Nigh Invulnerability / Video Games

---

• In many rail shooters with a Take Cover! mechanic, the cover/shield your character can hide behind will withstand pretty much everything the enemy can throw at it, even superweapons of mass destruction.
• Assault on Dark Athena shows an example of The Proxy. Mercs controlling Ghost Drones are using them as remote proxies in the field, so they themselves are protected from all harm. When Riddick uses a Drone station himself death becomes a minor nuisance to the player, as every time a drone falls in battle you just immediately wire back in and the next drone in line activates.
• High-level characters in Borderlands are very durable. Krieg the Psycho in Borderlands 2, as payoff for his openly self-destructive early game, is much more durable than that — a burning Hellborn Krieg with a nasty elemental weapon, for example, is quite possibly healing faster than the mixture of fire damage and bullets is killing him. This is actively lampshaded in the Sir Hammerlock's Big Game Hunt DLC where Big Bad Professor Nakayama breaks down in a panic before the final confrontation after his bioweapon fails to defeat you and you start coming for him. He even refers to the Vault Hunter as a "Walking Apocalypse". Salvador's "Come At Me Bro" skill takes it quite literally, with the flavor text "Nigh Invulnerability is a hell of a drug".
• On your first playthrough of Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, all the bosses cannot die unless you draw a specific Magic seal. It gets difficult on the 5th Seal especially against Death and Abaddon; draw the seal wrong and you have to deal more damage before you get the opportunity to try again.
  • However in Julius Mode the Bosses die without you having to draw the seal. Maybe the power of the Vampire Killer has the ability to negate the Bosses' Reconstitution due to the seals?
    • In the standard game, Julius tells Soma he kills them before they can regenerate. (Soma wonders how that's even possible.)
    • Also he gets Yoko to help who, who originally taught Soma about the seals, which would be why he was able to take down bosses that he couldn't outright kill fast enough.
• In Chrono Trigger, there are a few enemies that are either undamageable or essentially unkillable for any practical purposes. These include shield-encased Ozzie, who has 1000 HP, very high defense, and counterattacks with a decently-strong spell (depleting that HP count will result in Ozzie becoming untargetable); Cyrus, who has 2000 HP but is untouchable by standard physical and magical attacks and whose battle ends after 6 turns, which isn't enough time to deal the damage (though people have certainly tried); and Queen Zeal's hands, which also have very high defense, but unlike Ozzie, these have 20,000 HP and also have devastating counterattacks that deal HP to One or Mana Burn damage, during a boss fight where you actually need to fight stuff. If you destroy Queen Zeal's face, her hands also disappear, making destroying her hands directly not just entirely pointless and tedious but also extremely difficult.
• The comic-book-genre-based MMORPG City of Heroes includes the Made of Diamond, Made of Air (sort of), and Regeneration variants all as power sets for melee fighter player characters, as "Invulnerability", "Super Reflexes", and "Regeneration" respectively, as well as the "Willpower" set which combines elements of all three. In addition, some powers can create a state of intangibility, in which the affected character can neither affect nor be affected by anything.
  • In the background story, the setting's main hero Statesman was directly hit with a tactical nuclear warhead by the Soviet Union. It wasn't enough to kill him (but it was enough to put him in a hospital for awhile).
• Clive Barker's Jericho has Hanne Lichthammer, who, it seems, cannot be harmed (or, at the very least, cannot be killed) by bullets. It only takes Church's blood magic to trap her, and even then she has to be killed in a blood ritual.
• Dead Space has the Hunter, a Necromorph who can regenerate any lost body parts and is damn near impossible to kill. He is only killed when Isaac lures him into the path of the engines of a shuttle and test fires them, roasting the Hunter.
  • Dead Space 2 has another Hunter-esque Necromorph. It's called the Ubermorph. If any name pretty much guarantees "impossible to kill" this Necromorph has it. Though technically you can kill it by glitching it into a fan and letting it get blended.
  • Dead Space 3 has several of these guys appear as Elite Mooks, called "Regenerators". Isaac eventually beats them by spacing them. This doesn't kill them, but there's not a whole lot they can do to hurt you when they're helplessly drifting through space.
  • The Necromorph in general: although they are relatively easy to kill by dismemberment, they can reanimate any dead tissue, including dead Necromorph, so its only a matter of time before the remains are re-infected and come back as undead giblets and body parts trying to kill you again...and again and again and again...
• Demon Hunter: The Return of the Wings:
  • Laba and Glashire cannot be harmed without a buff by a specific potion.
  • Bormenta can't be harmed until the three elemental pillars are destroyed.
• Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening:
  • In an opening cutscene, Dante is impaled several times. Cutscene Dante hardly needs Royal Guard; he gets impaled at least once in each game minus the second (it's usually several times each game) so it's almost a Running Gag.
