their movies. The only ones not immune are human villains Fritz (who gets thrown into a set of chains by the monster, resulting in one of them wrapping around and snapping his neck), Karl (who dies when Joe slams a board into his head), and in the final battle of book 6, Herr Frankenstein and Dr. Pretorius, who die at the hands of the Creature.
  • In Warbreaker, Nightblood is a sentient sword that acts as an Artifact of Attraction, forcing anyone nearby to attack each other in an attempt to steal him for themselves. However, this power is completely useless on those it considers sinless (Indeed, the attractive power is an attempt to discern whether the people in its vicinity are sinless).
  • In Words of Radiance (book two of The Stormlight Archive), it turns out that Shardplate is immune to the lightning that some types of Voidbringers can summon. The first guy to survive such an attack notes that he should have realized it earlier; after all, Shardplate was designed to be used against Voidbringers.
  • For most of the first book of the Xanth series, Bink's quasi-sentient magical talent, being unable to be harmed by magic prevents people from coming to understand its nature by working entirely through Contrived Coincidence, and so was unknown to everyone in the story, including Bink. In the climactic scene however, Bink's talent decides it is necessary that a particular antagonistic character figure it out, and causes the antagonist's magic attack to fail in rather un-subtle example. The character in question was sufficiently powerful and versatile that there was no subtle way left to thwart his magic, so Bink's talent had to create increasingly implausible events to protect him. Since the character in question was also extremely intelligent, he had to be let in on the secret because he'd figure it out anyway. In a later book, Grey Murphy has the ability to nullify magic. This causes a series of would be opponents and other dangers to No Sell against him.
  • In Zero Sight the main requirement for being part of Lambda Squad is having high resistance to mind manipulation from vampires and other mages.
  • The Web Serial Novel The Zombie Knight:
    • Reaper servants like Hector can do this to many attacks. You totally can wound them, they just don't care.
    • Very old servants with high synchronization take this even further, their powerful soul-strengthening making weaker attacks bounce off them or even fizzle uncast.
    • Aberrations can do this too. Any attack that isn't soul-empowered, or empowered enough, is harmlessly deflected by their shadows.

    Pinball 
  • Game of Thrones: The Dragon in the Pro Edition (and the White Walker in the Premium and Limited Editions) automatically shoots back any shots made at it.
  • In Stern's Spider-Man pinball, a magnet allows Doc Ock to grab incoming pinballs before they have a chance to hit him.

    Podcasts 
  • During an attack from dire wolves in the second episode of The Fallen Gods, Flint is able to shrug off several bites thanks to his high Armour Class. He claims it's because his pecs are too huge.
  • In Jemjammer, Mr. Herst ends up ending his turn in a pool of acid. While it's been a pain for everyone else, he resists it so much that he only takes one damage from it. It's like vinegar to him.

    Pro Wrestling 
  • Unlike other performances, pro wrestlers are hitting each other, although they at least try to pull their punches.
    • Wrestlers (in)famous for no-selling include Hulk Hogan, The Undertaker, and John Cena and these men are famous in particular for absorbing their opponent's finishing moves and suddenly recovering to full strength, despite being on the receiving end of a lengthy beating beforehand. This was memorably used during a tag match in WCW during the 90's, when Hogan's tag partner Randy Savage, facing a two-on-one situation, decided to display a little Functional Genre Savvy and hit the apparently unconscious Hulk with his finishing move, the Flying Elbow. Hogan not only no-sold the move but jumped to his feet to help Savage fend off their opponents, as if Savage's elbow had been turned into a Healing Shiv.
    • Rarely seen in WWE but fairly common elsewhere is the "delayed sell", where a wrestler no-sells a move long enough to deliver his own equally devastating move before collapsing.
    • In his heyday, Ric Flair was known for taking a devastating hit and keeping his feet, nonchalantly taking a few steps before literally face faulting.
  • Hulk Hogan made it part of his persona as well. The first step in his "Hulking Up" process is to start no-selling everything. After that, it's all over. In the aftermath of Hogan's first major starring role in the 1989 movie No Holds Barred (a professional wrestler battles a corrupt television producer), a storyline was devised to pit Hogan against co-star Tiny Lister Jr., in Lister's role of man-monster Zeus, in a "real life" feud. (The explanation being that "Zeus" was annoyed and jealous over Hogan's star billing.) Zeus the wrestler made several appearances at wrestling cards, usually to interfere in matches involving Hogan and his friend, Brutus Beefcake, and the trope came into play when Hogan and/or Beefcake would try to fight off Zeus ... but Zeus would stand there, absorb the blows and smile as though he were not hurt! Eventually, a match was set up for SummerSlam 1989, with Hogan-Beefcake taking on Zeus and Randy Savage (with whom Hogan had been feuding, and Beefcake starting that spring); Zeus initially no-sold everything Hogan and Beefcake threw his way, but eventually they figured out his lone weak spot: if you poked his eyes, you could stun him long enough to hurt him. The "unfazable monster" gimmick worked for awhile, but eventually Zeus succumbed to Hogan, and in a "final" steel cage match in December 1989, Zeus little more than jobbed to Hogan ... a far cry from the imposing monster that was initially promoted as "unbeatable." Behind the scenes, Lister — who actually shared mutual respect for Hogan and had no problems with his second billing — had very little formal wrestling training, and Hogan has written in his autobiography that he agreed to go easy on Lister because of this.
  • Quite a few wrestlers use this as their main gimmick. Kevin Nash's career took off after he used the No Sell. Mick Foley recounted that the impetus for this was them watching a Jake Roberts match, whereupon Nash observed: "I tell you one thing, if Jake can get away with that with those skinny legs and that pot belly, I sure as hell can too."
  • In various shows, Ric Flair will often say "I made you" to Sting. He is referring to the 1988 inaugural Clash of Champions PPV, where Flair and Sting fought to a 45 minute draw, where Sting developed his gimmick of no selling Flair's moves, particularly the "Whoo Chop."
    • Then at Bound for Glory 2006, Sting completely ignored Jeff Jarrett smashing a guitar over his head and defeated him.
  • A staple for The Undertaker:
    • He incorporated the no sell into his "rising from the dead" persona, where he would sit up after taking his opponent's Finishing Move. If you see him lying out completely straight after taking a finisher, he's very likely about to do this, especially if his opponent hasn't covered him immediately. Cue an Oh, Crap! face from said opponent.
    • The Rock once got savvy while trying to perform the People's Elbow on Undertaker. When Undertaker sat up, Rock kicked him back down and did the elbow anyway.
    • Kane, whose gimmick borrows a lot from his kayfabe brother (and originally at least, about as much from Jason Voorhees), would do this a lot as well. Kane's fairly regular associate Big Show also does this, especially against smaller opponents.
    • Perhaps the first time Undertaker actually visually reacted to a strike was during the 1992 Royal Rumble, when Ric Flair low-blowed him and Taker sort of "half-sold" it.
  • At Ring of Honor's third anniversary show, Ebessan's Mandible Claw proved ineffective on Samoa Joe, even when using the Mr. Socko.
  • Never mind his size, strength, agility and general ferocity, the biggest hurdle to anyone seeking to beat Umaga was his ability to no-sell anything, even something legitimately damaging like a flying metal staircase to the head. They didn't call him the Samoan Bulldozer for nothing.
  • A weird glitch in the first WWE Day of Reckoning video game happens when an AI player is hit with a finishing move more than 3 times, they will stop selling the move.
  • In every one of the Nintendo 64 pro wrestling games that make use of the AKI engine (which there are several; starting with WCW vs. nWo: World Tour in 1997, ending with WWF No Mercy in 2000), the main counter to striking moves is animated as the character defending himself by simply sticking out his chest and absorbing the blow without flinching at all. This gameplay mechanic is particularly jarring, as it's possible to have the little 'ol geriatric (80+ years old!) Mae Young casually stick out her chest and take a direct hit in the form of a full unrestrained smash from a charging 7' 5", 550-pound legendary André the Giant without moving an inch.
  • According to one meme, Vampiro merchandise is not available in Mexico due to Vampiro refusing to sell ANYTHING there (even the dreaded martinete, or piledriver, which is INSTANT DEATH in lucha libre).
  • Similarly, one common snark from smarks is that the only thing John Cena sells is merchandise.
  • Subverted by Kellie Skater in SHIMMER, who claims to be "pure adamantium" and "virtually indestructible". This is about as true as JBL's claims that he is a wrestling god.
  • Related to no-selling is sandbagging, when a wrestler resists an opponent's slam or pick-up technique, making it difficult if not impossible to perform. While mostly a case of simply being too green to distribute their weight properly, some wrestlers intentionally sandbag when facing someone they don't like. Hardcore Holly was infamous for sandbagging against any and all rookies. Although he fervently denies attempting to sandbag on Brock Lesnar. In a televised match with then-rookie Brock Lesnar, the story goes that Holly started sandbagging and delivering stiff shots (i.e. real punches). Eventually, Lesnar got Holly into a powerbomb position, went to put him on his shoulders. Holly sandbagged the lift, Lesnar did the move anyway, and Holly was dropped on his neck, breaking it and causing him to be legitimately out for 13 months. Holly maintains he wasn't dumb enough to sandbag on a guy Lesnar's size and that the move simply went wrong (either because he failed to duck a telegraphed blow or was hit too hard by Lesnar to take the move correctly). Nonetheless, it demonstrates why these moves are done together.
    • Another notable case of sandbagging came on an episode of WCW Nitro where the Giant went to chokeslam Stevie Ray, but for whatever reason, Stevie Ray visibly refused to jump to make the move work. Instead, the Giant used his impressive strength to lift up Stevie Ray all on his own and delivered the move anyway.
    • Shane Douglas claims that Scott Hall would constantly sandbag him (or as he termed it, "lead ass") during Douglas' brief WWF tenure. Hall repeatedly denied this before he passed away, claiming that Douglas simply doesn't know how to work.
  • Mick Foley once made a joke at Al Snow's expense by saying, "I'd like to congratulate Al Snow on his lucrative Laz-E-Boy endorsement deal, which is odd, because Al usually doesn't sell chairs." However, this was not like most cases where the reason for a guy no-selling is because he's a jerk or because their gimmick requires them to be nigh-invincible. The joke occurred after a match wherein, after a lengthy sequence that saw Snow suffer a legitimate concussion in a match with the Road Dogg (which neither of the two recognized at the moment), when his opponent hit Snow with a chair several times and Snow just shrugged all of them off. Foley went on to ask Snow about it after the match (when the effects of the concussion were becoming apparent) only to have Snow ask, "What chair shots?", as he legitimately did not remember the whole incident (at least according to Snow, but, knowing Snow and Foley's longtime friendship, he probably was being honest). Mick recounted the story in his second book. Mick also recounted a humorous instance of him, as Cactus Jack, no-selling a chair shot by the Fake Mankind (Dennis Knight, a.k.a. Phineas I. Godwin, a.k.a. Mideon): "A chair to the back, you see, is a little different than a chair to the head, in that one has a bit more freedom in how to sell it. Which is my way of trying not to sound like a total hypocrite for not selling it at all."
  • Ultimate Warrior no-sold anything, even Triple H's Pedigree. Incidentally, this was a month or two BEFORE Trips was temporarily demoted to jobber in punishment for the Madison Square Garden Incident. Warrior was making his big return and they needed a warm body for him to squash, and there really wasn't anyone else available.
  • The Japanese wrestlers in Dragon Gate USA tend to not sell anything until they reach their limit, at which point they collapse. Bryan Alvarez likened this peculiarity of Dragon Gate USA singles matches to a live-action fighting game.
  • During a cage match between Bruiser Brody and Lex Luger in 1985, Luger did something to displease Brody. Rather than attacking Luger, Brody's response was to simply stop selling and stare at his opponent for the rest of the match. Given Luger's limited offense, the next several minutes consist of Luger throwing punch after punch at Brody, who just stands there, glaring a hole through him, until a genuinely terrified Luger punches the referee for a deliberate disqualification, hightails it over the side of the cage and escapes to the locker room. Another explanation given by several wrestling experts is that the bookers in Florida, where Luger was wrestling at the time, brought Brody (a legitimate bad-ass, which is largely believed to be the cause of his untimely downfall in Puerto Rico) in to teach the rookie Luger a thing or two about respect. Bill Alfonso, the referee for the match, has since said that the lesson was that you don't tell a veteran how to work a match. Another source claims that Brody (who was known for being difficult to work with) told Luger later that he had nothing against him, he just felt the match wasn't working out and had had enough of it.
  • Wrestlers with high-risk styles, such as cruiserweights or hardcore wresters, sometimes instinctively no sell huge moves to reassure themselves that they aren't seriously hurt. Two examples written about in their books include Chris Jericho immediately jumping up after a huge blow to his neck (to prove he didn't get crippled, a huge fear of his) and Mick Foley no selling a C4 explosion under the arm!
  • At Bound For Glory 2005, Christopher Daniels hits AJ Styles with a German Suplex, but Styles gets up immediately showing no signs of pain before flooring Daniels.
  • A less obvious example of no selling occurred at WrestleMania XII in the match between Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels. Shawn spent a long part of the sixty minute match attacking Bret's arm, but Bret acted like his arm was fine during his offense on Shawn. This was likely due to the bitter rivalry between the two in Real Life.
  • Before a match at Ring of Honor's Final Battle 2011, The World's Greatest Tag Team (Shelton Benjamin and Charlie Haas) beat down the Briscoe Brothers with chairs and their Tag Team Championship Titles for eight minutes straight. Once they were all in the ring and the match officially started, the Briscoes, still bloody and bruised from the beat-down, were able to go toe-to-toe for another thirteen minutes as if nothing happened, eventually getting a clean win.
  • Goldberg no sold frequently during his streak and afterwards. He had a memorable match with Glacier where he no sold everything.
  • Sometimes this used as a spot to start off a match, such as near the beginning of the Hogan v. Warrior WrestleMania VI match or Taz at the beginning of his match in Heatwave '98, and it's also a standard opening spot in any match against a giant like Mark Henry, Big Show or someone billed as a monster heel like Zeus. The beginning of a match is generally the most acceptable time to no sell a move, since it makes sense that a wrestler is less hurt by moves when they're fresh, especially if it plays into the psychology of the match (e.g. a "get the big man off his feet" plot).
  • The "sell nothing at the start of the match" routine is incredibly common in Japan, even if the wrestler is not a monster but is just somewhat large and sometimes not even then. Lance Archer, whose former gimmick was analyzing and outsmarting the opponent, took to roaring and no selling after heading to New Japan Pro-Wrestling, for example.
  • At Halloween Havoc 1995, The Giant no-sold falling off the roof of a building after losing the monster truck sumo portion of the main event, coming to ringside without a scratch on him. In the actual wrestling match, Hulk Hogan no-sold Giant's chokeslam finisher before the schmoz finish.
  • Bayley has a habit of no selling a move or two towards the end of her matches. At the NXT Takeover Brooklyn event, the end of the match saw Asuka kick her in the head, only for Bayley to no sell it to get in one last slap before Asuka laid Bayley out with two more heavy kicks to end the match and win the title off Bayley.
  • Orange Cassidy is a more modern and unique example, as he doesn't sell moves not because he's tough or invincible, but because he's lazy. A punch has him landing on his back before he kips back up, or a headlock takeover has him gently rolling away. All this while his hands are in his pockets and he has a bored expression on his face the whole time, mind you.
  • Bray Wyatt's "The Fiend" persona no sells everything and tends to kick out at one when hit with finishing moves or weapons.
  • Hook no-sold a Piledriver, in reference to his father Taz no-selling a Piledriver in ECW.
  • Matt Riddle almost always no-sells getting hit with a German Suplex.

