Not So Invincible After All

"You cut him! You hurt him! You see?! You see, he's not a machine! He's a man!"

— Duke on Ivan Drago, Rocky IV

When a character who is depicted as invincible or indestructible turns out to not quite be the case.

For this to work, their supposed power and reputation must be demonstrated enough times so that the rest of the cast may start legitimately believing that nothing can stop that character... only for that notion to be disproven in the end. Something as little as a minor injury to a character that's reportedly unable to be injured can count as this. It doesn't matter if they're the World's Strongest Man, the richest Corrupt Corporate Executive around, the most legally powerful Corrupt Politician, or even literally Immortal. The story will make sure to knock this supposedly "invincible" character down a few pegs. Of course, this is after the story itself finishes building the highest peg pedestal for them to stand on menacingly over everybody else.

Sometimes, this might be the result of something relatively mundane, like disease, bad habits or just plain stupidity. Perhaps your Badass Longcoat has developed a deadly cough over the last few days, or perhaps the Big Bad has enjoyed a few too many of those fancy cigars and develops lung cancer, or maybe the team's muscle tests positive for Huntington's. When done poorly, may be regarded as a Dropped a Bridge on Him.

This trope might be employed in high drama, where everyone's fighting and killing each other to bring the cast down to earth for long enough to realize that, hey, they may be powerful, but they're still human. This trope is also a hallmark of the Cosmic Horror Story genre, where no-one is significant enough to avoid death. Even the great Cthulhu is ultimately doomed to die, cold and alone, in the depths.

Such a moment may occur when a user of The Law of Diminishing Defensive Effort takes a hit from something that can go through their defense. In combat, this may be caused by Untouchable Until Tagged.

This can actually apply to both heroes or villains, although most examples tend to be the latter, and can often apply to an Invincible Villain when their luck finally runs out. For sports or combat opponents who already have an established unwinnable reputation as part of their background, then see Defeating the Undefeatable, a subtrope.

This is a Death Trope, so beware of spoilers.

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Examples:

Advertising

• Subverted in the final commercial of Segata Sanshiro. Segata is seemingly killed when a missile explodes right underneath him... but Sonic And Sega All Stars Racing Transformed shows he's still alive somehow. Then he returns alive and well, having seemingly found a way to dispose of the missile, in Project X Zone 2.