  • The Dullahans have Made of Diamond shields that can only be penetrated by a hard-to-pull-off attack. The Döppelganger is a shadow-entity that is invincible outside of the light, and Dante's acquisition of it makes it invincible even in light, i.e. fully invincible. It probably would laugh at the idea that Good Is Dumb. Boss Vergil in his Devil Trigger state is also invincible, in addition to regenerating any damage he might have sustained in human form. Just-timed usage of Royal Guard also makes Dante invincible to any attack; Perhaps predictably, the cutscenes never show him touching it.
• Devil May Cry 4: Dante does use it in the boss fights against him, though thankfully he doesn't do it all the time or the game would be Unwinnable.
• One of the powerful creatures in Devil Survivor for DS, the Immortal Lord of the Demons Beldr is not only incredibly strong, but also the first time protagonists meet him he's virtually immortal (duh), but also starts the first round by attacking everyone and sucking life of every creature he hit. Since it's impossible to kill him, heroes are forced to run for their lives or retreat immediately.
  • He is however, according to the legends, vulnerable to Devil's Fuge, a talisman made of mistletoe. It isn't even clear whether it's real mistletoe, since it's attached to a cellphone strap.
• Prince Laharl from Disgaea is the son of the overlord, and it shows. His reaction to Gordon firing a raygun at maximum power in the novels? "It tickles." Etna also claimed that 5 shots from a rocket launcher, 4 missiles at point-blank distance and 3 X-ray beam cannons did absolutely nothing to him. However, he can still be injured by high-powered and magic-imbued weapons.
  • In the games Laharl is Made of Diamond, easily shaking of physical abuse from Flonne and Etna, even heavy abuse after a few hours nap, without a single scratch and talking like he did not even feel pain. An example of Cutscene Power to the Max, considering that his defense stat is only average gameplay wise.
  • This makes it all the more confusing when Etna kills him at the start of "Etna's mode" with a single shot. The game even points it out to you. Then it's revealed that he didn't die at all. It just extended his Deep Sleep by a few more days.
• The Archdemon of Dragon Age: Origins uses the Multiple Bodies strategy. If its current body is killed, the Archdemon's soul can transfer itself through the Taint to the nearest Darkspawn. Since Darkspawn are soulless vessels, the Archdemon is thus reborn. The Grey Wardens are needed because they are the only ones that can get past this Nigh Invulnerability by taking the Archdemons' souls into themselves through their Taint — an act that destroys the souls of the Archdemons and the Wardens.
• Dwarf Fortress contains various megabeasts that are almost impossible to dent. In earlier versions of the game, Bronze Colossi were pretty much invincible. There is one reported incident of the slaying of a Colossus. By throwing a fluffy wambler at it and knocking off its head.
  • The games uses a detailed Subsystem Damage system, where creatures usually die either from blood loss or having their brain destroyed. Unless the creature has neither blood nor brains, in which case decapitating or drowning it will work. But then maybe it doesn't need a head or need to breath either, in which case cutting in half should do the trick. Unless the creature only has one body part, making it impossible to cut in half, in which case you're screwed.
    • This, incidentally, is why the giant sponge was the most unusual Demonic Spider ever pre-0.40.01. It's a single body part, has no nervous system at all, and does not bleed. It can't move, but like all other attackless creatures, has a "push" attack which deals damage based on the creature's size — and since it's a giant sponge, this allows it to kill any dwarf that comes within range with a single hit. The only ways to kill it were to freeze it in ice, seal it in rock, or drag it from the water and air-drown it. Like all creatures in 0.40 and beyond, however, it can be reduced to a pulp.
  • Notably, being literally Made of Air in Dwarf Fortress does not mean this, alternate name of the trope aside. Some Forgotten Beasts and other procedurally generated monsters are made of things like fire, smoke, or snow, and they are extremely easy to destroy (the fire ones will do some serious damage to your fort first) because they simply can't pull themselves back together, and anything down shorn off stays off. The real Nigh-Invulnerable ones are made out of some tough material; weapons-grade if you're unlucky, steel if the Random Number God has put a hit out on you. Like most things, the recommended solution is magma.
• EarthBound (1994) has Giygas, the Final Boss whose form cannot be fully grasped. Everything you do to him does damage, but it seems like nothing ever stops the monster. Only by using Paula's Pray command several times in a row will put massive hurt on Giygas since his chaotic form cannot comprehend love and hope.
  • In Mother 3, the Absolutely Safe Capsule Porky hides in is indeed completely impossible to damage in any way. Not that it matters, as it wouldn't be "absolutely safe" if it could ever open again or was of any threat to those outside of the capsule...
• The Elder Scrolls
  • Series recurring character Mannimarco, the King of Worms, is an infamous and highly dreaded Lich/Necromancer. He is associated with the Necromancer's Amulet, an amulet that grants the wearer magical protection equivalent to plate armor, as well as the ability to regenerate from injury, resist mundane weapons, and absorb magicka and life force. It also increases the wearer's intelligence and grants greater powers in the magical school of Conjuration. For a mortal wearer, this power comes at a price, as the amulet can drain the wearer's strength, endurance, health, and stamina. Mannimarco, being a Lich, is not affected by these drawbacks and becomes nigh invulnerable while wearing it. Part of Oblivion's Mages Guild questline is recovering the Necromancer's Amulet so that it cannot be used by Mannimarco, who serves as the questline's Big Bad.