    Puppet Shows 
  • Throughout The Muppet Show, Miss Piggy's signature karate chops have proven to be quiet effective, but there have been a couple who have been able to withstand it. The first was Charlie McCarthy (he was made of solid oak). The other being Christopher Reeve (seems he truly was the Man of Steel). At one point, Kermit tried to karate chop Miss Piggy only for nothing to happen. Miss Piggy then proceeded to show him how it was done.

    Roleplay 
  • It should be noted that use of this Trope, unless agreed upon by everyone before hand, is extremely frowned upon in RPs, especially Forum ones and is often considered a key sign of God Modding. An infamous example would be Dark Super Sonic from Campus Life: the original controller ended up boosting his powers by giving him the 'Absolute Zero Armor'; an armor made of harden ice that effectively made him invincible to everything. The resulting backlash from this resulted in not only control of Dark Super Sonic being taken from him but also resulted in his controller being banned from the roleplay. Dark Super Sonic was then given to a different RPer who used him more reasonably and the 'Absolute Zero Armor' was never brought up again once the characters managed to break it.
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh! East Academy, Haine does this to Gol'gar's Cosmic Nebula Force attack
  • Destroy the Godmodder: Most things used on the godmodder, and a number of attacks aimed at Piono post-MBoA.

    Sports 
  • According to legend, famous Cricketer W.G. Grace was once clean bowled in the first over of a match. Grace simply re-set his stumps and took block again, telling the bowler, "They've come to watch me bat, not you bowl."
  • In Mixed Martial Arts and most real combat sports in general, this power is a near requirement.
    • Showing that you are hurt can encourage your opponent to keep attacking you in that method, and scores points in the eyes of the judges. Also, if you scream in agony while in a submission hold or after a nasty strike, there's a high chance the referee will stop the match and consider it a verbal submission.
    • Chael Sonnen was infamous for crying in pain when caught in submissions early in his career; this cost him at least one bout even though he never tapped or verbally said the equivalent of "I quit."
    • In his match with Chael, Jon Jones nastily broke his toe to the point where it was nearly hanging off his foot; he completely ignored it and finished Chael in the first round (acknowledging it would have cost him the match and his title; had the fight made it to the second round, the doctor would have most likely seen it and called the match as well).
    • Randy Couture blocked a head kick from Gabriel Gonzaga in their title fight and completely no-sold it (the same high kick Gabe knocked out Cro Cop with in his previous fight) and stalked him down and finished him. The kick broke his arm.
    • Many, many fighters have done Hulk Hogan-style "shakes head/nuh huh, didn't hurt" motions to their opponent after a particularly good punch or kick; this is accepted code in the sport for "you tagged me good but I'm not gonna give you the satisfaction."
    • Fedor Emelianenko no sold the greatest suplex in the suplexiverse against Kevin Randleman in 2004 after landing directly on his head and neck, swept to side control and submitted Randleman with a kimura in less than a minute following.
  • Roller derby players actively strive to achieve a no sell. Players who can take a block without so much as being knocked off course or flinching are not only excellent defensive and obstructive players, they are also terrifying to the opposing team.
  • How Eli Manning won his way to his second Super Bowl appearance in the 2011-12 playoffs. In the NFC Championship game between Eli's New York Giants and the San Francisco 49ers, he took a big hit on almost every play and even took 6 sacks during the game, and each time he got up and kept playing like nothing had happened. Despite throwing the ball over 50 times in rainy and windy conditions, he did not throw a single interception.
  • During the England vs Portugal match at the Euro 2016 Qualifiers, Harry Kane got kicked in the head as a result of an...ambitious challenge by Bruno Alves. Kane just scrambled back to his feet and kept running towards the ball, as if under the impression that the ref was playing advantage.
  • One humorous example from the National Basketball Association took place in a 1990 regular-season game between the defending champion Detroit Pistons against the Philadelphia 76ers. At one point during the game, Detroit's star point guard Isiah Thomas tried to steal the ball from 76ers forward (and former Detroit teammate) Rick Mahornnote  and in frustration punched Mahorn in the head, resulting in Thomas being ejected. Mahorn, upon being punched, didn't even flinch.