Anime & Manga

• Bleach:
  • Kageroza Inaba is a Mod Soul who creates and controls the Reigai, superior Mod Soul clones of the Gotei 13 elites that are too powerful for their real counterparts to truly defeat. He can create portals to make opponents attack themselves, teleport, hijack Reigai bodies to heal himself, endlessly resurrect defeated Reigai, absorb and redirect Ichigo, Yamamoto and Nozomi's powers, and use a cloning ability to escape death. He can therefore defeat Yamamoto and out-gambit Urahara, two things even Aizen couldn't do. He and Nozomi are two parts of one person, Ōko Yushima, who re-absorbs them both to become so powerful, his mere presence begins destroying Soul Society. This triggers the Reigai to turn on him to save Soul Society, and Nozomi fights from within to destroy his Soul Chain. Only then is he weakened just enough for Ichigo to finally kill him.
  • Gerard Valkyrie's power is called "The Miracle". It allows him to regenerate from anything, always returning stronger than before and with no apparent upper limit to this ability. Every means of incapitation fails, and not even the Royal Guard or a fully-powered Kenpachi can stop him. He is only stopped by Yhwach stripping his powers, which allows him to finally be killed; Yhwach is implied to only be able to do that because they're both pieces of the same Soul King. On the other hand, Word of God confirms that the Quincy Cross that pulled both of Gerard's halves together when Kenpachi cut him in half is in fact his core; if the Shinigami had destroyed it, the fight would've ended then and there (not that they had any way to know this at the time).
• In A Certain Magical Index, Accelerator is considered one of the most powerful espers ever and pretty much invincible thanks to his ability to modify the vectors of anything that closes in on him. Cue Touma Kamijou and his Imagine Breaker punching the daylights out of him and shattering his image of invincibility.
• Dragon Ball:
  • Dragon Ball Z:
    • Goku has saved the world several times over, defeated Frieza, a Galactic Conqueror feared by even the Kais themselves, and become the first Super Saiyan in a thousand years... but during a significant chunk of the Android and Cell Sagas, he's incapacitated by a heart virus, which actually killed him in the Bad Future Trunks hails from, and which the main timeline Goku only survived thanks to medicine Trunks gave him. Future Gohan even remarks at one point that he thought Goku was invincible.
    • Upon achieving his Perfect form, nothing seems to hurt Cell; he even takes a direct hit from a Destructo Disc, which, mind you, is established to cut through anything like a hot knife through butter, without a scratch. Then Vegeta charges up his Final Flash, daring him to take it head-on if he truly believed he was invulnerable; Cell obliges, and only survives because he dodged at the last second. He still gets his right arm and a sizable chunk of his torso blown off, proving that, even if Cell's Healing Factor rendered the injury moot in short order, he's not all-powerful and can be hurt.
  • Dragon Ball Super:
    • During the final showdown of the Future Trunks Saga, the newly-created Merged Zamasu initially appears to be unstoppable, shrugging off everything Goku, Vegeta, and Future Trunks throw at him... and then Goku manages to reflect his Sphere of Destruction attack back at him, which reduces the entire right side of his face to purple goo. As it turns out, Future Zamasu's Complete Immortality has been compromised by his fusing with the mortal Goku Black; thus, he's no longer completely immortal and can be killed.
    • It was also revealed that Beerus would die if Universe 7's Supreme Kai was killed, and he was very upset when Whis revealed this to Goku.
    • Jiren, the strongest fighter for Universe 11 is an absolute monster who has defeated all his enemies with no trouble, from a berserker Kale and Maji-Kayo to Super Saiyan Blue Goku and Hit. He is even confirmed to be the mortal who was rumored to be stronger than a God of Destruction! However, during the climax of the tournament, he is shown to not be invincible, since Goku was able to slip him up and almost ring him out through trickery and Vegeta managed to memorize his movements to avoid his attacks and land a solid blow right in his stomach. He also struggles against Goku and Vegeta's combined powers when they double team him. So despite being a mortal stronger than gods he isn't unbeatable, just really, really, really, REALLY hard to beat. The first one to actually hurt him was Android 17 with a point-blank blast. Afterwards, Goku unlocking Ultra Instinct and beating him to an inch of his life and then managing to finally beat him for real with help from Frieza all but name drops him from this trope.
• Durarara!!'s Shizuo Heiwajima is presented as pretty much damn near invincible for most of the series — so when Horoda manages to demonstrate that he's not as immune to bullets as he is to blades, it comes as quite a shock. It's then subverted in the following episode when Shizuo shows up at Shinra's place bloody and tremendously annoyed, but not particularly close to death.
• Fairy Tail:
  • Acnologia is built up as a seemingly invincible opponent, so powerful that he easily defeated the strongest wizard in Fairy Tail on his own off-screen and later still treated the attacks of the strongest wizards in Fairy Tail working together like insect bites before nuking the island they were on. The later revelation that he's a Dragon Slayer that slaughtered countless dragons (and the Dragon Slayers own struggles to fight several time-displaced dragons at the end of the Grand Magic Games) simply put even more on that. At least, until the Tartaros Arc where Natsu's dragon dad Igneel finally makes his reappearance and, though it costs him his life, Acnologia is left quite damaged and loses his arm in battle. This makes it clear that, while a nearly insurmountable foe, he's not truly invincible. Of course, this is little comfort, as Acnologia is still so strong the number of people capable of matching his absolute best are almost none, to the point Zeref wanted to use an infinite source of magic to go back in time and kill Acnologia when he was weaker, and Natsu and the other Dragon Slayers need the direct and indirect aid of nearly every wizard on the continent to finally kill him.
  • The Five Dragon Gods of Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest are in a similar boat automatically by virtue of being dragons with power rivaling Acnologia, performing feats of strength that make them seem impossible for anyone who's not one of them to defeat. However, this facade of invincibility is shattered as early as the first one, Mercphobia, who is revealed to have lost control of his power due to being Brainwashed and Crazy from subterfuge and despite his madness-induced rampage is stopped by the heroes with the aid of another Dragon God. The second one, Aldoron, is revealed to be about the size of a small mountain range with the durability to match, shrugging off multiple town-destroying blasts to the face and an attack from Natsu that defeated a War God, but the Fairy Tail guild are able to overwhelm the God Seeds tied to his power before Natsu destroys Aldoron's brain and wrecks him with an attack from the inside that blows him up. The third one, Selene, is fought evenly by Suzaku, a Dark Slayer Knight and one of Diabolos's strongest members and she herself admits that while she faked how serious her injuries were Suzaku was stronger than her human form and even in her dragon form, she doesn't play around when faced with the even stronger guild master Georg and chooses to kill him instantly, meaning he could have done some decent damage to her if she let him. She and Ignia later prove able to harm each other in a well-matched fight, and Ignia leaves her badly injured the moment she lets her guard down. The sixth Dragon God, Dogramaag, was straight up killed by Elefseria, although this case was more Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu because Elefseria had his heart ripped out while doing the feat, which ended up being a fatal mistake as it lead to Dogramaag coming back to life centuries later.
• Fate/stay night: Berserker is a proud user of The Law of Diminishing Defensive Effort, tanking seemingly every attack directed at him without injury. This illusion of invincibility lasts until Archer fights him in the Fate route. To elaborate, Archer makes Berserker BLOCK with one of his fairly basic attacks. And goes on to kill Berserker about five times. Too bad he has to be killed TWELVE TIMES in order to be permanently dead. And later still in the UBW and Heaven's Feel route, he finds himself overwhelmed and killed by Gilgamesh and the tag-team of Saber Alter and the Shadow respectively.
  Illya: Berserker actually had to defend? Who in the world is this guy?
• Fullmetal Alchemist:
  • Izumi Curtis is the Elrics' teacher, a brilliant alchemist and one of the few people they're truly scared of. (Ed and Al often build up the courage to fight a villain with the line "He's not as scary as our teacher!") However, she also suffers from an Incurable Cough of Death and Blood from the Mouth. On the manga, Van Hohenheim introduces himself to her by noting her alchemy-induced cough and cures her by jabbing his hand into her midsection and rearranging her organs. In Fullmetal Alchemist: The Conqueror of Shamballa (the sequel to the 2003 anime, it's revealed that she finally succumbed to her illness.
  • During the finale of the Manga and Brotherhood, Father has seemingly absorbed God and nothing the heroes do can seem to have any lasting damage that he can't regenerate from. They persist anyway...and then he instinctively uses his hand to block an attack much to both his and his opponents' shock. A sign that his power is starting to wane and their attacks are working. To which the heroes continue their attack with renewed vigor.
• This trope is one of the major plot points in Gunslinger Girl. While the main characters can destroy buildings full of soldiers and survive gunshots with almost no ill effects, none of them will live out of their teens due to damage done in making them killing machines.
  • Their shortened lives are arguably for the best given the things that happen to them. Near the beginning of the series Elsa finds the one weak point in their bullet resistance and commits suicide by shooting herself in the eye. The final arc of the manga also lays it thick with the terrorist organization that is the Big Bad breaking out the high explosives and the big freaking guns and killing several Fratello operatives in a protracted battle before everybody's efforts become All for Nothing by Realpolitik of all things.
• In Hellsing, Father Alexander Anderson had for the most part seemed to be The Juggernaut, regenerating from even headshots with explosive rounds. Then at the start of their last encounter, Alucard uses his Jackal Hand Cannon to blow off part of Alex's left arm, and Alex finds that he cannot regenerate the damage.
  • Alucard gets one of these when fighting Alexander using the Nail of Helena.
• MegaMan NT Warrior (2002): Slur's status as Invincible Villain is finally revoked from her when Bass promptly attacks and kills her in revenge for a previous defeat.
• My Hero Academia has its plot kick off when protagonist Izuku finds out that his hero All Might, The Cape incarnate and the number one hero around, received a crippling blow five years ago that limits the use of his powers and All Might is running out of time. As the story progresses All Might's ability to use his powers drops further and further, accelerated by passing the torch to Izuku and his own heroic nature leading him to push himself too far too often, until he finally uses up the last of it bringing down All For One, an insanely powerful supervillain who killed his mentor and then raised her grandson to be evil just to spite her memory. This has several consequences, including All Might's now-powerlessness revealed to the world, an unworthy Number Two becoming the new number one hero, and immense guilt from Bakugo, who All Might was rescuing from All For One. In addition, All Might's former sidekick used his future vision and foresaw All Might dying within two years of the start of the series.
  • The U.S.J. Arc is Class A learning a whole about the pro heroes they look up to as their teacher Eraserhead and the hero Thirteen are both badly beaten by the League of Villains, who overwhelm Eraserhead with numbers and then a creature designed to beat All Might while Thirteen gets ambushed via a portal trick while trying to help some of the students get outside to get help. Seeing the injuries Eraserhead incurs ends up terrifying Izuku, Tsuyu, and Mineta, and the whole class leaves the experience realizing just how tough the pro heroes have it and the sort of things they're being trained to hopefully survive because they're not invincible, no matter what the public thinks.
• Naruto:
  • Kimimaro, an extremely powerful member of the Sound Five, nearly kills Gaara and Lee, only to succumb to his fatal illness mere seconds before he could deal the killing blow.
  • Later there's Itachi Uchiha, who, after having a long fight with his brother Sasuke and actually winning this fight, coughs blood and suddenly dies, leaving Sasuke shocked. It is later revealed that he was already dying of an illness and was actually prolonging his life with medicine because he wanted Sasuke to kill him.
  • Also, now revealed is Nagato, the real person behind Pain. While the bodies he possesses are incredibly difficult for even Jiraiya and Naruto to defeat, Nagato is extremely thin and weak looking due to summoning the Demonic Statue of the Outer Path while trying to kill Hanzo years ago, which drained him of most of his chakra and left him emaciated.
• In One Piece, it is later revealed that Gol D. Roger turned himself in to the World Government because he had an incurable illness that developed four years before his execution.
  • Zig-zagged with Whitebeard versus the Marines, and later, the Blackbeard Pirates. Very much as unstoppable as was claimed of him until his death. He ultimately received 267 bullets, 46 cannonballs, and 52 stab wounds, with half his face melted off, until he finally died on his feet. However, the reason why they even got so far was that his health was failing beforehand. This means in his prime, even that wouldn't be enough to kill him.
  • At first, Charlotte Katakuri, the strongest of the Sweet Commanders, seems to be nearly unstoppable, having the highest bounty revealed at that point in the story, subjecting Super-Soldier Ichiji to an offscreen Curb-Stomp Battle, killing a guest who was attempting to assassinate his mother before he even got to see her, seemingly being immune to Armament Haki (which should normally bypass his Elemental Shapeshifter abilities), and subjecting Luffy to an utter No-Holds-Barred Beatdown, doing all of it while remaining untouched... Until it turns out in Chapter 884 that he's actually just using his Observation Haki and Elemental Shapeshifter powers (which turn out to be Special Paramecia abilities, NOT Logia) together to pull his body out of the way when he's "hit", so that all that his enemies touch is air. And once Luffy manages to break his focus, which is necessary for his Observation Haki to work, and later, match his Observation's power, leaving it unreliable, he's as vulnerable to getting hit as everyone else.
    • Also, according to the rest of the Big Mom Pirates, Katakuri was The Ace of their family, never even so much as lying down, and essentially being an Invincible Villain... until Luffy manages to score a Double Knockout with him, and Katakuri can't get back up due to having less experience at taking hits in battle.
  • Big Mom herself is an interesting example. While normally Nigh-Invulnerable, there is one circumstance where her Made of Iron body can be damaged: if something happens to a portrait she keeps of someone named Mother Carmel. When the portrait simply fell with no damage, Big Mom let out a huge scream and scraped her knee, causing it to bleed. Bege, recounting this event, commented on how strange it was to see that Big Mom had red blood. In the Battle of Onigashima, Kid and Law use their Awakened Devil Fruit powers to overcome or bypass Big Mom's physical defenses and start doing serious harm to her, shocking bystanders. Kid even points that no one is completely indestructible, and the fight ends with Big Mom being blasted out of Onigashima.
  • Zoro spends most of his fight with King unable to deal any kind of damage, even when his attacks do reach their target. At best he deals Clothing Damage, but this only makes King angrier, since he doesn't want people to see his face. It's not until Zoro figures out how King's Lunarian body works that he really begins to deal damage: when the flames on King's back go out, he gains a massive increase in speed at a severe cost to his durability. Soon after Zoro begins exploiting this weakness, King finds himself actively blocking Zoro's attacks, before trying to kill him at a distance. It does little to help him.
  • One of the other Emperors, Kaido, is so Nigh-Invulnerable he basically treats suicide attempts like a hobby and is known as the "strongest creature in the world", as almost nothing can even pierce his skin and a leap from cloud height only left him with a bit of a headache. However, in the past he has received one scar from the legendary daimyo Kozuki Oden (a man who clashed equally with Whitebeard), and in fact was nearly killed by him. In the present, he tanks a sustained barrage from Gear 4 Luffy without a scratch, but when Oden's closest followers come to assassinate him, he's actually shocked that their blades are able to hurt him and he screams in pain. Luffy later demonstrates his improved Haki mastery when he punches Kaido -without Gear 4- and actually draws blood. As the other members of the Worst Generation jump in, Zoro, Law, Kid and Killer all show that they have ways of bypassing his invulnerable skin, amazing him. Later still, Luffy figures out that Kaido can infuse his attacks with Conqueror's Haki and quickly learns how to do it himself, granting him a significant boost in power and evening the odds. And as Yamato points out, another sign of him weakening from the battle is that the cloud flames he created to hold Onigashima in the air begin to disappear. And when Luffy finally achieves Gear 5, he is able to defeat Kaido once and for all.
  • For much of the first half of the series, Logia Devil Fruit powers seemed utterly broken, with the Made of Air aspect allowing their users to let attacks pass right through them. However, when fighting Crocodile and Eneru, Luffy would stumble upon the Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors that would allow him to fight them on an even keel, much to the amazement of bystanders. Blackbeard first showed off his Dark-Dark Fruit powers by using them to attack Ace directly. A fighter trained in Haki: the Color of Armament could also affect Logias by attacking their bodies directly. When the rookie pirate Caribou, who had the power to turn into mud and became a living bog, tried attacking the New World pirate Pekoms, Pekoms used his Haki to take Caribou down in one shot, noting that Logias who think they're invincible have short lives.
  • For the people of Nami's island, the fish-men of the Arlong Pirates were unstoppable monsters only the Grand Line Navy could handle. Even when Cocoyashi decide to rebel, they know that they're just throwing away their lives. Then Luffy and co. step in, and begin systematically taking down the fish-men. In Sabaody, Nami is surprised to learn of the Fantastic Racism fish-folk and merfolk suffered, as they always seemed so powerful to her.
• Subverted in the fight between Boros and Saitama in One-Punch Man. Boros lands a clean hit on Saitama and sends him flying across the surface of the ship they're fighting on, and thinks to himself that Saitama definitely took damage, as we see the Caped Baldy standing with his costume messed up and his head lolling to the side. It turns out that Saitama wasn't hurt at all, he was just getting bored of the fight.
  • Later happens for real when Cosmic Fear Mode Garou is able to actually keep up with and match Saitama in power for a bit, even countering his Serious Punch. However, Saitama, facing a real challenge for the first time in his professional hero career, began quickly growing in strength at a rate faster than Garou could keep up with, and eventually won the fight (although it technically ended when Garou gave up after realizing he had killed Tareo).
• Happens three times in the final Tournament Arc in Pokémon: The Series:
  • First, it happens to Alain. He was the only rival Ash never actually beat in a match, with his Charizard only suffering one loss in the first Mega Evolution Special. When he goes up against Leon in the first round, things seem to be going well for him as he actually defeats his Rillaboom- but then Leon sends out his own, even more powerful Charizard and mops the floor with his roster. Not even Mega Evolution has any effect on it.
  • Then, Ash faces Cynthia in the semi-final round of the tournament. After a grueling match, he defeats her, with his Mega Lucario triumphing over her Mega Garchomp, but just barely.
  • Finally, Ash and Leon face each other in the finals. It’s an extremely hard fight, with Ash having to use Mega Evolution, Dynamaxing, and Z-Moves to even stand a chance against Leon. But in the end, with The Power of Friendship giving Pikachu its second wind, Ash is able to take Leon down and fulfill his promise to become the strongest trainer.
• This trope is the reason why Makoto Shishio died on Rurouni Kenshin. It isn't because he was burned alive (though this incidentally was the cause), shot in the head, took a tremendously powerful blow to the head, took several more extremely powerful blows to the body, was shot through a wall, and was hit dead on by arguably the most powerful attack in the series but because he "surpassed his limit", which caused him to spontaneously combust due to all of his sweat glands being melted.
  • On the other hand, that "limit" was imposed by the exact same circumstance that made Shishio so seemingly invincible in the first place.
  • Kind of subversion in the person of Hajime Saitō. This nigh-invincible swordsman died from a stomach ulcer... at the age of 72 after outliving most of his enemies.
    • That was for the real life Saitō...and because he was a heavy drinker (probably fueled in his later years when he worked as a lonely night watchman in a museum) The anime Saitō don't drink so much...as he stated when talking with Shibumi he said that drinking tends to make him want to kill people (he prefers smokes instead)
• Straight Cougar in s-CRY-ed loses to Big Bad Muto even after going to his second stage Alter. He had previously effortlessly defeated both protagonists with only his first state Alter.
• Sonic X
  • In Season 3, when Yellow Zelkova tries to carry out his master's orders to kill Sonic and friends. His battle with them takes place on a Volcanic Planet as he viciously battles to the death with Knuckles where not only does Zelkova's armor get destroyed, revealing his (and Dark Oak's) race's true appearance, but also is knocked off a cliff and slides into molten lava in a VERY familiar scene. Chris even acknowledges this trope in the English version of the series:
    Chris: He thought he was invincible...
  • Dark Oak himself had previously applied this to Super Sonic. With the Chaos Emeralds' power, Sonic taking his super form was pretty much always a sign of a swift Curbstomp Battle in his favour. Dark Oak however, fought Super to a stalemate, forcing him to disperse the Emeralds across the universe as an emergency plan before Dark Oak had the chance to overpower and take them from him. Even outside of his super form, Sonic was recurrently shown struggling a lot more often against the Meterax's forces than he usually did against Eggman and previous villains. In fact, Dark Oak remains the only villain in any Sonic universe to defeat Super Sonic in a fair fight.
• In Touhou Bougetsushou, Watatsuki no Yorihime blows through Marisa, Sakuya, Remilia, and even Reimu without breaking a sweat. In Inaba of the Moon and Inaba of the Earth, another manga in the same story arc, she gets knocked out by one of Tewi's pitfall traps.
  • She doesn't seem fully knocked out considering she is sitting up or trying to climb out of the hole while groaning in the one panel depicting her after the fall, but it does make her look less invincible (albeit being a gag and not necessarily a serious power showing).