    Theatre 
  • Melissa tries to harness the powers of Teresa's talisman against her at the end of Abandon All Hope — this becomes a complete No-Sell when it's revealed Teresa was completely lying about getting her power from a talisman.
  • In Pokémon Live!, none of the Pokémon's attacks have any effect on MechaMew2, not even very strong ones like Thunder and Self Destruct.

    Visual Novels 
  • Danganronpa has Makoto Naegi, The Hero of the first game and the Big Good for the rest of the franchise. The Ultimate Despair is known for their ability to throw people in despair, manipulate their minds with Mind Rape and Breaking Speech and make everybody lose hope with a few words. Makoto, however, is immune to any of that, which he attributes to his unyielding optimism, and their Breaking Speech is often counterattacked and defeated by Makoto's Rousing Speech. The third installment takes it a step further, by showing that even their analytical skills don't work on him, as they can't predict his luck, which is completely random in terms of both when and how it'll work in his favor.
  • In Dies Irae there are quite a few who fit to bill of being able to shrug off whatever is thrown at them, but a few examples would be:
    • The priest Valerian Trifa is someone who happens to be the caretaker of the Big Bad's physical body. This gives him such obscene defenses that more often than not he just stands there in a fight letting the opponent wail on him to no effect, maybe slipping in the occasional counterattack every now and again. And needless to say but the same also applies to said Big Bad.
    • One of the three commanders, Machina, has the ability to "end" whatever he comes in touch with. Basically, if something has a beginning, middle and an end, he can force it to end immediately. Be it magical effects or whole existences. This is of course valuable defensively as most things just "end" upon hitting him making him very difficult to hurt.
    • And finally there is the Time Armor, possessed by the main character Ren Fujii after he begins Emanating. It locks it's users state at zero and prevents any kind of change from being imposed on them unless they allow it. It is one of the most powerful defensive abilities in the series and is something that can even block the effect of Machina's all ending fists.
  • Fate/stay night: As a rule of thumb, all Servants are immune to attacks that are not at least indirectly magical in nature.
    • Berserker's Noble Phantasm "God Hand" negates any attacks of B rank or lower, meaning that only an insanely powerful attack can harm him. And as if that wasn't enough, it also gives him twelve lives and makes him immune to any attack which killed him before.
    • If activated instead of used passively, Avalon allows the user to No Sell EVERYTHING. From a rain of countless legendary Noble Phantasms to the single most powerful artifact weapon in the whole of the Nasuverse (capable of tearing apart spacetime and destroying the world), Avalon just ignores the whole thing.
    • In the backstory (depicted in Fate/Zero), Gilgamesh No Sells the Holy Grail pouring out all of the world's evil at once, declaring that because he is "the King of all mankind", he has the authority to take responsibility for mankind's collective sins, thus those sins cannot corrupt him. Whether it was because of that or just because Gilgamesh's ego is roughly the size of a galaxy, he turns out correct: the Grail cannot corrupt him. He does it again in the "Heaven's Feel" scenario, when the Servant-devouring Shadow tries to corrupt him but can't, and has to hurriedly eat him before he kills it.
  • Galaxy Angel: In the second game, Moonlit Lovers, the O-Gaub uses the Black Moon's technology to surround itself with a Negative Chrono Wave, creating a shield capable of withstanding attacks from any weapon, including a direct hit from the Elsior's Chrono Break Cannon. This forces the heroes to develop a Field Canceller device to cancel this shield, installing it on Unit #7 along with the aforementioned Chrono Break Cannon to destroy it at point blank.
  • This seems to be a thing among the family of King Arthur in the Nasuverse. In Fate/EXTRA, Gawain possesses an ability called "Numeral of the Saint." It grants him a threefold boost in his power when the sun is overhead, which manifests in-game as taking no damage whatsoever from your Servant's attacks. So in order to even harm him, you and your ally have to hack into the Arena, deactivate the sun, and wound him while the sun is out.
  • The Parry skill in Fleuret Blanc is a guaranteed block against any attack — unless it comes up against Feint, in which case a difficult Quick Time Event determines its success.
  • In Silver Crisis, this is how most bouts against main antagonists Silver and Ganondorf go. Granted, it's justified because Ganondorf can only be killed by Sacred Weapons made by the Gods, and the same applies to Silver because he was a being created by Ganondorf's magic.
  • In Spirit Hunter: NG, D-Man explains in Spirit Memoirs 6 that curses have no effect on him, hence why he's so cavalier about receiving a mail that supposedly turns a person into a murderer. As revealed at the end of his quest, this is because he's already dead.
  • The case 4 culprit from Tyrion Cuthbert: Attorney of the Arcane is the only person who won't take any damage in the final Argument with you in court.

    Web Animation 
  • CPU Championship Series: In Everest Tony manages to do this to Blood Falcon's attempt to send him to the Dark Realm through sheer determination. Combined with Legacy Character in this case.
  • In the Eddsworld Halloween Musical Episode "Trick or Threat", an evil little girl manages to possess both Matt and Edd, but her powers doesn't work on Tom, who is able to kick her out of the house, and thus making Edd and Matt go back to normal. It turns out Tom was immune from the girl's psychic powers because he was already possessed.
  • Epithet Erased:
    • Zora's ability to inflict Rapid Aging only works on things that show effects of that ageing. Ramsey makes himself immune to it by turning himself to gold, which doesn't corrode.
    • In Epithet Erased: Prison of Plastic, Molly's power is a hard counter to her sister's, and while it has limitations, as you'd expect from an ability being used by a malnourished twelve-year-old who's already had a tiring week, most of the challenges the group encounter on their way to Lorelai's stronghold have to threaten Feenie and/or Trixie indirectly, because Molly can just shrug everything off and erase the "boss" from existence. The first major crack in Lorelai's facade comes when she throws an attack that she knows won't hurt Molly, but Rick jumps in front of the attack.
  • Helluva Boss: Blitzo and Millie are captured by Satanists who attempt to send the imps back to Hell by tying them to a stake, dousing them in gasoline, and setting them alight. After a tense moment they turn out to be perfectly fine, so the Satanists decide to try shooting them in the head, which Blitzo admits would work better.
  • In Kingdumb Hearts: "Derp Dorp Dorpence," when Sora first encounters young Xehanort, he uses dream power to drop coconuts on him. Later, when he encounters young Xehanort again, Xehanort tries to no sell him, telling him that this won't work on him again. Sora uses dream power to turn him into a coconut.
  • Red vs. Blue sees Tucker attempt to drop a shipping container on a recently recreated Tex only for her to no sell it.
  • RWBY:
    • In the distant past of Remnant, gods walked among humans until humanity was incited into building an army against the gods. When the army attacked the gods with magic, the God of Darkness captures all the magic in a single claw with casual ease. He is so incensed by humanity using the gift he had given then against him that he destroys the entire race, leaving the instigator of the confrontation — Salem — alone on an empty planet, unable to die.
    God of Darkness: My own gift to them... used against me.
    • Salem herself does this during her fight in "Witch". She takes an entire barrage of punches from Yang without even flinching, and is merely inconvenienced when Yang detonates at least half a dozen sticky bombs to destroy the upper half of her body. Hazel's assault on her fares slightly better, but she still effectively shrugs off everything he throws at her, including caving her face in.
  • This happens when Superman tries to fight Darkseid in the Cartoon Hooligans episode "What If Superman Got Sick?!". This is justified due to Superman being sick.
  • The Wrath of Giga Bowser: Despite multiple characters attempting to fight back against Giga Bowser, all of their attacks prove completely ineffective, not even managing to make it flinch. During the climax of the video, multiple characters are unloading a barrage of missiles and laser beams at Giga Bowser, but it just keeps advancing without even reacting to being shot.

    Webcomics 
  • In Champions of Far'aus Mischevies, a type of trickster spirit, have tounges that nullify magic that comes into contact with them.
  • Cucumber Quest:
    • Almond blocks Peridot's petrification-into-gemstone spell seemingly by whacking it aside with her sword, but it was really her Heroic Spirit that kept her sword from being transformed.
    • Nautilus was able to use her Summon Magic to good effect even against the Disaster Masters until she ended up fighting Rosemaster, who simply grabs it and hurls it to the floor. (Earlier, Saturday had evaded its attack by tying it into a lasso, but the second instance is much more serious.)
  • In El Goonish Shive, when Not-Tengu is hit by Ellen's tranformation beam it has no effect on him whereas every time Ellen has used it before it has at least had a stun effect.
  • Erika and the Princes in Distress: Angered that Erika interrupted its duel, a scorpunch launches its huge fist-shaped tail at full force straight towards her head. Erika merely turns around looking pissed, and the scorpunch realizes it is royally screwed. Somewhat subverted however, when Pita then pats the back of Erika's head, and she actually cowers and lets out a cry of pain.
  • Girl Genius:
    • The Master of Paris easily shrugs off an attack that moments before turned a group of knights into Dem Bones style servants to the one who uses it.
    • Played for Laughs by Othar Tryggvassen (GENTLEMAN ADVENTURER!) who no-sells having a Jaeger land on his back from terminal velocity. When Tarvek points out his spine should be broken, Othar brushes it off with "special trousers. Very heroic".
    • When a Dreen makes its first appearance, it at first appears to be an anti-climatic gag with Tarvek's warnings of how dangerous they are seemingly ended when Martellus's battle-clank squashes it flat. In the next strip, Martellus's clank has been disassembled from the bottom up, without the Dreen even taking its attention away from Agatha.
    • By the time Von Pinn fights Lucrezia in the latter's old lab in Castle Heterodyne, she has rendered herself immune to Lucrezia's Compelling Voice.
  • All paladins have a natural No Sell with the Axe of Prissan in Goblins. In order to ensure it is wielded by a paladin for good, the weapon is magically enchanted to pass harmlessly through any paladin it strikes. The enchantment also extends to anything attached to the axe. As revealed later this can be manipulated. The goblins tied a rope to the axe and then threw it through Kore. While the rope was still inside Kore, it was severed from the axe and rematerialized inside his throat.
  • Godslave: When Edith tries her Megaton Punch on Turner, his only reaction is a small wince.
  • Grrl Power: Maxima pulls off a rather spectacular no-sell when Vehemence gives her a super-powered punch to the face. Her internal monologue reveals that he broke her nose, but she's not about to tell him that.
    Maxima: You made me take a step back. You are strong.
    Vehemence: Hah hah, what the fuck.
    • A vault of supernatural artifacts too dangerous to be used is protected by, among other things, an immense golem with a weakness-inducing aura. When they have to open the vault after a robbery, the supernatural entities are all visibly immoblized, while the ARCHON agents Maxima, Dabbler, and Halo make short work of the golem. When asked why the aura didn't affect them:
      Dabbler: Resistance to debuffs!
      Halo: Nothing gets through Mister Bubble.
      Maxima: It did.
  • Gunnerkrigg Court: Jones has a sparring match with Sir Eglamore, where his sword glances off her face without leaving a mark. Chapter 40 later shows her being invulnerable to a spear.
  • Sheriff Ned in Harry Potter Comics: is the first muggle the wizards encounter (though others follow) that is immune to mind magic and can't be memory charmed. He has no idea what they're even trying to do when they attempt it. It is later revealed that a growing number of muggles are becoming immune to memory charms, a genetic adaptation of their immune systems due to wizards using the charms on them so often.
  • The Titan in Latchkey Kingdom can No-Sell a stab to its weak point. It's significantly weaker to explosives, though.
  • The Order of the Stick:
    • The prequel Start of Darkness has Xykon kick off his ascension (or de-scension) to lichdom by taking Lirian the Elf druid in a Curb-Stomp Battle. None of Lirian's magic affects Xykon, including turning herself into a dragon to fight better.
      Xykon: Are you starting to get it yet? Your claw/claw/bite doesn't impress me, I have Damage Reduction up the wazoo.
    • The first hint that Belkar's alignment is south of neutral is when an Unholy Blight spell (doesn't affect evil creatures) that incapacitates the rest of the party has no effect on him.
    • The Monster in the Darkness also has incredible Damage Reduction, to the point that he didn't even notice Belkar attacking him. Haley's next suggestion was to run the hell away as fast as possible.
    • Miko also tried and failed to harm the Monster. Apparently, her katana "tickles". When he promptly challenged her to a "who can hit the lightest" game, she planned to use her round to attempt her most powerful attack, but she never got that far because the Monster's weakest attack sent her flying.
    • Using negative energy effects on Nale is just plain stupid; making out with his girlfriend involves a close encounter with a level drain attack, meaning that he buys Potions of Negative Energy Protection in bulk. Unfortunately for him, he is less resistant to knives.
  • This Rare Candy Treatment strip shows Marowak failing to hurt Noctowl with its Bonerang.
  • Theo from Sidekicks manages to do this to Monk every time the latter tries to use his superpower.
  • Sluggy Freelance: Bun-bun is immune to Basphomy's magic that inflicts one's worst fear upon one. Apparently this is because he's so badass and his worst fear is losing, so it just makes him try harder. He finds it much harder to forfeit a struggle later on.
  • Stand Still, Stay Silent: The first working rune Reynir comes up with catches fire when ghosts approach. Drawn large enough on the ground, they can be used as extremely selective landmine. They unfortunately don't work on the massive Merger of Souls that is leading them, causing Lalli to have to fight it himself.
  • Tower of God:
    • In the Tower, Shinsu is everything. It's an unlimited power and is breathed instead of air, so those who are apt in controlling it prefer this to normal physical attacks. So when people who are extremely resistant to it appear, like Yuri and Viole, this trope just piles up. The first example is when an administrator tests people who want to go up the Tower for their ability to withstand Shinsu at all. He first uses it to push back everyone and then those who can pass through a wall of it may proceed — but the seemingly weak protagonist Bam is not even pushed back by the wave that was supposed to affect everyone.
    • Later, Bam is shown to be immune to (at least some) spells, which are apparently a form of magic different from Shinsu manipulation.
    • At the end of the "Name-Hunt Station" sub-arc, Princess Yuri Jahad gets into a fight with Slayer Karaka. Though both are shown to be extremely powerful, Yuri clearly has the upper hand because nothing Karaka can do to her manages to do any damage — not even reflecting the power of her own attacks against her. Likewise, she isn't even hurt by Karaka's spheres of darkness that are supposed to completely annihilate an opponent on contact.
    • When the protagonists enter the virtual world of the Hidden Floor, they encounter younger versions of Jahad and Khun Edahn, both of whom are already extremely powerful at that point. But when when the avatar of Jahad as he is now appears on the Hidden Floor, young Jahad's Cool Sword breaks when striking him, and Edahn's lightning spear the size of a tall building vanishes without a trace — both without provoking any reaction. So the two attack him in a way that No-Sells his defences: by starting a process that annihilates the entire virtual world and strategically aiming its effect at his hand first, enabling the protagonist to escape his grip.
  • Unordinary: Arlo's barriers are completely impenetrable to those with a lower power level than him. Even Sera damages herself breaking through it, as well as John, though she healed herself in seconds by rewinding the injury. Additionally, anyone who attacks the barrier appears to have the force the used reflected back on them, hurting them even more, though whenever his barrier breaks Arlo takes damage as well.
  • In Val and Isaac, Isaac's asexuality means he's impervious to things like a siren's song or the arrow of a Romanticore. He's also immune to poison, not because he's ace, but because he keeps accidentally drinking the stuff.
  • Weregeek (or rather its guest page) reminds us: while Warhammer 40,000 may be fun, very few sorts of Mind Screw can be worse than this trope applied recursively.

    Web Original 
  • Near the end of Dream's first Death Swap, in the Nether, Dream uses an enchanted golden apple to swim in lava. Of course, George doesn't know this, and Dream had humorous reactions swimming in the lava.
  • In Worm:
    • One of the things that makes the Endbringers so hard to fight is that they are barely affected by many parahuman powers. It takes the combined forces of basically every parahuman (villain and hero) just to drive them off, and even then there's usually a massive amount of destruction anyways. Justified by the majority of their body being non-essential, and the closer you get to an essential part the denser and harder to damage that area is, with the essential parts being composed of material so dense it violates physics.
    • Crawler will take damage from any attack the first time, but afterwards his body will develop a natural counter that lets him ignore it completely. Even when he does get hurt, he regenerates so rapidly that he's back to full strength within moments. He's even become a full on Combat Sadomasochist at the point, actively trying to find things that will hurt him to make him stronger.
    • The Siberian is essentially an unstoppable force, completely ignoring any attack and able to destroy barriers by simply walking through them. She can even share this invulnerability with anyone (or thing) she touches. As far as anyone knows, there's no way to hurt her at all, but eventually her weakness is discovered to be that she's just a projection; the actual parahuman is vulnerable to damage and can't receive her touch-invulnerability.
    • Clockblocker is able to temprorarily freeze an object or person in time, rendering it indestructible. It's been demonstrated that an object frozen this way is comparable in durability to the Siberian.
    • Scion makes them all look like chumps, being able to completely counter any ability (including the virtually unstoppable Endbringers) after having a second to identify it. Justified in that he's the source of the majority of the abilities, and is vastly more powerful than any individual regardless of their power source. He simply attunes himself to the shard giving their powers and applies a perfect counter shard.
    • And then there's a non-powered, Played for Laughs example: Emma, who has never worked out a day in her life and has no idea how to fight, attempting to attack Taylor.

    Web Videos 
  • Exploited in Critical Role. Intuit charges deal massive amounts of psychic damage, and even one of them is enough to severely cripple or even kill a person. Lucien exploits his own immunity to psychic damage by dropping about a dozen intuit charges in the chamber of the Somnovem, and standing practically on top of them as they explode, killing the Somnovem and forcing the Mighty Nein to flee, but leaving him completely unharmed.
  • Epic Rap Battles of History:
    • In "Superman vs. Goku", Superman's heat beam bounces harmlessly off Goku's arm.
    • In "Hannibal Lecter vs. Jack the Ripper", Hannibal attempts to break Jack with his raps but Jack is unfazed.
  • One of The Nostalgia Critic's many criticisms about Alien: Resurrection is when Dr. Wren holds Annalee Call hostage, threatening to shoot her in the head, and the rest of the survivors comply, pointing out that as an android a bullet to the head would have no actual effect on her. Especially when being shot in the chest earlier didn't even slow Call down.
    Dr. Wren: Nobody moves, or I put a cap right where this android's brain is!
    Critic: Go ahead, she's a fucking robot! Yeah, sure, drop the weapons! It's not like robots can survive anything extreme, except being shot in the chest, being torn in half (Bishop), and getting your head fucking decapitated (Ash)! But aside from that, robots are very sensitive. Be careful.