Comic Books

• Captain Britain foe the Fury was killed by Captain UK. This wouldn't be a good example compared to the rest if it wasn't Fury, the same being who killed all of its Universe's superheroes, survived the destruction of the said Universe and get toe-to-toe with one of the most powerful Reality Warpers in the history and won. And yet, the Unstoppable Rage of one woman was enough to teach it the meaning of death and defeat.
• Marvel Comics' version of Captain Marvel died not from a supervillain battle, but from cancer (admittedly, it was cancer caused during a supervillain battle, but).
• DC's The Question was never a "Big Gun," he had no super powers and his foes were street-level criminals and human organizations, but he was still reputably badass and tough: the first issue of his Dennis O'Neil series ended with him defeated in a one-on-one fight by Lady Shiva, then his body was viciously beaten by the gang she was working for, then he was shot in the head with an air-gun and then he was thrown into a frozen river and left for dead. Not only did he survive, pulled out of the water by Shiva, but he was then given martial arts training by Richard Dragon (Regarded as the premier martial artist of the DCU and one of the trainers of Batman, Black Canary and the afore-mentioned Shiva) so he came back even tougher... then, in 52, it is revealed that he has developed terminal lung cancer exacerbated by a lifetime of smoking. It has recently metastasized and now he is wasting away, physically and mentally. There is no mystical cure and no advanced alien treatment, his cancer is untreatable and he dies outside the gates of Nanda Parbat.
• Superman: After countless times of escaping death, after being one of the most evil and powerful of super villains, after clashing and allying himself with the some of the greatest powers of the DC universe, both good and evil, how does the immortal Hank "Cyborg Superman" Henshaw finally die? He makes the mistake of transferring into a robot character who already has a soul, and then is soul-killed. The writer said it was permanent, but Hank came back anyways, only to be knocked out and kidnapped by Doomsday.
• In DC's Hellblazer, John Constantine is known for going up against all manner of demons, supernatural entities, and the Devil himself, and cheating death at every turn. One of the finest Story Arcs of the series, "Dangerous Habits", begins with John discovering he's got terminal lung cancer. Over the course of the storyline, he attempts to call in every favor he can think of, only to discover that the few beings he knows who have the power to help him don't like him enough to do so. He eventually weasels out of the situation, in classic John Constantine style, by selling his soul to all three of the Lords of Hell. Since, if John were to die, they would be forced to go to war over his soul (destroying Hell in the process), they are therefore forced to cure his cancer to keep him alive. Naturally, this pisses them off unbelievably, and has consequences later in the series.
  • In the movie he finally manages to redeem himself to void his earlier suicide which had damned his soul. Pissed at not getting Constantine's soul (John flipping him off as he was ascending to Heaven probably didn't help his mood), the Devil cures his cancer at the last moment, so he'll have time to sin again.
• One shot Spider-Man foe Carl King aka The Thousand was a man turned into a swarm of spiders. All the spiders are seemingly destroyed via electrocution and Spider-Man leaves. One of the spiders survives and vows revenge, boasting that he is invincible as long as there are spiders for him to inhabit. He is then stepped on by an oblivious passerby.
• Wolverine: Wolverine once battled the Iron Monk, who had underwent a mystic ritual that rendered him invulnerable to harm...under certain conditions: No earthly weapon made by mortal hands could hurt him. He does a No-Sell to Logan's Adamantium claws, gunshots, rocks, clubs, and everything else Logan could throw at him, boasting of his invincibility all the while. Finally, Logan got his hands on a very special sword.
  Iron Monk (Sneering): I am the Iron Monk! No earthly weapon forged by mortal hands can harm me!
  Wolverine (Running him through with the sword): This bad boy was forged out of meteorite iron by a demon.

Fan Works

• Adventures of a Screwed Up Clone: Dani compares what happened after Danny joined the Justice League to what happened with Superman; while they are both still powerful heroes, over time villains discovered different methods of affecting them.
• All For Luz: Despite hyping up their Quirk to Luz that they won the Superpower Lottery, All For One was still put down by All Might, which kicked off the story in the first place.
• Code Geass: Paladins of Voltron kept true to the source material in showing why Emperor Zarkon was The Dreaded, having him take on both Robot Lions and Knightmare Frames on foot and defeat them. Then, in chapter 37, Lelouch, of all people, managed to break the illusion of invincibility by stabbing him with his Luxite Blade while rescuing Cornelia. A minor example, to be sure, but it gave some much-needed hope.
• Discussed at the end of Eleutherophobia: How I Live Now. Eva tells Tom that it's possible to escape infestation and live by reminding him of all the hosts who were freed during the war; Yeerk propaganda had just convinced Tom that death was the only way out.
• In The Fifth Act, Sephiroth is considered an unbeatable legend to most of Shinra's employees. When Cloud overpowers him in their (from his point of view) first fight, Genesis is amused that Sephiroth's "immortality" has been soundly disproven and Sephiroth himself is deeply perturbed that he has found someone who can match him.

• Guardians, Wizards, and Kung-Fu Fighters: After stealing Elyon's powers, Phobos seems unstoppable. However, as the narration notes, all that power doesn't stop him from being made from flesh and bone that can still be injured by the Guardians if they actually manage to land blows, which they proceed to prove during the subsequent fight.
• The Gunslinger Hero: Flintlock:
  • Despite Shigaraki having talked up how powerful the Nomu that he brought with him to the USJ was, it was still able to be taken out, and not even by All Might, which it was designed to take down.
  • During the second event of the Sports Festival, a robot with the same look and power-set of Darth Vader was used as the final boss. Despite his nigh invincible nature, and him having eliminated several teams from the running, he was still eventually able to be beaten by the combined efforts of several students.
• Discussed by Archer and Welf in Heroic Myth. After curb-stomping the Apollo Familia, Welf says that he can't imagine the Servants ever getting beat. Archer refutes the notion. No matter how invincible they seem, Servants can be brought down with the right circumstances, people, and equipment. His unusually specific list of scenarios is a Mythology Gag to events in the original Fate/stay night, which Welf lampshades as being too detailed to be simple hypotheticals.
  Welf: Still, I can't imagine any of you guys getting beat when the going gets tough. Spirits are amazing…
  Archer: We may be but there's no such thing as invincible, Welf. Anyone can be beaten with the right weapon, tactics, or people by your side. Be it a school teacher with proper training and support from a mage, or a person who practiced a powerful martial art while equipped with blessed weapons or Magic Items passed down in their family, or even just some punk kid who got lucky. A Servant can be taken down as easily as any monster from the Dungeon.
• In Incarnation of Legends, the Legiones is respected for his power and leadership ability as one of the four adventurers said to have conquered Orario's best. Despite this, he returns from his latest expeditions with his armor cracked and wounds all over his body, though he comes home victorious from his battles. Kojiro notes that he likely ran into another adventurer on his level, possibly a companion of his. He later reveals to Kojiro that The Asura was responsible, though he declines to use the Asura's real name, as it would "ruin the surprise".
• In Mass Foundations: Redemption in the Stars, one of the antagonists is the Collector-General, a hulking figure of solid and lava, able to unleash biotic barrages and with inhumanly durable barriers. When the Courier ends up fighting it alone, the Shadow Broker’s guards consider him doomed and see no reason to intervene. After the creature gets brought to its knees, they finally fire at him, but it was too late.
• A Moth to a Flame: Despite being The Dreaded throughout Eurasia due to controlling most of it from the shadows for centuries, the Core bitterly explains to Marcy that the Wu Clan's influence didn't last forever. The outside forces that the Wus couldn't control eroded away their influence, such as the barbarian tribes causing the fall of The Roman Empire and even their stronghold in Imperial China faltering to a steady decline after the assassination of Emperor Gong. The split of the Northern and Southern Chinese dynasties would break their power irreparably and over the course of the next 200 years, all they worked for had eroded to nothing, causing some of them to pull a Screw This, I'm Outta Here and use the Calamity Box to move to Amphibia to start a new life.
  The Core: Dear Marcy. No one empire, no one clan, can ever truly withstand the test of time, not even the Wus. That is the folly of being made of mere flesh, blood and bone. Like those before them, they fell victim to a changing world.
• In Neither a Bird nor a Plane, it's Deku!, Izuku spends most of the early parts of the story shrugging off everything thrown at him with ease thanks to his Kryptonian Nigh-Invulnerability. Everyone's hopeful that he can beat back the Noumu on his lonesome until help arrives. Their hopes are quickly dashed when the Noumu flies into a rage after Izuku's Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs, beating him bloody and leaving him screaming in agony. He's only saved from having his spine broken by All Might's timely arrival and decision to kill the Noumu to end the threat it posed.
• Rosario Vampire: Brightest Darkness: After being set up as essential Invincible Villains throughout Acts III and VI, Jovian and Jacqueline become this upon The Reveal that Apoch's Laser Blade can both deflect their supposedly unblockable Hand Blasts and cut through their supposedly unbreakable barriers.
• In Strange Magic, when Doctor Strange (Marvel Cinematic Universe) discovers Voldemort's use of horcruxes (Harry Potter), his research confirms that horcruxes aren't actually as secure a means of immortality as Voldemort believes. According to Strange, a horcrux will eventually absorb the soul fragment within it and both will be destroyed, the Sorcerer pointing out to Sirius that if they truly worked there should be various ancient Egyptian wizards still walking around.

Films — Animated

• Tai Lung of Kung Fu Panda runs rampant over the heroes for a solid nine-tenths of the first film. The guards of the prison he was in after he broke free? They were definitely competent and skilled, just not enough of either. The Furious Five, as a team? Did manage to beat him in a straight fight, then he broke out the Pressure Point attack. His former teacher/adopted father, Master Shifu? A Curb-Stomp Battle combined with a massive case of Tai Lung Calling the Old Man Out. And then, he meets Po. Things went downhill for him after that.
• Puss in Boots: The Last Wish: At the start of the movie, Puss has bought into his own legend as a fearless, invincible hero; this has led to him frivolously wasting most of his nine lives suffering less-than-dignified deaths. An encounter with a bounty hunter ends with Puss coming to the grim realization that he is down to his last life after said bounty hunter makes him bleed.
  Wolf: You're not living up to the legend, gato.
• Madame Souza of The Triplets of Belleville is a virtual Implacable Man who crosses the Atlantic in a pedal boat and manages to wipe out the French Mafia with no more aid than three other elderly women and an incredibly fat dog. The ending implies that she died of old age sometime after the events of the film proper.

Films — Live-Action

• Played for Laughs in GoldenEye when Boris, after being the last survivor of the collapse of Alec Trevelyan's lair (other than Bond and Natalia of course), jumps up and hollers his catchphrase: "Yes! I AM INVINCIBLE!" A split second later, three tanks of liquid nitrogen explode and flash-freeze him to death.
• In Rocky IV, Drago is initially pounding Rocky completely, until one of Rocky's punches actually cuts Drago below his left eye. The odds begin to shift in Rocky's favor from then on out. Simultaneously inverted: while Duke is excitedly pointing out Drago's vulnerability to Rocky, Drago is in the opposite corner flabbergasted that his opponent just won't stay down.
  Drago: [in Russian] He's not human. He's like a piece of iron.
• Avengers: Infinity War:
  • Thanos is pretty much an Invincible Villain. He beat up Thor before the movie even started, curb-stomps the Hulk in the opening moments, and casually laughs off the assault of the Guardians of the Galaxy. Until the Battle of Titan, where Iron Man, Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, and half of the Guardians actually manage to briefly overpower and restrain him together. Unfortunately, a fatal mistake by Star-Lord costs them their victory. An all-out attack from Iron Man shortly after manages to give a cut across the cheek. Subverted, or perhaps inverted, in that instead of a moment of triumph, Thanos immediately taunts him on how it took so much to accomplish so little.
    "All that for a drop of blood."
  • Played straighter at the climax, where Thor drives Stormbreaker into Thanos' chest, drawing blood and making him scream in pain. Sadly, even that isn't enough to stop Thanos from finishing his plan.
• In The Matrix Reloaded, after Neo stops a hail of bullets, the Merovingian's mooks pick up swords and start fighting him. When Neo stops a sword with his outstretched hand, a drop of blood from his hand hits the floor. The Merovingian then says "See! He's just a man!" Cue Neo taking swords off the wall and defeating the mooks.
• The War of the Worlds:
  • In The War of the Worlds (1953), the alien tripods lay waste to the human military without breaking stride. However, they all are defeated by bacteria, against which they are not immune.
  • In War of the Worlds (2005), the Tripods are assumed to be untouchable, but once their shields are down, they fall easily to grenades and the like, even before the bacteria ends their invasion.
• Predator: When they find evidence that the titular Predator didn't escape their barrage of gunfire completely unscathed, the soldiers realize they're not dealing with an invincible supernatural threat, just a very, very dangerous mortal one. Cue one of the film's more famous quotes:
  Dutch: If it bleeds, we can kill it.
• In Independence Day, the alien invaders' shields give them an overwhelming advantage, as they take no losses until Captain Hiller tricks one of them into crashing into a cliff, disabling the craft. Later, David's virus is able to disable all of the alien ships' shields, putting the Earth's air forces on a much more even footing against the aliens.
• Terminator:
  • The eponymous killing machine in The Terminator is finally shown dragging his heavily damaged leg after being flattened by a semi. In this case it's not so much to show that there's hope of defeating him, but rather to show that he absolutely will not stop so long as he's still functioning.
  • Terminator 2: Judgment Day is an odd example. The original version played this straight, showing the T-1000's shapeshifting ability malfunctioning due to being frozen, blown to pieces, and then reforming in a hot environment. Then, before release, they deleted all these scenes (except one) to make the audience think he truly was unstoppable. Then they released a Director's Cut with the scenes restored.
• The Mist plays this trope completely straight. The creatures found in the mist are terrifying and unstoppable... against frightened, trapped civilians armed with makeshift melee weapons. Against trained soldiers with automatic weapons and flamethrowers, who use infantry tactics and have both armor and air support, they're easily slaughtered wholesale. This should be noted as one of the very few films where a modern-day military is shown to be more than a match for the threat.
• Toons in Who Framed Roger Rabbit were initially thought in-universe to be incapable of being killed, as they get crushed, blown up, sliced in half, decapitated, etc. and survive. However, it turns out that they can be killed by "the Dip" (actually paint thinner).
• The titular Golden Army in Hellboy II: The Golden Army was touted as an invincible army feared through the ages. Then Hellboy and co fought them and found them relatively easy to break. "Invincible my ass." Subverted in that they're never said to be Nigh-Invulnerable - just able to reform themselves from any breakdown.
• X-Men: Apocalypse has the title villain, the most overpowered mutant ever. Quicksilver, using his Super-Speed, punches him repeatedly. Apocalypse doesn't bleed (and once he catches on, finds a way to neutralize the speedster), but it gives the X-Men hope that he actually can be overcome.
• Yojimbo: Sanjuro's skill as a swordsman makes him unbeatable in melée combat, but that doesn't help him when confronted by Unosuke, the only person in the setting who carries a gun.
• This comes up a few times in the Godzilla franchise. Most kaiju are usually unstoppable forces akin to hurricanes and cannot be stopped by anything other than another heroic kaiju, or some fantastic weapon like the Oxygen Destroyer or MechaGodzilla. That said, in Shin Godzilla, he's injured by more mundane bunker buster bombs, but this is a subversion: Shin Godzilla heals off the damage in seconds and retaliates with such force Tokyo is turned into an inferno.
• A twofold version in It (2017). After spending half the movie as an unstoppable force of terror and violence, Bill and Richie manage to dispel one of Pennywise’s reality warping death traps through belief and earn his ire. Then Beverly wounds him enough to force the monster to retreat.
• Space Jam: A New Legacy: Road Runner. In basically all other Looney Tunes media, he's a Comically Invincible Hero, but here, he's subjected to just as much slapstick as the rest of the Tunes. The most notable case is during the big game, when Chronos uses his time-slowing powers to worf the poor bird in spectacular fashion.
• In the Fantozzi movies the bosses are simply too powerful and well-connected to be defeated by their "pathetic" and "inferior" employees, no matter how much they torment them... But once in a while one of the bosses puts himself in the wrong position and pushes too much, leading to their defeat and humiliation. Most notably Riccardelli, who for years had forced the employees to go at the company's film club and watch and praise avant-garde films only he liked and in particular the four hours and half-long The Battleship Kotiomkin, of which he had a rare personaly copy, choose to force the employees in a surprise film club meeting and watch that movie on the same night Italy's association football team was playing a World Cup qualifier against England, resulting in a severe Humiliation Conga, and while the police eventually got him back on top the employees had already burned his copy of the film.
  • Subverted with the Galactic Mega Director: at one point he's arrested for bribery and Fantozzi gets the chance to help the police confirm his guilt, but the Mega Director successfully frames Fantozzi for everything and is freed while Fantozzi is sentenced to 20 years in jail in his place.
• In Deadpool 2, Domino's incredible luck makes her borderline untouchable when dealing with things on her relative power level, with many conveniences allowing her to move, dodge, and fight things in her way almost all of the time. However, as illustrated with her fight with Cable, that doesn't make her actually invincible, and she actively still has to think about how to fight and survive, with Cable managing to get a few good hits on her once in close-range. When she sees Deadpool being confronted by The Juggernaut, she wisely decides to retreat.
• After Halloween Kills finishes with Michael Myers' greatest on-screen showcase of being an Implacable Man, Halloween Ends goes well out of its way to demonstrate that he is most definitely not invincible, with him spending most of the film (and the four years in between both movies) out of the action weakened from the injuries he obtained in the previous film (most of this film's kills are performed by a bullied teen who stole Michael's mask and went on a killing spree to get rid of his tormentors and is killed by Michael in term) and him being killed by Laurie and his corpse destroyed in a car shredder just to make damned sure in the final act.