    Western Animation 
  • The Adventures of Puss in Boots: The Bloodwolf is on such a higher level than anyone else that nothing anyone does to him makes him do more than flinch slightly. He blocks all of Puss' attacks barehanded just to show he can, as when Puss finds an opening and stabs at the Bloodwolf with all his might, Puss' sword breaks against him.
  • Archer: In "El Secuestro", Pam is mistaken for Cheryl (who is Secretly Wealthy) and kidnapped. While she does spit out blood and gets a black eye, she literally laughs off the kidnappers attempting to beat her into silence, and taunts them over how ineffective they are. The episode later reveals that Pam used to routinely fight in an underground fight circuit, so she's used to dealing with people who can hit a lot harder than these dumb wannabe kidnappers.
  • Avatar: The Last Airbender:
  • The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes:
    • Done hilariously with Luke Cage.
      *WHAM*
      "...It's called unbreakable skin, fool."
    • In the series finale, it's seen just how outmatched the good guys are when Galactus no-sells getting shrunk to microscopic size and trapped in Yellowjacket's gun. He reverses it without so much as turning to look at them!
  • Batman: The Animated Series:
    • In "Joker's Favor", everyman Charlie Collins has spent two years living with the specter of the Joker hanging over his head (after inadvertently cussing the Clown Prince of Crime out on the freeway, he begged for his life; Joker agreed in exchange for Charlie promising him to do a favor — which the villain could call in whenever he wanted — at some point in the future). After being pulled into one of the Joker's insane schemes and living to tell the tale, Charlie confronts the clown in an alleyway. The Joker tries to laugh him off, only for Charlie to sock him in the stomach. The villain immediately starts doing what he'd done for those two years — threatening Charlie's wife and son — but Charlie doesn't even blink, instead pulling out one of the Joker's own bombs and threatening him with it. Joker is terrified and ends up calling for Batman to save him. That's right — a short, pudgy, balding man stood up to the villain with one of the highest body counts in all of fiction, and brushed off his threats. THAT is a Badass Normal.
    • In "Harley and Ivy", it's revealed that Poison Ivy has a natural immunity to poisons and toxins, which she brilliantly employs by hiding out in a half-finished neighborhood built atop a toxic waste dump; she gives Harley the same immunity in the episode, as they've teamed up to commit crimes. When Joker shows up to "reclaim" Harley, he uses his signature Joker venom — which can affect even Batman — on Ivy when she gets in the way. She falls to the ground, coughing... and then those coughs turn to laughter as she stands up and simply says "It doesn't work on me." She then demonstrates that the Joker has no such powers by kicking him square in the crotch, sending him sprawling.
  • Batman Beyond: In "Shriek", Terry tries to sneak around Shriek by switching on the machinery in the factory they're fighting in. Shriek uses his acoustic suit to silence all the sounds except Terry's footsteps.
  • Captain Planet and the Planeteers: In "Summit To Save Earth, Part 2", Zarm forces the Planeteers to "fight" him one-on-one. However, nothing that Wheeler, Linka, Kwame or Gi try has any effect on him, as he easily avoids their attacks by either levitating himself or turning into a hologram.
  • In the Class of 3000 episode "Prank Yankers", when the school is filled with helium as a prank, Philly Phil's voice proves to be so deep that he's unaffected by it.
  • Code Lyoko:
    • Subverted. Attacking a polymorphic clone or someone Xanafied ends up with them no-selling the attack when they're not blocking the attack or knocked out. And even then, it's only for a few moments. However, William (with his entire Xanafied class in episode 54) and Ulrich (with XANAfied Milly in episode 89) succeeded in permanently putting them off of commission.
    • Falling in the Digital Sea guarantees you a Fate Worse than Death. However, thanks to his Super Smoke, William is not affected in the slightest by the Digital Sea, and even lives inside it while he's XANAfied.
  • Danny Phantom:
    • In a dhampyr-style "best of both worlds" arrangement, half-ghosts are immune or resistant to many ghost vulnerabilities. For example, they can effortlessly pass through ghost shields as long as they're in human mode. Also, Danny's ghost sense doesn't detect half-ghosts like Vlad or Danielle (his much more powerful future self no longer has this weakness). Danny's (albeit limited) resistance to Freakshow's control over ghosts could also be due to this.
    • On the flip side, Danny's immune to many other ghosts' powers or attacks that affect humans. He's unaffected by Ember's Mind-Control Music until she gets a significant power boost, and the ghost bugs that attack all his classmates in "Doctor's Disorders" can't infect him (even though he's one of the villain's prime targets in that plot, so they logically would have gone after him, too, if they could have).
    • Wulf's power to create portals between dimensions makes him the only full-ghost able to get through ghost shields.
    • Dora, sister of Prince Aragon, has a Ring of Power that stops Danny's ghost sense from working on her.
    • To most ghosts (including aforementioned incredibly powerful future self), humans, technology, buildings, and anything in the way, Danny's Ghostly Wail attack is a One-Hit Kill that puts them down for the count. The two exceptions are a giant ghost sphinx in "King Tuck" (it's at that point that Sam concludes "Now we're doomed") and Vlad, who gets up and transforms without a scratch on him or a single sign of weakness, as if the attack didn't even happen. Granted, in the latter, Danny had been knocked out twice, overshadowed and shocked, so he may not have been using the Ghostly Wail at full power.
  • When Darkwing Duck fires his trademark gas gun at Bushroot in "Night of the Living Spud," the Plant Person laughs a la Poison Ivy and reveals that doesn't work on him.
  • Dora the Explorer:
    • In the Christmas special, "Dora's Christmas Carol Adventure," Swiper, No Swiping! didn't work on Future!Swiper when it was used by his past self, of all people.
      Future!Swiper: That doesn't work anymore!
    • In "Dora's Big Birthday Adventure", Dora and Boots cannot jump out of the Magic Storybook because it's ineffective when in Wizzle World; the only way out of the book from there is to speak to the Wishing Wizzle who can wish them home with his magic wishing crystal which Dora had on for the previous two Magic Storybook specials.
  • For every dragon weakness on Dragons: Riders of Berk, there's at least one species that's immune to it:
    • Typhoomerangs are the only dragons who are able to eat eels, which are poisonous to all other dragons and makes them really sick and have a disease known as Eel Pox.
    • Scauldrons are able to eat Blue Oleander, a flower that has lethal poison to all other dragons. Their venom is also used as an antidote.
    • Gronckles are unaffected by all forms of Dragon Root, an herb that causes dragons to go crazy and, in concentrated liquid form it can incapacitate them.
    • Whispering Deaths are, unfortunately, unaffected by Dragon Nip, which has a calming effect on all other dragons.
    • Thunderdrums are immune to the Death Song’s singing call because their bellow is so loud that they tend to be almost deaf, making it the only known dragon which is immune to the Death Song's call.
    • Slitherwings are the only dragon that the Death Song can't trap in its amber — due to the poison the Slitherwings secrete through their skin, the liquid amber substance slides right off them before it can harden.
    • The Death Song is the only dragon that can protect itself from Slitherwing poison — the poison can't penetrate its hardened amber.
    • The Screaming Death is the only dragon with scales hard enough to completely protect it from the hunters' Dragon Root lanced arrows. Their scales are also tough against an average powered Night Fury’s plasma blast and a Deadly Nadder’s spine shot.
    • It turns out marble is impervious to all forms of dragon fire and able to completely withstand physical dragon attacks. So far, only Catastrophic Quakens are strong enough to damage marble.
    • The dragon-worshipping Defenders of the Wing feed the local dragons Sagefruit to keep them docile and non-aggressive. Toothless is the first dragon they've ever seen resist its effects (to protect Hiccup). The last season reveals Singetails are also apparently immune to the effects of Sagefruit.
    • According to Viggo, the only dragon powerful enough to beat the nigh-invincible Singetail is the Skrill.
    • Viggo's dragon hunters make their chains, cages, etc. from a "dragon-proof" metal completely impervious to all forms of dragon fire and that dragons can't bite or claw through. It's a constant mission to find dragons that can get around this. The winners? Any Razorwhip tail is sharp enough to slice through it, all Hotburples can bite through it, Changewing acid can dissolve it underwater, and Dagur's able to train his Gronckle to smash through it. Lava also weakens it like it would any metal under such intense heat, enough that one good blast can shatter it — such a technique would normally require at least 2 different dragon species to pull it off, but since Dramillions have both lava and concussive attacks, they're able to destroy it without help from anyone else. The riders also eventually discover that, although the metal may be impervious to any one dragon species' fire, the combined fire of their five different dragons can destroy it.
  • The Fairly OddParents!: When Super Bike finally pushes his yandere tendencies too far, Wanda tries to poof him away. She only gets a face full of fire and a reminder that Super Bike is Nigh-Invulnerable.
  • In the Family Guy episode "Pawtucket Pete", like with the Class of 3000 example, Jerome's voice is deep enough that he's immune to the effects of the helium leaking out of Brian's parade balloon that Peter shot.
  • In Futurama:
    • Fry, due to lacking the Delta Brainwave (an inherent component of most forms of life), has reduced mental capacity in exchange for being completely immune to psionic attacks and manipulation.
    • In "Less Than Hero", Fry and Leela take an ointment creamnote  that allows them to shrug off practically any damage, which they learn after an attempted mugging.
  • Happens in The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, when a woman who thinks Grim will attack her sprays him with pepper spray.
    Grim: It doesn't hurt—I have no eyes.
  • A few characters in Invincible (2021), but Omni-Man is probably at the top of the list. During the Flaxan invasion, he takes several seconds of focused laser fire (when a single shot was enough to cut a regular human in half) without so much as a burn mark on his costume. Later, a house he's in explodes, leaving no trace of the structure or other people inside. When the smoke clears, he's in the exact same spot and pose he was in before the explosion.
  • In one episode of Jackie Chan Adventures that takes place in Spain, Valmont (who's currently sharing a body with Shendu, the Big Bad of the season), Hak Foo, Ratso, and Jackie find themselves standing in the middle of a Pamplona street when the Running of the Bulls begins. Jackie (an extremely athletic archaeologist), Hak Foo (The Brute of Valmont's team), and Ratso (who usually serves as Dumb Muscle and is quite strong himself) immediately panic and find themselves tossed among the angry bulls. But Valmont/Shendu just stands still, and the bulls go around him. It's unclear whether this was because they sensed the demon inhabiting the body, or the combination just gave the two incredible willpower that naturally made the bulls go around what they thought was some kind of immobile obstacle.
  • Justice League: Aquaman in "Ultimatum" after his opponent, Downpour, tries to drown him in a massive wave. He just stands there, not as much as blinking. Seconds later Downpour throws three punches at Aquaman, who doesn't even flinch before knocking Downpour out cold with a single backhand.
  • Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts: In "Cactus Town", Wolf stings the Umlaut Snäkes with her scorpion-tipped staff, but it accomplishes nothing as they have venom flowing their veins anyway.
    Cotton: Oh, honey. Do you know much venom I've got coursing through my veins?
  • The Legend of Korra:
    • Similarly to the Airbender example, in "Out of the Past", Amon is capable of resisting Tarrlok's bloodbending with little effort. At most it simply slows him down. Tarrlok is visibly shocked, as it had always been his foolproof last resort if other methods of subduing people didn't work. The ending reveals that this is because Amon is himself a Bloodbender and is able to bloodbend himself into resisting it.
    • Aang is capable of ignoring bloodbending while in the avatar state.
    • The Dark Spirits in Book Two of Korra also have this ability, but it works on all four elements. In the first two episodes, the main cast hit them with everything they've got, but the spirits either dodge or shrug off the attacks. Even after Korra entered the Avatar State, a single spirit swatted her aside and forced her out of it. Only Unalaq's spiritual waterbending techniques work on them, and even then they're only being calmed down rather than hurt directly.
    • Midway through the series, the sealed Northern Spirit Portal completely defies Unalaq's attempt to open it with waterbending. Even after 10,000 years, the Avatar's seal holds strong.
  • Lilo & Stitch: The Series:
    • Many of Jumba's mind-altering experiments don't work on other experiments, or in some cases, at least, on experiments created after the one with mind-altering powers. Stitch (who himself has no mind-altering powers to be hindered by this rule) was the last of Jumba's original creations and is thus immune to all of them.
    • In "Spike", Jumba shrugs off losing 99% of his intellectual capabilities without missing a beat because "1% of evil super genius is still pretty good."
    • Subverted in "Checkers" when Lilo tries using the mind-controlling Experiment 029 on Jumba who laughs it off and starts to say that it only affects the "weak-minded"... before falling under its control less than a second later.
    • Angel, Experiment 624, can turn any experiment back from good to evil by singing a siren song; however, if that experiment is created after her, the song will have no effect on them. This is shown in her eponymous episode when she sang to Stitch (Experiment 626), who does not turn evil, instead compliments her voice and gives her flowers. This later-made experiment immunity is later exploited by Reuben (Experiment 625) in "Snafu", who tricks her into singing her siren song in reverse to try to turn him from evil to good, only to reveal to her that he recorded her voice with a tape recorder hidden in a bouquet he was holding. (He intended to play the recording in reverse so he and Gantu could convert the experiments Lilo and Stitch reformed back to evil, but Snafu [Experiment 120] ruined those plans.)
  • Looney Tunes: Yosemite Sam of Outer Space, who has billed himself as fearsome and unbeatable, took this to absurd extremes in the 1960 cartoon "Lighter Than Hare" when he boasted that his "indestructible tank" would take out Bugs Bunny. Sam guessed wrong! He tried again with his army of "undefeatable robots" ... but when Bugs put a magnet in the chute where the "mechanized monsters" put their dynamite, they were rapidly pulled in to suffer the blast. Later, Bugs put an explosive in Sam's jetpack. Sam was only one word away from completing Yosemite Sam of Outer Space!, and thus giving chase, before the blast.
  • In Mega Man (Ruby-Spears), the Robot Masters almost always flee after Mega Man steals their powers, letting him end some fights before they begin. However, when he tries this trick on Pharaoh Man, Pharaoh Man responds by punching him in the face so hard that Mega flies to the other side of the street.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • Fluttershy in "Stare Master". She is being turned to stone by a cockatrice, and one might expect her to have some clever solution to the situation, as is typical with such stories. Instead, she just ignores it and stares the creature down and lectures it until it's intimidated into stopping and breaking the enchantment on her.
    • In a similar vein, "The Return of Harmony, Part 1" shows that Fluttershy is the only one of the Mane Six who's immune to Discord's verbal manipulation. Granted, he finally just gives up and uses straight-up mind control instead.
    • "Keep Calm and Flutter On" reverses it. Fluttershy uses The Stare on Discord (the same one she used to cow a dragon into submission); Discord pretends to be scared, then laughs at Fluttershy for thinking her Stare could affect him. By the end of the episode, both being immune to overt manipulation by the other forms the basis of a lasting friendship and his redemption.
    • It should be noted that in "Princess Twilight Sparkle, Part 2", Fluttershy's Stare does work on Discord, implying that Discord's immunity might have come from his Lack of Empathy rather than anything else.
    • As the superhero Saddle Rager in "Power Ponies", her super-powered mode gets a full blast of the Mane-iac's doomsday weapon, and the beam bounces off harmlessly.
    • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2": Until she voluntarily surrenders it, Tirek is unable to drain Twilight of the combined power of the Princesses' alicorn magic. Though likewise, Tirek shrugs off everything Twilight throw at him.
    • Tirek's magic (even with the power of the alicorns — two of which regularly raise the sun and moon, and one who is the living embodiment of The Power of Love — Discord, and many ponies he absorbed) does absolutely nothing to the rainbow-powered Mane Six.
    • In My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Rainbow Rocks, the human Mane Six and Sunset were the only ones unaffected by the Sirens' Mind-Control Music, because of The Power of Friendship that got imbued into them when they drew magic from Twilight's crown; however, this does not prevent them from arguing which allows the Sirens to absorb their magic. DJ PON-3 was also not affected by the spell because she always wears her headphones.
  • In My Little Pony (G3): Twinkle Wish Adventure, it's no sell on The Power of Friendship for Whimsey Weatherbe, at least at first. After the ponies hit her with their cute and catchy song number, "That's What Makes a Friend," she just shrugs it off, saying that she doesn't believe them, that they only want to take the wishing star Twinkle Wish back from her and not actually be her friend. Ultimately, however, she gives Twinkle Wish back on her own when she realizes that keeping her isn't getting her anywhere as far as making friends.
  • Phineas and Ferb:
    • In "The Best Lazy Day Ever", Dr. Doofenshmirtz invents the Ugly-inator, which is designed to make everyone else ugly so that he'll look attractive by comparison. He gets shot by it himself and is unaffected, suggesting that he's already too ugly for it to have an effect.
      Doofenshmirtz: Oh, no! Now I'm ugly! I'm— [realizes that nothing has changed] Oh. Oh, I get it. Hardy-har-har.
    • In "Tip of the Day", Doofenshmirtz invents a Delete-From-My-Mind-inator which can erase whatever is on his mind from all minds in the Tri-State Area; however, anyone who isn't aware of what he's thinking of will be unaffected.
    • The Worst Fear-inator from "Cheers for Fears" brings the worst fear of anyone it zaps to life; however, it has no effect on Perry because he's fearless.
  • The Powerpuff Girls (1998): In the episode "Speed Demon", Him is victorious in a Bad Future where the whole world has gone to "Heck". The girls unleash a full assault, only for Him to pop back up and ask if they're finished.
  • One episode of The Real Ghostbusters features the team trying to catch a ghost haunting a theater, but every time they trap him, he simply breaks out of the trap. It turns out to be the ghost of Harry Houdini.
  • Regular Show:
    • In "Grave Sights", Skips attempts a Groin Attack on one of the zombies. Though the zombie's crotch crumbled to dust, he was otherwise completely unharmed by the kick.
    • In "Rage Against the TV", the Hammer is immune to all damage.... except from furniture.
    • In the Grand Finale, the park crew try to pre-emptively take out Anti-Pops with traps when the fight begins. Despite hitting him with a variety of things, including a train, it doesn't do anything to him with Anti-Pops commenting that it tickled.
  • The Simpsons: Several episodes, largely involving Homer. The best-known is "The Homer They Fall", in which Homer learns that he has an abnormal medical condition that effectively makes him a Stone Wall and decides to take up boxing. For most of the episode, Homer indeed withstands incredible punishment and never so much as flinches... although virtually all of his opponents are weak, unskilled novice boxers. Homer soon gains national media attention, and it isn't long before he somehow earns a shot at former World Champion Drederick Tatum. The No-Sell trope immediately crashes out the window the instant the Simpson-Tatum fight begins (Tatum's blows are just that powerful), and Moe is forced to rescue Homer seconds before Tatum can deliver a blow that surely would have been fatal.
  • Two examples in the South Park episode "Good Times with Weapons":
    • The boys get real "ninja" weapons and pretend-fight with Butters and his persona "Professor Chaos". Professor Chaos repels heat and ice attacks, so Kenny uses his non-elemental attack, a real ninja star into Butter's eye.
    • Cartman picks the ninja power to have whatever power he wants. In a practical sense, it's straight-up No Selling.
  • Spider-Man's spider-sense is capable of detecting threats before they happen, and is powerful enough that some people consider it precognition. However, there are a few things that can bypass it:
    • In The Spectacular Spider-Man, Spidey realizes that, because of the time he spent fused with the symbiote, his spider-sense doesn't consider Venom a threat (leading to a rather painful beatdown).
    • In Ultimate Spider-Man (2012), Peter realizes that people he completely trusts (i.e. May, his teammates, Fury, Agent Coulson, etc) can sneak up on him without registering on his senses, whether he wants to see him at that moment or not (something Coulson demonstrates on at least one occasion).
  • SpongeBob SquarePants:
    • In "Something Smells", SpongeBob eats a peanut-onion sundae he made out of ketchup, onions and a peanut plant, rendering his breath rancid and gross, which scares the townsfolk away. Patrick is unable to discern the stinky breath because he doesn't have a nose; thus, this results in him suspecting that he's ugly.
    • In "The Bully", SpongeBob is threatened by Flats Flounder and spends most of the episode trying to avoid him. However, when the time comes for Flats to beat him, it turns out that SpongeBob's spongy body absorbs the blows, leaving him unharmed. Flats continues hitting him until he's completely exhausted and falls over.
    • In "Karate Island", while ascending the "Four Floors of Fear" to rescue SpongeBob, Sandy makes it to the third floor and encounters Filthy Phil, who uses the power of his body odor to defeat opponents. However, it has no effect on Sandy due to her nose being protected by her air helmet, and Phil passes out from getting a whiff of his own smell.
    • In "It's a SpongeBob Christmas!", Plankton invents a fruitcake with a chemical known as Jerktonium, which causes anyone who eats it to become a naughty Christmas-hating jerk. Surprisingly, the Jerktonium has no effect on SpongeBob, because his innocence and deep love of Christmas protects him from its negative effects.
  • Steven Universe:
    • Modern Homeworld gems have weapons and equipment that directly disrupt the physical forms of gems, instantly reverting them to gem form. Steven doesn't have the physical form of a gem, though, but an organic human body, so they don't seem to do much more than make him feel a bit odd. Similarly, humans (such as Lars) are completely invisible to most of the Gem detection systems as they are set to look for Gems rather than organic material. On the flipside, Homeworld technology has advanced considerably in the six thousand years between their defeat in the Gem War and the present. The hand-shaped Homeworld ship that shows up in "The Return" isn't even scratched by the Crystal Gems' woefully obsolete Light Cannons (though early in the series, just one is enough to destroy an automated probe).
    • Quite a lot of gem weapons and technology were designed only with gems, which are alien rocks with hard light bodies. Humans are often either resistant or entirely immune.
    • In "Earthlings", Amethyst insists on fighting Jasper one on one, to prove that she is as strong as her. Armed with the extra training and weapon upgrade from the weeks since the last time they'd faced each other, she puts all her strength into her attack. After taking a couple of blows from her, Jasper just stops and takes every attack from her without suffering any visible damage.
      Jasper: Is it sinking in yet?
    • In "Reunited", Lapis shrugs off Blue Diamond's Emotion Bomb attack, which had left everyone else involved incapacitated, delivering a Pre Ass Kicking One Liner before proceeding to turn the tide of the battle.
    • Steven's shielding powers at their most powerful effectively make anyone else's attack this, most likely because he's actually a Diamond, and not a Quartz as he'd previously believed. When his Gem is forcibly removed by White Diamond in "Change Your Mind", his Gem half, Pink Steven, effortlessly shields itself against White's brainwashing beam, even when she's firing not just from herself, but from all the other Gems in the room she's controlling. In the movie, when Steven gets his powers back in the climax, he's able to deflect all of Spinel's attacks, defeating her solely by letting her wear herself out enough to where she starts thinking clearly about how awful she's being.
    • At the end of Steven Universe: Future, in "I Am My Monster", Steven's Corrupted Form shrugs off basically everything thrown at him. Granted, nearly all of them were secondary abilities that weren't straight attacks, but none of the Diamonds nor Lapis (who has been shown to be extremely powerful with her water abilities) could keep him held down for very long at all. When holding Steven down fails to stop him, the group quickly changes plans to try and calm Steven down from this form by reaching him emotionally, which, thankfully for them all, works.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987):
    • In one episode, Shredder gets his hands on a ray that makes people afraid. He uses it on the turtles and Krang angrily calls him a fool, saying something to the effect of "this does not work on mutants!" Of course, Krang never once mentioned that (in)convenient fact earlier in the episode. And, to add insult to injury, Shredder gets hit with the ray by the end of the episode, and it works on him just fine — leading to his subsequent humiliation. Then again, this incarnation of Shredder...
    • There is another episode with a fear ray that does work wonders on the Turtles, Bebop and Rocksteady, and Shredder himself. Krang, although not totally immune, is less affected.
    • In another episode, it was established from the beginning that Krang's brainwashing device only affected humans. Unfortunately, because it had to set on the roof of the Channel 6 building, that meant Shredder had to have Rocksteady and Bebop do it so he would be safe, and it caused quite a few problems.
  • Thunder Cats 2011 has this in the "Trials of Lion-O". Lion-O must force Panthro out of a wrestling ring within a time limit, but cannot even move him.
  • In The Transformers G1 episode "The Golden Lagoon", diving into a spring filled with liquid electrum gives a coating that enables both Autobots and Decepticons to shrug off lasers, missiles, and even bombs. This enables the Decepticons to defeat even Omega Supreme, without getting so much as a scratch themselves.
    Starscream: Over 10,000 electron bursts hit me dead-on, and it felt like a soft breeze! Ah, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!
  • Trolls: TrollsTopia: Chaz's Mind-Control Music in "Smooth Operator" can hypnotize any troll alike; however, it has no effect on children, which he realizes too late.
  • VeggieTales: In Sumo of the Opera, the Italian Scallion goes up against sumo champion Apollo Gourd. Despite Scallion having trained harder than he had in his entire life, while Apollo hadn't trained at all, Scallion is badly outmatched...until Apollo tries using his Signature Move on Scallion. For the first time in Apollo's whole career, it doesn't work. Scallion comes close to beating Apollo, but only ends up getting a draw. Still, even that is more than any other challenger to Apollo's title had ever accomplished.
  • Winx Club does this every season beginning with the fourth.
    • In the fourth season, the Winx discover their Enchantix powers are not strong enough against the Wizards of the Black Circle, thus the Winx must earn Believix, one of the higher level fairy forms, which is the only thing stronger enough than their dark power.
    • In the fifth season, Believix turns out to be really weak underwater, and the Winx have to aquire Sirenix, an ancient power last used by Daphne, to fight against Tritannus.
    • Bloomix, which is earned in Season 6 when Bloom shares her Dragon Flame, is not that much effective against Kalshara, so the Winx travel into the past and earn a new nature-based power, Butterflix.
    • Butterflix is also not effective against wicked space creatures such as Staryummies, so Queen Dorana bestows the Winx the Cosmix power which they use to combat them.
  • Xiaolin Showdown has a Shen Gong Wu called the Two-Ton Tunic. When called upon, it transforms into an armored shirt that allows the wearer to shrug off any attack, even a punch from the Fist of Tebigong. The only Wu that is able to affect it is the Reversing Mirror, which can reverse the powers of whatever Shen Gong Wu back on its user.
  • In Gladiator's introduction in X-Men: The Animated Series, Juggernaut punches him in the stomach. He's unfazed, and tosses Juggernaut across the ocean. Then Phoenix shows up for the first time, and she shrugs off Gladiator's attacks and throws him into space.