Literature

• "The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant": For centuries, a kingdom lived under the shadow of a man-eating dragon that was immune to every attack thrown at it, from regular weapons to magic spells, to poisons. Eventually a scientist invented a material sharp enough to pierce the dragon’s scales, enabling the kingdom to fashion a weapon to kill the dragon.
• "The Hunger Games": Despite Katniss hyping them up as a squad of unstoppable killing machines raised to fight from birth, who compound their existing individual advantages by teaming up and wiping out their hapless competition (much to Katniss’s initial despair and disdain), the first Career Tribute (the boy from District 4) to fall ends up Killed Offscreen on the first day, to Katniss’s surprise. It soon becomes apparent than while powerful, they are also quite vulnerable to the arena and most are no match for her quick wits, various skills, and luck as the situation calls for it.
• In Mistborn, everyone regards the Lord Ruler as a terrifying invincible god. Turns out that his power (or rather, a particularly significant part of it) comes from the mystically empowered bracelets he wears on his upper arms which provide him with a limitless supply of youth and vitality — when they get torn off, he immediately begins to revert to his actual age of approximately one millennium. Though he still has his other powers, he can't use them at all effectively while time is rapidly decaying his own body out from under him.
• A rather metaphysical example from the distant past of the Perry Rhodan universe: in a backstory vignette, we learn of the fight of the last still-active Knight of the Deep, Armadan of Harpoon, against an entity called Nabel that controls a large and spreading sector of space. Nabel's strength and weakness both is her unconditional commitment to an idea — specifically, the idea of her own ultimate power. (This is a universe in which superbeings with vast psychic powers do canonically exist, so the concept isn't as outlandish as one might first think.) After years of trying to find a way to fight such an enemy all on his own, with no support whatsoever and his immortality having given out, Armadan fails as far as he knows; he dies of old age with Nabel's position no weaker than before. Yet it's also his death that for the first time in her entire existence inspires Nabel to consider her own mortality — and being who she is...
• The mercenary protagonist in The Dogs of War is Secretly Dying of lung cancer. He shoots himself at the end of the book.
• Porthos, the giant member of our band in The Three Musketeers and The Man in the Iron Mask — so big and strong that he can't even kill himself by hanging (though it does cure his impotence, which is why he was doing it) — is killed holding up a huge rock in Thirty Years After.
• In the Dale Brown book The Tin Man, Patrick McLanahan is warned that the first version of the eponymous Powered Armor he's using is vulnerable to knives, something that turns out to be a Chekhov's Gun. Hal Briggs gets this in Strike Force after running into a Russian trap.
• The death of the alien invaders in The War of the Worlds (1898) is a classic case, although not a very well foreshadowed one.^note Most adaptations tend to make it even less foreshadowed — in addition to the famous introductory paragraph there is an info-dump about midway through the book that in passing mentions an apparent lack of a Martian immunity system amongst other biological facts since learned — but it is clunky enough that adaptations tend to leave it out. Earlier in the book, there is the Martian attack on Shepperton, which applies this to the Martian tripods by showing that human heavy weaponry can destroy them... just with so much effort that the invasion still seems unstoppable. The problem is that the Martian tripods are well-armoured enough that anything a human soldier could lift in 1898 won't so much as scratch them, and contemporary artillery can't adjust quick enough to hit them without some degree of luck. HMS Thunder Child, a torpedo ram, can move while firing and use ramming to take down a tripod and damage two others before being destroyed. Set the story in the 21st Century, when we have our own Lightning Bruiser war machines, and the tripods will definitely prove not so invincible, which is why subsequent adaptations of the story usually give them indestructible forcefields.
• This happens in Worm when Taylor and Tattletale are facing down Glory Girl, a Flying Brick whose sister they have taken hostage. Taylor covers her with bugs, in response to which Glory Girl says that she's invincible, to which Tattletale retorts that no, she's not, she just has a force field — one that shorts out temporarily when she takes a hard hit, like a gunshot. At which point Tattletale shoots her, letting Taylor's insects through.
  • Tattletale's power makes her scarily good at this — at one point, she does it to the Siberian, a legendary, invincible supervillain who is a Hero Killer, by figuring out that she's actually a solid force field projection created and controlled by someone else. Dragon then hunts down the creator and kills him.
  • Taylor herself tends to work with the assumption that nobody is invincible, not truly. When she was finally forced to fight against Alexandria, she filled Alexandria's lungs with webbing, effectively drowning her. The result practically skyrocketed her to A rank.
  • In the battles against Scion, who usually just tanks everything thrown at him, never bothering to dodge, there are a handful of superpowers that people notice he's blocking or dodging, most notably Foil's projectiles. Taylor realizes that despite appearances, Scion is not invincible, and he's dodging those attacks because they actually have the power to harm him. Many plans in the final battle revolve around said powers as a result.
• Downplayed in The Zombie Knight. Just after Roman is first shown to be a good guy, he gets splashed in the face with soul-empowered hydrochloric acid and has his face melted off. He is useless for the rest of the fight because he can't see a thing without his glasses.
• Done at the climax of the Sherlock Holmes story The Hound of the Baskervilles. Upon seeing the hound, Holmes, Watson and Lestrange are terrified at the sight of it. But when one of their shots causes it to cry out in pain, they realize that the hound is mortal and gun it down.
• The Sea Wolf: Wolf Larsen remains undefeated in physical (or verbal) confrontation — right up until an apparent brain tumor does him in. Foreshadowed by his unthinkably painful headaches at various points before the end.
• In Honor Harrington, the Solarian League's navy is more than ten times the size of any other, so it's been able to bully most potential opponents for centuries, without even having to actually fight. Then one of its ships gets popped in a fight with the Manties. The Sollies repeatedly double down to restore their reputation for invincibility, with generally lamentable results.
• After spending 8000 pages worth of story and 10 years real-time being almost untouchable to the main characters, Lord English is finally defeated in The Homestuck Epilogues. After his status as The Omnipotent is revoked by the destruction of the Green Sun, Davepeta carries him into the resultant black hole, which he survives, but throws him into an alternate timeline where he is devoured by the alternate Calliope.
• In the second book of The Heroes of Olympus series, The Son of Neptune, the heroes have to fight the giant Alcyoneus, whose gimmick is that he is un-killable as long as he is within the boundaries of his homeland - in this case, Alaska. Unfortunately for him, he didn't exercise the most caution in deciding where in Alaska to confront the heroes.
  Frank Zhang: Here's a tip, Alcyoneus. Next time you choose the biggest state for your home, don't set up base in the part that's only ten miles wide. Welcome to Canada, idiot.
• Journey to the West: Sun Wukong is immortal five times over and proves repeatedly throughout the story just how unkillable he is, surviving fire, lightning, being boiled alive, being decapitated, having a literal mountain dropped on his head, being burned for 49 days in a furnace that was specifically designed to kill immortals, and all manner of other things. So it's a major surprise to everyone when the Scorpion Demoness stings him and her venom actually makes him deathly ill. It still doesn't quite manage to kill him, but it's probably the one time in the story that Monkey's life was in real danger. The story says the Scorpion Demoness's venom is so strong that even the Buddha himself is not immune to it.

Live-Action TV

• Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., when Aida creates a new body out of Darkhold matter, they give it all the abilities of the Inhumans faced so far, including superhuman strength, teleportation, and a major Healing Factor. They're pretty unstoppable... until they make the mistake of letting the Ghost Rider get in a hit, leaving a Wound That Will Not Heal. Aida spends the rest of the season flat-out terrified of the Ghost Rider, teleporting away whenever he gets close. She ultimately dies when she unknowingly lets the Ghost Rider (possessing Coulson) get his hands on her, and he burns her to ashes.
• The Boys (2019): In Season 3, everyone learns that Homelander is the World's Strongest Man for a reason, but he's not so far above them that there's no hope of victory. It turns out that his abilities have been massively hyped up beyond their actual scope in-universe, which is nothing new for Vought. Soldier Boy leaves him with a black eye, and Maeve destroys his left ear by jamming a metal straw into it. Maeve also bloodies him with her regular punches despite herself not being strong enough to lift a bus (she broke her arm trying to pull one up from a precipice).
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Buffy is brought low by a bout of flu in "Killed by Death". Handily, this gives her a reason to investigate a series of deaths in the local hospital.
  • After all of his plans were ruined, Warren simply walks onto Buffy's backyard with a pistol and shoots her. She's still human, after all. Unfortunately, he also kills Tara, and her girlfriend Dark Willow is not happy about this. Dark Willow does have time to save Buffy's life before going on a rampage, though.
  • In Season 5, Glory can be slowed by magical artifacts.
  • Joss Whedon has a habit of giving main characters senseless, non-heroic deaths, from stray bullets to C-list villains who have simply gotten further in their plans than anyone thought. While the characters weren't ever built up as particularly invincible, their main character status would tend to create viewer expectations of their survival, or at least going out in a blaze of glory.
    • One particularly tearjerking example is Cassie, a minor but much-loved Buffy the Vampire Slayer character who had prophesied her own death. Buffy manages to save her from a cult looking to perform a human sacrifice, when she is almost cut down by a Booby Trap that comes out of nowhere. But this too, Buffy stops. At which point, Cassie drops dead from a heart defect. Also, an example of You Can't Fight Fate
    • The Judge cannot be harmed with any weapon. The Judge declares himself invincible. It took an army to stop him before, and even they could only stop him temporarily. That army did not have a missile launcher, which Buffy uses to blow him away.
• In an episode of Farscape, the protagonists find the wreck of the Zelbinion, a legendary Peacekeeper command carrier. Everybody is stunned, as the ship was believed to be indestructible. When they tell this to Crichton, he calmly tells them to talk to Leonardo DiCaprio about indestructible ships. In a later episode, it's revealed that the ship was destroyed by the Nebari, who claim not to have any warships. However, their civilian ships are fully capable of engaging any warship of a galactic power. It's implied that even the Peacekeepers and the Scarrans would have trouble dealing with the Nebari.
• In Power Rangers Jungle Fury, Grizzaka is in a huge battle with the Rangers. The fight has proceeded to a giant Megazord fight and at one point during that massive showdown he taunts the rangers with "It's your turn to learn the same lesson all of my enemies have. There is no one as powerful as Grizzaka, and never will be," which, unfortunately for him, ends up tempting the Rangers to form the Jungle Master Stampede Formation and use it to destroy him. Before exploding, he gets a huge surprise and shouts "Impossible... I am invincible... no one is stronger than Grizzaka...!" After that, his Critical Existence Failure is instantaneous.
• Omar Little of The Wire, was so effective at his role as a stick-up man targeting the drug crews of Baltimore, that it eventually stopped being a certainty of him jacking them, but a guarantee. Attacks on his loved ones just made him come harder at the people responsible, and even sending an assassin at him doesn't take. The guy could escape a shootout against his crew by jumping out of a four-storey high balcony, cementing his reputation on the streets as an unstoppable force. Until he was shot from behind by a 10-year old boy while he was buying some cigarettes at a grocery store. Even the news of this seemed too anticlimatic to be true, so naturally stories on the streets over "Omar's Last Stand" spread growing more and more incredible befitting the reputation he held in the Baltimore underworld.
• The teaser of Star Trek: Voyager's third season finale, "Scorpion", is pretty simple. Two Borg cubes (and only one of them was needed to wipe out 39 starships and 11,000 Starfleet lives in Star Trek: The Next Generation) appear on the screen, delivering their catchphrase. While they're saying it, beams of energy shoot out and blow them up as they reach the line 'Resistance is futile." The whole episode is about how Voyager can go up against something that is able to do that to the Borg.
• Sarah Connor in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles suffers from a unique version of this trope, when she learns that in her uninterrupted timeline, after she had fought to keep John alive and saved the world twice, she died from leukemia. She immediately heads to a hospital in an attempt to stop this.
• Supernatural:
  • Not only can Leviathans not be killed by normal weapons, but they're also totally unfazed by all of the typical monster weaknesses, such as holy water and salt. Twice on the show, the heroes think they've finally found a way to kill one, first when one gets crushed by a falling car, and then when Bobby chops off one's head, only to find out they're alive and strong as ever a short time later. They can effortlessly kill every other creature on the show, and a single Leviathan even wipes out an entire garrison of angels. If the tablet Metatron wrote on them is any indication, even God himself didn't think it would be possible to kill more than one. Not more than one at a time, more than one ever. Then Jody Mills accidentally spills Borax on one...
  • Sam and Dean are badass hunters who routinely kill monsters, ghosts, demons, and even gods. They've also died many, many times. In particular, Sam in "All Hell Breaks Loose, Part 1" and "Heaven And Hell" was killed by humans with ordinary weapons, and in "Mystery Spot" as a result of a "Groundhog Day" Loop Dean got hit by a car, choked to death on a hot dog, was lethally shot twice, was crushed by a falling desk, and was killed by an ordinary dog, got electrocuted by a toothbrush, and got lethal brain damage after slipping in the shower, and that's just counting the deaths we see.
• Luke Cage (2016):
  • Luke Cage's durable skin can resist practically anything. However, he can still sustain internal injuries, like point-blank shotgun blasts to the face. The Judas bullets can penetrate his skin and are tough to dig out. Subverted in the second season, in which the only appearance of the Judas Bullets is someone trying to gun down Luke in a drive-by with a rifle loaded with the things only for them to bounce off because his skin has adapted.
  • In the second season, the Establishing Character Moment of John "Bushmaster" McIver is him walking up to Luke and beat the ever-living hell out of Cage thanks to his drug-boosted body. The humiliation Luke gets as a result thanks to someone uploading a video of the "fight" on the Internet becomes a Running Gag.
• Super Sentai: A tradition is to have a Monster of the Week or major villain be all but invulnerable or undefeatable until a new power is unlocked by the heroes.
  • Chikyuu Sentai Fiveman:
    • Big Garoan in episode 44 is Garoa's ultimate weapon and it makes short work of Super Fiverobo in a crushing Curb-Stomp Battle, then the Fiveman use the Earth Cannon to blow its cockpit and then shower it with the Magma Base's full might in the newly-made weakspot and it goes down.
    • Vulgyre in the finale is well-enough invincible, taking no damage from even Max Magma and flattening the fortress in a few hits, then the Shidon Flowers and Meadow's spirit weaken them enough to be finally defeated by Super Five Robo diving into its mouth with a finisher.
  • Gekisou Sentai Carranger: Exhaus Super Strong flattens all of the Carrangers' mecha and is easily the strongest foe who takes basically no damage from anything but outdated imo-youkan can weaken and/or shrink the consumer, and Gynamo took advantage of that to shrink and reduce his power to a level fit for the Carrangers to defeat.
• The old male Liopleurodon in the Walking with Dinosaurs episode "Cruel Sea" is described as the largest carnivore to have ever lived, the uncontested apex predator that even the sharks dread... but he dies a slow and undignified death from being beached and is eaten by scavengers.

Myths & Religion

• Classical Mythology:
  • In "Jason and the Argonauts," Jason survived all manner of crazy adventures, battling against impossible odds. He even betrayed his extremely homicidal wife and lived to tell about it (even if she let him live so he could suffer for everything else she had done to him). What did him in? A piece of his ship, the Argo, fell on his head and killed him instantly while he was asleep. In one version, he sat under it, told it that it was the only friend he had... and then it fell on his head and killed him.
  • The mighty Hercules, son of Zeus, a man who stole Cerberus from Hades, who choked an indestructible lion to death, who slew the Hydra: killed by a shirt with some poisonous blood on it. In some versions of the myth, it didn't actually kill him, just caused him constant, unending agony, so he set himself on fire to escape the pain.
  • Achilles was rendered invulnerable because his mother Thetis dipped him into the River Styx as a child; however as she was holding onto his heel, it was never made invulnerable. Many years later during the Trojan War, Achilles is the greatest hero on the field...until he is killed by a single arrow in the foot. As with any myth, there are varying versions. Most of them do make some mention of the arrow being poisoned.

Tabletop RPG

• Psionics: The Next Stage in Human Evolution is about people with massive psionic powers and superhuman physical and mental attributes, so espers often stray into this territory.
  • Pyrokinetics can summon bursts of intense flame to melt incoming projectiles, which easily nullifies the damage from tranquilizer bolts and darts, but this doesn't nullify the effects of the drugs inside of them.
  • Even the most powerful espers don't have unlimited power points, so bullets and other weapons never stop being deadly threats.
• In the World War II superhero RPG Godlike, The Invulnerable Man is invulnerable to anything, as long as he knows about it. He dies of lung cancer from smoking; he didn't see that coming.