    Real Life 
  • There was also the tale of the sideshow performer whose stage name was "Oofty Goofty" (real name Leonard Borchardt), also billed as The Wild Man of Borneo. He took a job as a sideshow wildman and had covered his body in hair set in place with tar. A week later he grew ill from what is said to be an inability to perspire due to the thick tar. It nearly proved impossible to remove, with doctors at a hospital having to put tar solvent on his body and leave him on a roof, where it melted off of his body. Some time after that, he was thrown out of a saloon onto a hard cobblestone street and claimed later to feel no pain from it. He then utilized his newfound resistance to pain by inviting the citizens of San Francisco to take a whack at him with a baseball bat for ten cents a swing. Worked out pretty well...until boxing champion John L. Sullivan took up the challenge and broke the bat over Oofty's back, fracturing three of his vertebrae.
  • Harry Houdini claimed to be able to withstand any blow to the abdomen if he had time to brace and would frequently work this into his shows. According to testimony surrounding his death, he was met by some students/fans who asked him about this ability backstage. Harry told them he could perform the feat when prepared and they took it as a sign to proceed. They struck Harry and the blows were believed to have ruptured his appendix. Houdini most likely would have survived had he undergone emergency surgery, but he refused medical care. However, rupture of the appendix by blunt trauma is not common. It is also reasonable that Harry already had appendicitis and all the blows did was confuse Harry about the cause of his abdominal pain, making him dismiss a warning sign that could have saved his life. In either case, Harry refused to abandon a show in favor of emergency care and subsequently died of peritonitis secondary to his ruptured appendix.
  • At the beginning of WW1, German Zeppelins were essentially invulnerable to anything the British threw at them. They flew far higher than the early war fighter planes, artillery shells could not detonate against their soft balloons, and bullets would harmlessly pass through the balloon. The Hydrogen would leak so slowly that Zeppelins could make it all the way from London back to Germany easily. It took the invention of Incendiary rounds to shoot down any Zeppelins. The British brought their own no selling machine to the battlefield in the form of the tanks that were essentially immune to the massed machine gun fire that dominated trench warfare. The only things that could stop a tank were grenades, really lucky artillery fire, and random mechanical failure.
  • Many professional fighters tend to act as though a hit had no effect to throw off their opponent. Most of the time when a fighter does this, it actually means they were hurt.
  • Car accidents subvert the trope: safer cars (especially safer sports cars or race cars made after the 1980s) have crumple zones and are specifically built to take the impact of a crash, meaning the crash, the car, and/or both can easily look like No One Could Survive That!, while its passenger(s) can easily be uninjured or capable of walking away. On the other hand, older vehicles before safety developments and crumple zones or unsafe modern vehicles could themselves appear to have sustained no damage — with the occupants killed or seriously injured.
  • More awareness of psychological trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder has led to some people assuming all people who have suffered a traumatic event or loss must be suffering from the most severe, stereotypical forms of it. This unfortunately has even led to cases of soldiers who don't have PTSD being judged as merciless killers (even in cases where they killed no one and were not combat personnel), or people questioning someone's allegations of abuse or rape because "they got over it too quickly." Worst of all, false convictions of murder because you'd have cried more if you really loved your deceased parent/child/spouse/etc; to not act as expected, you must have done it!
  • A few interesting cases from planes of World War II:
    • During a patrol, a group of P-47 Thunderbolts were looking for German fighters. One pilot saw some, but before he could react, one of the Germans (who were diving on the formation) knocked his plane out of the fight. After a few thousand feet went by, the P47 leveled off, and after several failed attempts to bail out, the pilot decided to try and return to base. After this, another German fighter (an FW-190) arrived, and started firing on him... after 3 attempts, the German ran out of ammunition, but the 'Jug' was still flying. The German rendered a salute (probably the German ace Colonel Egon Mayer, who would have been denied his 67th kill of the war), and left. The American arrived back at base, landed, got out, and started counting the bullet holes. After passing 200, and not even moving off the wing... he gave up. The pilot in question? Robert S. Johnson
    • Grumman fighters, such as the F4F Wildcat, of the period were also subject to this, being specifically designed so that the entire plane could be wrecked and the cockpit would still be intact. Compared to the more nimble but virtually unarmored Mitsubishi A6M Zero, this led to battles where the Zero pilot could easily catch the lumbering Wildcat, then pour bullets into it for fifteen minutes with no effect. But if the Zero got in front of the Wildcat for even two seconds...
    • B-17s, too. Most famously, one B-17 has been photographed trundling along after getting hit by a German fighter. As in the fighter itself hit the plane. While the tail of the featured B-17 did eventually snap off, it managed to only do so once it and its crew were safely on the ground.note  American aircraft manufacturers built tough.
  • The United States Navy:
    • When it was made anew with the Naval Act of 1794note , Congress authorized six frigates as designed by Joshua Humphreys (though one was extensively modified by her naval constructor). These ships were designed to be America's capital ships in lieu of heavier ships of the line and were quite unlike common European frigates. For one, their frames and other critical parts were made of southern live oak (Quercus virginiana), a form of live oak that grows only in what is now the southeastern United States and is much stronger than the kinds of oak commonly used in ships of that time. For another, Humphreys included a number of innovations in his designs, such as "diagonal riders" that greatly improved the frigates' structural integrity. It's resulted in memorable cases of these frigates shrugging off things that would have easily ruined other ships.
    • This is how USS Constitution got her nickname "Old Ironsides," during her battle with HMS Guerriere during the War of 1812. Upon seeing the cannonballs of the British frigate's 32-pounder carronades bouncing off of Constitution's hull, one of her crew shouted "Huzzah! Her sides are Made of Iron!" That's right, she was (and still is, presumably) tough enough to No Sell cannonballs — and despite that, she was still fast enough to outrun heavier fighting sail like ships of the line, as she did with HMS Africa during the "Great Chase" earlier that year (of which Guerriere had also taken part).
    • USS United States, the first of the six frigates, had a moment of this during The American Civil War. By then she had been in ordinarynote  and left to rot for years at Norfolk. As the war drew to a close, the rebels sought to turn the ship into a harbor blockade by scuttling her. Despite years of neglect, the live oak timbers were still strong enough to ruin a whole box of axes just trying to cut into them. It took drilling holes into the ship's hull just to sink her. Even that wasn't her final fate — Union forces raised her from the harbor bottom intact after retaking Norfolk, only for her to be broken up and sold for scrap after the war's end.
    • In 1938, a hurricane hit New England and caused Constitution to be blown out into Boston Harbor. She slammed into the Bagley-class destroyer Ralph Talbot, yet only suffered superficial damage. Eight years later, a Navy tug accidentally rammed her in the stern, and again only took minor damage above the waterline. Constitution was well over a hundred years old by this point yet was still tough enough to take a roughhousing from ships made of steel!
    • During the War of 1812, after the USS Constitution claimed her second kill (HMS Java), the British Admiralty issued an order to "Not engage American Heavy Frigates in Single Combat". Towards the end of the war, the USS Constitution sortied out to look for more prey to sink, and ran into two British Frigates (HMS Cyane and HMS Lavant). After several hours exchanging broadsides with each ship in turnnote , emerged victorious. The British ships followed their orders, but the Constitution upheld American tradition of defying British orders.
  • During the Second World War, thanks to the armored flight decks of British aircraft carriers, they could no-sell kamikazes. This photograph of HMS Formidable ablaze after being hit by a kamikaze is often used when kamikaze missions are featured in the media—generally without revealing that the Formidable was launching planes again less than four hours later (and that much of the steam and smoke in the picture is not from a fire, but from damage to the ship's boilers). A popular legend of the time was that one of the first announcements a British carrier captain made to his crew following a kamikaze attack was "Sweepers, man your brooms." All but two of Britain's pre-WWII aircraft carriers (of which all were converted WWI-era warships except for one, and were sitting ducks) were sunk during WWII. Later carriers, ones completed during WWII, could shrug off a kamikaze attack.
    • Similarly, Typhoon Cobra struck the United States Third Fleet, sinking three destroyers and causing much damage throughout the fleet. American carriers reported planes blown overboard, flight decks buckled, radar knocked out, while the HMS Indefagitable, with an armored deck and fully-enclosed hangar, reported back "What typhoon?"*
  • In what was one of the silliest naval battles of all time, the USS Monitor, the world's first true ironclad warship, and the casemate ironclad CSS Virginia squared off in the Battle of Hampton Roads (which, contrary to what the name might suggest, was a naval battle) during The American Civil War. The two ironclad warships squared off and started firing cannonballs at each other for three hours, only to discover that neither ship could cause significant damage to the other because the cannonballs kept bouncing off of them. The Virginia thus tried to ram the smaller Monitor, but the Monitor had a much shorter turning circle and was able to easily evade those attempts. All the while the ships kept firing away at each other in the vain hope that enough hits would cause the armor to fail. Eventually a chance shot temporarily blinded the captain of the USS Monitor, causing it to pull back momentarily before another man took over. The CSS Virginia interpreted the temporary pullback as a withdrawal, and thus began to withdraw itself, so when the USS Monitor returned to the battle, they thought the CSS Virginia was fleeing. Both sides promptly declared victory in the battle. As a result of the battle, all the European powers immediately stopped building wooden warships and built copies of the USS Monitor instead.
  • Germany's early victories in World War II came in spite of the fact that they had few powerful anti-tank guns, while their enemies had some very well-armored tanks.
    • In the beginning the Germans' only towed anti-tank gun was a 37 mm, which worked against lighter tanks but got the nickname "door-knocker" from its inability to deal with heavier ones. The machinegun-armed Panzer I and the Panzer II with a 20 mm autocannon weren't really even capable of fighting other tanks. Their main anti-armor tank, the Panzer III, just had a 37 mm while they waited for the 50 mm upgrade. The Panzer IV was originally intended as an infantry support tank, so it had a low-velocity 75 mm. With that in perspective, they had some real tough nuts to crack.
    • Despite being an awkward and by-then-outdated design, the French Char B1-bis heavy tank had 60 mm of armor all over it. One such tank called Eure was ambushed by several German Panzer IIIs and Panzer IVs and took 140 hits without sustaining significant damage. It single-handedly took out thirteen of the enemy tanks.
    • British Mathilda II tanks proved similarly impervious in France and North Africa, with armor ranging from 78 mm thick on the front to 55 mm on the rear. After being replaced by the Valentine and Churchill tanks, the Matilda II went on to prove just as impervious against Japanese tanks in Burma.
    • Despite being badly mis-used and poorly maintained in the first six months of the Soviet-German War, the T-34 medium and KV-1 heavy tanks were basically immune to the German 37 mm; the T-34 had 40-45 mm of hull armor sloped at 40 to 60 degrees for more bounce and effective thickness, and while the KV-1 had 75 mm all over. Several KV-1 tanks are known to have taken over two hundred hits from tank guns and (anti-tank) artillery without sustaining any damage (not even a lost track or periscope, no mean feat considering that the tracks were a sight more vulnerable). The 50 mm could work at close range, and the heavy 88mm Flak gun could take them out at a distance, but there weren't very many of these in 1941; it was more common for Soviet tanks to meet their end by German infantrymen getting on top of them to pour petrol on the engine block and set them alight. Not until the large fielding of 75 mm high-velocity guns did the Soviet tanks meet their match.
  • No Challenger 2 tank has ever been destroyed by enemy fire (only one has been destroyed at all, by friendly fire from another Challenger). One tank is known to have taken at least 70 RPG hits without particularly noticing, while another was temporarily disabled by multiple RPG and anti-tank missile hits and was back in operational use within a few hours. Even the M1 Abrams, fighting in the same theaters alongside the Challenger, hasn't been able to take the same amount of punishment.
  • Much to the horror of NATO tankers, tests on ex-Warpac tanks just after the Cold War showed that the latest Soviet tanks with the latest explosive reactive armor were thoroughly impervious to then-standard NATO 120mm sabot ammo, which led to the crash-development of a new, more effective sabot round.
  • In 2008, the prominent Indian skeptic Sanal Edamaruku put forward the Great Tantra Challenge, where he invited an equally prominent tantrik to kill him using nothing but his alleged supernatural powers on live television, after the latter claimed he could kill people in less than three minutes with them. The tantrik spent nearly two hours chanting mantras and waving his hands in Edamaruku's face without success before giving up. A second attempt to kill him using Ritual Magic was met with similar results. Videos showing skeptics ignoring attempts to incapacitate/kill them with chi/psychic energy/magic/etc are common online. Worse are the skeptics who are also martial artists challenging "psychic" martial artists to a fight. The "psychic" martial artists' techniques do nothing offensively to the skeptic while also providing no defense to the following punches/knees/etc to the face. Of course, actual monks and martial artists (read: people who have literally physically trained in their art since birth) have also come forth to denounce "psychic martial artists" who attempt this on skeptics, on the basis that this is not how chi is supposed to work.
  • A somewhat common act of defiance for children (and some adults) after being hurt — "Doesn't hurt!" — though that particular response can be tempting fate.
  • In 2023, Alessandro De Meddalena found, on a great white shark, tooth marks suggesting the shark's survival of an encounter with an orca.
  • Owls are the only predatory animals that actively feed on skunks, as they have very poor sense of smell, and as a result they are completely immune to the skunk's spray.


Alternative Title(s): Power Denial, Doesnt Work On Me, No Sale, Your Power Wont Work On Me

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Miko Doesn't Reset

Mitch is shocked to discover that Miko's brain doesn't "reset".

How well does it match the trope?

5 (3 votes)

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