Video Games

• Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies: The Federal Erusea Air Force's 156th Tactical Fighter Wing "Aquila", also known as Yellow Squadron, is a squadron of fearsome Ace Pilots who gave the Independent State Allied Forces a run for their money during the first half of the Continental War, and easily dispatched any ISAF fighter unfortunate enough to cross their path without suffering a single casualty. In the game proper, the Yellows first appear as Elite Mooks who will aggresively pursue you and are capable of evading any missile fired at them, with AWACS SkyEye telling you to haul ass out of the battlefield as soon as they arrive in the mission "Lifeline". ^note  And for good reason; here, they simply cannot be shot down by any means. As the game goes on, however, their aura of invincibility begins to gradually falter thanks to the involvement of ISAF's own ace pilot and the player character, Mobius 1:
  • In "Shattered Skies", while you still cannot shoot down Yellow Squadron fighters, the mission also presents you your first real chance to actually land a hit on one during the Big Badass Battle Sequence taking place, to the shock of everyone present. Not only will Yellow Squadron be forced to flee from the furball when this happens, but the squadron's leader himself and the fighter whom you just happened to damage — Yellow 13 — will begin to consider you a potential Worthy Opponent as a result.
    Ally: A Yellow's hit and trailing smoke. Whose kill was that?
    Yellow 13: Who was it that shot me?! See who's responsible for that shot!
    Unnamed Yellow: It's a ribbon!
  • Said aura is finally shattered at the end of "Stonehenge Offensive", which ends once you manage to shoot down Yellow 4. From this point on, Yellow Squadron fighters become just as killable as any other regular mook (but no less deadly), while Mobius 1 becomes greatly feared by the Erusean forces as the "Grim Reaper" who claimed the life of one of their best pilots.
• The trend continues in Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown, where Trigger goes up against Mihaly A. Shilage - the infamous "King of the Skies", who according to source material mentored Yellow 13. He comes with his own Yellow Squadron-Expy, Sol Squadron, whose pilots are every bit as dangerous as the Yellow pilots were. Mihaly himself stands out as an in-universe Living Legend whose presence strikes fear into the hearts of his opponents who dreaded going up against him. Every time he shows up, he claims at least one of your allies' lives. It gets to the point that Mihaly's flight data was used by the enemy scientist as a template for a super combat A.I. that, after it goes rogue, threatens all of humanity's existence. Throughout the story, it's made clear that only Trigger could stand up against him. He's the first to be able to land some hits on the mighty ace pilot in all of his career, would've actually beaten him in the second encounter were it not for the satellite disaster, and finally beats him for real even with Mihaly flying a Super Prototype plane to up his odds. Not only that, Trigger also proves to have what it takes to defeat two of the aforementioned super A.I. drones in the final battle as well, showing once and for all that there's always a better ace pilot out there.
• In a Borderlands DLC there is a mission that requires you to defeat a giant crayfish-like enemy called Crawmerax the Invincible, and he is by far the hardest boss in the game. Once you defeat him, you can get an achievement called "Vincible".
• Darkest Dungeon: Your party can fight an army of undead, fungus people, mutant pig-men, brigands, cultists, pirates, and a slew of eldritch abominations and win. In the end, even the most ancient and lethal of all demons can be felled like any of your mortal party members. Unfortunately, they have reserves that you will NEVER have.
• Beldr the Immortal of Devil Survivor, who has before made a pact with every single possible thing on earth saying that none of them can hurt him. This makes him Nigh-Invulnerable to every one of your attacks, unless you use the one thing that didn't make the pact: the Devil's Fuge, or Mistletoe, which has been made into a cell phone strap. Not so immortal after all, huh?
• Alduin from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is assumed to be completely deathless. The only thing that does him in is fighting a dovahkiin in the Nord afterlife, and even that ends ambiguously. So it comes to a complete shock to him when ancient heroes managed to create a shout that can actually hurt him.
• Final Fantasy
  • Sephiroth of Final Fantasy VII is not so massively above everyone that he can't be fought at all, but the characters powerful enough to give him a good fight are few and far between. Crisis Core shows that by the time Sephiroth went insane upon finding out his origins, he went all-out against Zack, who previously defeated beings close to Sephiroth's level. Despite winning the fight, Sephiroth was left vulnerable enough from both his psychotic breakdown and the strain of fighting Zack that an ordinary grunt managed to kill Sephiroth by stabbing him in the back and throwing him into the Lifestream. Despite coming back to life twice with more power each time, Sephiroth still consistently loses to the heroes because of his belief that he's a god, that there's no way they could beat him this time, and that he enjoys toying with his enemies too much to go for the quick kill.
  • Final Fantasy X has the Eldritch Abomination Sin, a gigantic Space Whale that consumes and destroys everything that gets on its way. The Al Bhed try to take on Sin in a joint operation with the Crusaders using their heaviest weapons early in the game, and do absolutely nothing to Sin. The only means of defeating Sin is by the use of the Final Aeon, which is obtained at the end of a summoner's pilgrimage. But this will end up killing the summoner and one of their guardians in the process, and that guardian will just become the next Sin. However, when the main characters Take a Third Option and Screw Destiny, they have what it takes to damage Sin by weakening it using the very same tech that the Yevon Church restricted, which gives the party the chance they need to get inside Sin and permanently stop it.
• Zato-1 from Guilty Gear is a straight video game example, although he was originally intended to dodge the bullet. The unexpected death of his voice actor forced the designers to call in a Not So Invincible After All moment to explain the voice change, as he was consumed by Eddie, the shadow parasite he used to fight.
• Hitman: Absolution: Used to justify why Agent 47, master assassin, tried garrotting a giant bodyguard instead of anything smart. He admits that he was overconfident in his abilities and when it comes to assassinate said bodyguard, he can kill him with his barehands in a rematch, to show why he thought so highly of his skills.
• In Iconoclasts, the Agents are the immortal Super Soldiers of the One Concern. While they can be hurt and killed just like everyone else, they all possess an extremely strong Healing Factor which ensures they don't stay dead for very long. When not one, but two of them are perma-killed in quick succession, it terrifies the rest of them.
• Injustice: Gods Among Us features Ares, the God of War. Many of his quotes are assertions that as a god, he is invincible. Not only that, but combat is what makes him strong, and his own victory quote points out how stupid it is to challenge the God of War in combat. All that said, he gets curb stomped by Wonder Woman during the story campaign, and then admits that a lack of conflict in the world due to Superman's Regime makes him weak enough to be harmed by even mortals.
• In Langrisser (Warsong in North America), Volkov/Baldarov permanently dies from a random arrow in a cutscene at the end of a battle, even though in-game you can take up to nine arrows at a time and still be as good as new after three turns of self-healing (or less, if someone casts a heal spell on you as well).
• One of Francis's quotes in Left 4 Dead reads "Good thing I'm indestructible."
• In many Mario games such as Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World, even while you're powered-up with the Invincibility Star, you can still get killed by jumping into lava or being crushed by a wall and platform.
  • The "Invincible" Tubba Blubba from Paper Mario. His invincibility is the plot point of the chapter: you know he has a weakness, you just don't know what it is or where to find it. It's his heart, separated from his body, which is still very vulnerable. After defeating it, it flees and rejoins its owner, making him not only vulnerable but weak enough to take out in one turn.
• After Priority: Tuchanka in Mass Effect 3, if you talk to EDI she’ll remark that while the Reapers claim to be the pinnacle of existence, one of them was killed by a worm. There are also hints of previous cycles putting up a decent fight, including exploring the corpse of one Reaper that a precursor once shot with a weapon that scarred their own planet when fired.
• Metal Gear:
  • Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater features a unique gameplay-affecting example. One of the harder bosses in the game is The End, an incredibly skilled sniper who's also an incredibly old man. If you take a long enough break from the game (or, if you're a cheating bastard, advance the PS2's internal clock), he'll have died of old age when you load back up. For that matter, another Easter Egg means of killing him? Snipe him when he's asleep in his wheelchair.
  • In Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, Solid Snake, who's survived Outer Heaven, Zanzibar Land, Shadow Moses, the sinking of the Discovery, and the Big Shell Incident is slowly dying of advanced cell degeneration. It doesn't kill him, though. At least, not for LONG after the game ends.
  • Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty had a sudden and shocking example. Throughout the game, Fortune has been invincible, where bullets literally go around her, and explosives that get close to her don't explode (why nobody takes a knife to her is anyone's guess). She and the other characters dismiss this as supernatural, and the player is convinced of this with an eventually subverted handwave. When the characters begin to pull at the threads of the twist ending, Fortune moves to shoot Ocelot with her BFG, and he quick draws his gun and shoots her, having previously deactivated the device protecting her without her knowledge (before revealing that he was responsible for it in the first place).
• Nihilumbra: The Klimeths, after you combine fire with a turret.
• Shinjiro Aragaki of Persona 3 certainly seems to be headed this way after it's discovered that he's been taking Persona suppressants that have been shortening his lifespan, but it ends up being subverted when he ends up Taking the Bullet for Ken Amada instead.
• In Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, the Prince is hunted by the Dahaka, an apparently invincible agent of time sent to kill the Prince to correct the Prince's meddling with the timestream via his use of the Sands of Time. The only thing that temporarily halts the Dahaka's pursuit is flowing water. In the best ending, the Prince finds the magical Water Sword. When the sword actually manages to hurt the Dahaka in their final encounter, the Prince mentions that it isn't so invincible after all.
• Ukyo Tachibana from the Samurai Shodown video game series was set up for this with his tuberculosis, but due to his popularity, SNK has never followed through, except in the obscure and disliked Warrior's Rage.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • The player will still drown underwater or get crushed by moving platforms while invincible in the games.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog 3:
    • Ice Cap Zone Act 1 has a Knuckles-exclusive area where you must glide from wall to wall and avoid spiked balls. If you use debug mode or a glitch to get Super Sonic into the area, the spiked balls will damage you anyway, and since the damage knocks your ring count to 0, it ends your Super status. However, in Sonic 3 & Knuckles, this is corrected and the Super and Hyper characters can touch the spike balls with no repercussions.
    • The Launch Base Zone final boss Big Arms. If Eggman manages to catch you in the robot's arms, he'll carry you up and body slam you, causing you to lose your rings, even in Super Mode, causing you to revert to normal. This turned out to be a glitch and, similarly to the spike balls above, was corrected in Sonic 3 & Knuckles: While Big Arms can still grab Super Form characters, when slammed into the ground, they'll just bounce harmlessly, taking no damage.
  • In a few modern Sonic games, a select few enemies have proven to be powerful enough that they can, through power alone, harm Super Sonic or other characters in their Super Forms. Notably, the Egg Salamander from Sonic Rush, Solaris from Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) and Dark Gaia from Sonic Unleashed are three such examples, though in the case of the former, only a select few of the Egg Salamander's attacks can harm Super Sonic or Burning Blaze. The Titans from Sonic Frontiers can also make short work of Super Sonic if he fails a QTE. In the True Final Boss added in the Final Horizons update, THE END unavoidably blasts Super Sonic 2 and forces him to lose alot of rings. Even more striking because in this form, Sonic had harnessed the power of Cyberspace to increase his Super Sonic power further.
• View from Below: Deconstructed. The Crimson God at full power is completely unbeatable and once defeated Melody, the Stone Wall party member, in one hit. Although Ash and Melody learn that he can be weakened by killing his soul pieces, they are still held back by their fear of him, since they have no knowledge of how much this actually weakened him. This leads to the Crimson God almost killing them again, but once they regain their footing, they find that his attacks have been reduced from one hit kills to survivable even for a Glass Cannon like Ash.
• Warcraft: Many boss characters are not only very powerful, and possess game breaking spells, but they also have Divine armor type which only receives 0.1% damage from all types, making them practically invincible. When the game requires the player to defeat them, a main quest will have them acquire one or more units that do Chaos damage, which completely ignores all armor types including Divine.
• In White Knight Chronicles, Grazel's Knight Adolmea the Sun King is supposedly the most powerful one. It lives up to that reputation for a while since its magical protection renders most attacks even from fellow Knights ineffective. Then Leonard obtains the sword Falcyon which is able to cut through Adolmea's defenses. Grazel is suitably shaken after being defeated so easily in their rematch.

Web Comics

• A Running Gag in Captain SNES: The Game Masta. Anyone who says the phrase "I am invincible!", regardless of how powerful they are, will end up getting hurt in some way, even if they're only correcting someone else or quoting someone else who said it. In the world of Final Fantasy IV, an explosion threw a number of treasure boxes all over the world; every single one has landed on someone foolish enough to say "I am invincible!" And it happens every single time, without fai... * gets hit by a treasure chest from the sky. * So far, the only 2 people have not lost to this; Scarmiglione, who had a second form triggered by being killed, and Bowser, who simply shrugged it off.
• Drowtales: 30 comic-time years and over 12 real-time years since the comic started, someone FINALLY lands a scratch on Snadhya'rune. She does NOT take it well.
• Kill Six Billion Demons:
  • God-Emperor Solomon David holds a regular tournament where the Multiverse's strongest fighters will fight each other to face Solomon in the final round; anyone who can so much as draw a single drop of blood from Solomon can have any boon from him he's able to fulfill, up to and including his Empire or his Magus Key. In the centuries he's hosted the tournament, Solomon has met hundreds of challengers and has never lost, even when he's Just Toying with Them. At the end of King of Swords, 82 White Chain becomes Solomon's opponent and their duel leads to White Chain grazing Solomon's cheek and giving him a small bruise. While this does not qualify as a victory per the rules, merely seeing the God-Emperor touched by an opponent leads to the audience declaring White Chain the winner.
  • During the Discordance of the Demiurges in Breaker of Infinities, the majority of the battle is spent with Allison trying to survive while the Demiurges rally to land a single telling hit on Jagganoth, eventually leading to Allison getting her head in the game and joining the battle as Aspected Chaos. By fundamentally changing Mottom's binding, Aspected Chaos allows Incubus to actually pierce Jagganoth's skin, a feat thought to be impossible due to his Complete Immortality. Once the dust settles, it is revealed that it wasn't an actual wound, merely that the binding consumed Incubus' sword. Not only is Jagganoth unharmed, but the binding the Demiurges and Aspected Chaos threw their all into turns out to be barely worth a minute of respite. Seeing the binding as the best they can do, Jagganoth decides he's had enough of probing their strength and unleashes his One-Winged Angel form.
• One-Punch Man: Subverted in the fight between Boros and Saitama. Boros lands a clean hit on Saitama and sends him flying across the surface of the ship they're fighting on, and thinks to himself that Saitama definitely took damage, as we see the Caped Baldy standing with his costume messed up and his head lolling to the side. It turns out that Saitama wasn't hurt at all, he was just getting bored of the fight.

Web Video

• DEATH BATTLE!: "Hulk VS Broly" specifically uses the Immortal Hulk, who is, well immortal, being able to come back from everything from decapitation to being reduced to nothing but a skeleton. However, Broly manages to actually take him down for good by hitting him with enough force to completely vaporize his entire body, leaving nothing behind for Hulk to regenerate from.
• In Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, much of Captain Hammer's cocksure Jerkass attitude comes from the fact that he is apparently impervious to damage, but when Dr. Horrible's death ray malfunctions and explodes in his hands, the aftermath has him lying on the floor and crying "I'm in pain! I think this is what pain feels like!", before he runs away like a little girl and spends the next many months in therapy.
• Helluva Boss: Being a demon prince of the Ars Goetia, Stolas is not only pretty high in Hell's hierarchy, his status is also backed up by the fact that he's vasty more powerful than most other demons. When Striker binds him with blessed rope in "Western Energy" and starts torturing him, Stolas has to be rushed to a hospital at the end of the episode due to the severity of his injuries. Up until this point Blitzo had assumed Stolas to be so powerful that he wouldn't be in any actual danger after learning that he had been kidnapped. The realization that he isn't leaves him rather despondent.
  Blitzo: He can get hurt?
• RWBY:
  • The key to defeating Adam Taurus was actually Blake realizing this. As soon as she realized that he wasn't some unstoppable beast that she had no choice but to run from and decided to stand up to him, Adam had been effectively crippled. While he was still a Master Swordsman, the lion's share of Adam's power lay in intimidation, dragging other people down, and ambushing his enemies, making himself seem much more invincible than he really was: once confronted in outright combat, Blake and Yang were able to find holes in his defenses, create counters for his Semblance, and finally defeat him once and for all.
  • A recurring assertion is the fact Salem is immortal doesn't mean she's invincible. Volume 8 reveals that she can be affected by the Semblances of others, and that she can actually lose fights; Emerald's illusions successfully trick her, and Hazel and Oscar are able to obliterate her body enough to put her out commission for a short while. The fight also revealed that she does feel pain, even if she has an insanely high threshold for tolerating it.

Western Animation

• In Aqua Teen Hunger Force, the Broodwich sandwich is stated to be immortal and cannot be taken apart. Yet, Shake was able to remove the sun-dried tomatoes simply cause he found them disgusting.
• In the opening of the first episode of Batman Beyond, Bruce Wayne hangs up the Bat-mantle after a bad heart attack forces him to pull a gun on someone.
• In the second movie of Care Bears the villain Darkheart falls out of a rowing boat and nearly drowns, needing to be rescued by his own reluctant minion. For reference, this is the same guy who at the beginning of the movie menaced the Care Bears on their boat in the middle of a storm-tossed ocean by taking the form of an enormous serpent, and possesses huge mystical powers. Who'd have guessed he'd be as vulnerable to the old "banana peel on the floor" trick as anyone?
• In many episodes of The Dreamstone, the Wuts regularly beat the Urpneys effortlessly through the use of their powerful magic or Sky Surfing leaves, and one occasion even handed Zordrak a humiliating Curbstomp Battle. In "The Spidermobile" however, Urpgor finally creates a mech capable of deflecting the Wuts magic, leading them and the other heroes to suffer a slapstick defeat at the hands of the Urpneys twice over.
• El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera: After terrorizing Miracle City once every ten years for a long time, devouring superheroes and supervillains alike, El Mal Verde is finally brought down by White Pantera kicking the wind out of him, El Tigre incinerating the inside of his nose and knocking most of his teeth out, leaving him upside down in a crater where Granpapi steals his wallet. From then on, he remains a dangerous villain, but the knowledge that he can be defeated means he's no longer as feared as he used to be.
• Futurama:
  • That Guy was cryogenically frozen because they were unable to find a cure for his terrible "boneitis". He turns out to be a cold, skilled businessman, and is just about to sell Planet Express to their biggest rivals, Momcorp, when he keels over and dies, Chekhov's Gun-style, of his boneitis. "I was so busy being an Eighties guy," he laments, convulsing with agony, "that I forgot to cure it..." His one regret was that he had boneitis.
  • During an episode set on a planet of robots who believe humans are evil, a horror film (in a clear homage to The War of the Worlds) ends with the heroes pontificating that a human was immune to their "most powerful electromagnetic fields," but could be killed by a simple pointy stick in the back.
• Hazbin Hotel:
  • Once a year, Exorcist angels descend upon Hell to cull its sinner population. They've been doing this for long enough that it's common knowledge that they're unkillable. Then the first episode ends with the retrieval of an Exorcist's decapitated corpse, which is eventually revealed to have been slain by Carmilla with her angelic steel-laced shoes. The very fact that Exorcists can be killed at all drives the plot of the first season, as Adam retaliates by scheduling another Extermination six months earlier and Alastor uses his knowledge of Carmilla's part in the incident to force a deal with Charlie in time to defend the Hotel.
  • Alastor is an Overlord of Hell and the most powerful of Charlie's allies, spending much of the series in smug superiority over the residents and only being decisively outclassed by Charlie's father, who is literally The Devil. When he fights Adam, his overconfidence nets him a broken cane and nearly-fatal injuries, forcing him to retreat for the first time shown and sending him into an uncharactaristic spiral of panic. For the audience, this is the first time that he is shown to be genuinely panicked and not in control of his situation, though he bounces back pretty quick.
• In The Jetsons episode "The Test Pilot", George, under the impression he was going to die, volunteers to field-test a life jacket Made of Indestructium for Mr. Spacely. After a whole episode of being put through all kinds of comedic overkill, including being directly hit with two intercontinental ballistic missiles, the jacket was deemed totally indestructible and received the Good Spacekeeping Seal of Approval. Just before the celebratory banquet, however, Jane mentions that it looked soiled so she put it in the washing machine, where it apparently fell apart due to being dry-clean only. Cue Spacely crying as he sees his dreams of wealth gone up in smoke and his company out of business and George rushing off to Cogswell Cogs to get a new job.
• Looney Tunes:
  • Bugs Bunny, one of Western Animation's most iconic Comically Invincible Heroes was occasionally granted a rather humiliating loss, often at the hands of underestimated foes such as Elmer Fudd or Cecil Turtle. Double points in that the usually unflappable Bugs was prone to temper tantrums in most of these instances.
    • More typically of course he goes up against someone who appears to be utterly undefeatable, and proceeds to take them out with cunning and aplomb.
  • Speedy Gonzales, while not as commonly done, had similar moments. Being even more infallible than Bugs, his one true loss was at the hands of Daffy Duck hitting him on the head with a mallet.
• Rick and Morty: While Evil Morty does decisively beat Rick Prime, he does so by the seat of his pants, getting blindsided and nearly killed by him several times, and ultimately only getting the better of him due to a last second Twin Switch with Morty, knowing Rick Prime would be arrogant enough to let his guard down against an ordinary Morty. It stands out compared to every previous opponent whom Evil Morty was next to a step ahead of, showcasing just how dangerous Rick Prime is and how Evil Morty's best asset is preparation.
• Steven Universe: The Diamonds are regarded as very powerful gems, Pink Diamond was shattered by Rose Quartz. Subverted in that Pink Diamond faked her own shattering because she was Rose Quartz. Although doing so did show it's possible for Diamonds to be poofed and shattered.
• Starscream from Transformers: Animated. After Megatron tore his spark out of his chest, Screamer immediately discovered that there is a piece of the AllSpark lodged in his forehead. Cue the Starscream Death Montage. In the finale, Prowl removes the fragment and Starscream dies for good.

Real Life

• There have been six ships of the Royal Navy named HMS Invincible, none of which are still in service:
  • HMS Invincible (1747) was originally a French ship named L'invincible. Which proved to not be invincible when she was captured by the British and renamed HMS Invincible. HMS Invincible sank in February 1758 when she hit a sandbank in the East Solent.
  • HMS Invincible (1765): She was wrecked off the Norfolk coast in 1801, with the loss of 400 lives.
  • HMS Invincible (1808): Survived The Napoleonic Wars; eventually scrapped.
  • HMS Invincible (1869): Renamed in 1904; foundered in a storm in 1914.
  • HMS Invincible (1907): The first battlecruiser ever built. She blew up and sank after taking a hit from SMS Lützow during World War I, with the loss of 1,026 crew. Only six crew members survived. Lützow later sank from shell damage caused by Invincible.
  • HMS Invincible (R05) was a light aircraft carrier, the first of three in the Invincible class. She served from 1980 to 2005, including service in The Falklands War. Although this Invincible had the longest and most successful career of the six, she would eventually be decommissioned — to make way for the much larger Queen Elizabeth class carriers — and recycled for scrap in Turkey in 2011.
    • In the novel The Hunt for Red October, Soviet Captain Ramius sarcastically mentions the name Invincible to his crew when he spots the carrier on his periscope, stating it to be a particularly arrogant name for a ship.
• The T-34 tank. While it certainly was invincible against inferior German designs in 1941 and good part of 1942, the newer German tank cannons, such as 75 mm Kwk 42 and formidable 88 mm Kwk 36 could destroy it with ease, and it proved to be a death trap when coming second best. In 1943, it was hopelessly outclassed against the newer German designs.
  • History would repeat for the tank in Korea. The initial offensive saw North Korean T-34s shrug off South Korean bazookas and Chaffee light tanks. Once heavier UN formations with Shermans, Pershings, and Centurions arrived, though, the tank was on the receiving end of repeated asskickings.
• Chuck Norris, the Memetic Badass, famously lost a fight to Bruce Lee.
• Attila the Hun, one of the most feared warriors in history, died on his wedding night thanks to a nosebleed.
• The Mexican criminal known as "El Tigre de Santa Julia" was famously captured while he was on the toilet. It has even become a popular expression in Mexico to say "You caught me like El Tigre de Santa Julia" when someone is interrupted in the bathroom.
• We all know what exactly happened to the Titanic, a ship which was defined in the media as 'unsinkable'. Turns out that no engineer in the world can prepare for that exact mixture of hubris and ill fortune.
• World Chess Champion Jose Raul Capablanca was considered to be practically unbeatable in his prime, at one point never losing a tournament game in 8 years. So everyone was surprised when he ended up losing the world championship to the Russian Alexander Alekhine.
• In his heyday, Alexander the Great was as close to a living god as ever existed. His empire extended from Greece to India, he was fabulously wealthy, an amazingly powerful king who was both loved and feared by his subjects, and a nigh-invincible military strategist. His sudden death at the age of 32 was a shock to the ancient world. Theories abound on what might have killed him, including diseases like malaria or typhoid. If these theories are true, then a tiny, mindless insect or microbe accomplished something countless battlefield opponents and would-be assassins failed to do in killing Alexander.
• During his conquest of Gaul, Julius Caesar's repeated victories gave him a reputation of invincibility, and even during Vercingetorix' great revolt many of the Gaulish tribes didn't join or even fought for the Romans because of it... Until the Battle of Gergovia, in which Vercingetorix successfully fought off and forced to retreat the main Roman army led by Caesar himself, spreading the revolt to almost all tribes before Caesar's triumph at Alesia restored his reputation.

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