  • Oblivion:
    • An interesting case with Haskill, the Chamberlain of Lord Sheogorath in The Shivering Isles. Haskill appears to be immaterial and cannot be harmed directly by the player in any way, as weapons, spells and arrows will all pass harmlessly through him. He can be hurt by environmental damage (i.e., falling rocks), but doing so requires extremely lucky timing, and even if you do manage to harm him, he has a massively powerful healing spell at his disposal and is tagged as unkillable.
    • Similarly Sheogorath himself, while it is possible to directly attack him; will freeze time as soon as you do so and immediately send you plummeting to your death via mile high freefall without a parachute.
  • Skyrim:
    • Draconic Big Bad Beast of the Apocalypse, Alduin, literally cannot be harmed under normal circumstances. He can only be damaged while under the effects of the "Dragonrend" Thu'um Shout.
    • Shadowmere, the mystical Dark Brotherhood steed, has quite a large amount of health and a very rapid Healing Factor. This horse can battle dragons and come out unscathed. The only way to kill it is with enough damage to kill it in one hit (fall damage, mostly), but even then it will come back to life at the spot you first acquired it.
• In the science fiction MMORPG EVE Online, players are known in-game as pod pilots, named for the biostatic capsules or "pods" they use to control their ships (allowing them to replace bridge crews). A side benefit of quicker reflexes is that capsuleers are virtually immortal - whenever their pods are destroyed, a clone of theirs wakes up immediately at a cloning facility. Clones have a limited memory capacity, and if a player doesn't update his clone properly, he may lose some skills. In fiction, capsuleers may also be killed outside of their pods, or if their clone malfunctions and doesn't activate (the latter is the assumed fate of deleted characters), but as far as game mechanics go, capsuleers are immortal.
• Fallout: New Vegas gives us Joshua Graham, the Burned Man. Co-founded the Legion with Edward 'Caesar' Sallow, led troops, killed just about anything around. Then lost an important battle. Caesar had him covered in pitch, set on fire, and tossed into the Grand Canyon. He didn't get better. He still went back home. To Utah. After the End, too, so no just catching a bus.
  • Yes Man has the downloadable version; this is a gameplay thing, so just in case you murder the other faction leaders you can still get to endgame.
• Many episodes of Final Fantasy feature enemies with likely powers. Though, about all of the main villains show the ability to survive incredible damage...
  • In Final Fantasy IV, Golbez regenerates from a mere hand all but the DS remake. A Core unit of the Giant of Bab-il regenerates unless its support unit is destroyed. Zeromus just plain can't be hurt unless one with a pure soul uses the dark crystal on him. Among fandom even Yang and Cid are considered Made of Diamond as they respectively survive the explosion of a giant cannon while standing in it and jumping down some miles, with dynamite attached to him and hitting the ground nice and fast.
  • In Final Fantasy V, a few late-game enemies (and one boss trio) will automatically revive from KO within a single turn (with full HP) unless/until the player is able to land a finishing blow to the whole group simultaneously.
    • Also, for some reason, no one could kill Exdeath until he lost control of the Void.
  • In Final Fantasy VI, The Guardian in Vector is impossible to defeat. All your attacks do no damage. The reels for an absolutely unavoidable instant death attack against all enemies won't line up against him. If they do, he dies, but its adventure map sprite isn't removed, so you do not pass either way. The only way to destroy it is to wait for it to load a battle program, when it starts attacking and stops being invulnerable.
    • There is also Chupon/Typhon in the Colosseum. He is winnable against, but chances are that he'll just Snort your only character out of battle and that counts as a loss, so usually you do not defeat him. He has no special damage resistances, still.
  • In Final Fantasy X both main villains, Seymour and Sin, are able to shrug off death. Seymore sticks around as some freaky ghost, increasing in power with every death. Sin just comes back in a few years due to the method of his death also being his method of Resurrection.
  • Absolute Virtue from Final Fantasy XI is a boss that has the ability to regenerate instantly, and will do so constantly. It also hits like a semi running over a tin can, will cast the most damaging spells in the entire game (often instantly and repeatedly), and possesses all the Eleventh Hour Superpowers of most job classes in the game. Oh, and it can summon baby dragons. Repeatedly. That cast devastating Area of Effect spells. And blow up. The only way the playerbase has ever beaten this mob is through a exploit, or more recently, a Zerg Rush, both of which were patched quite a while ago. And this thing has been around for years. Maybe the developers just wanted an unbeatable monster, and won't admit it. And now we have Pandemonium Warden, which at first almost took a day to defeat (they gave up), but was finally beaten by Apathy, an endgame group. The reason this is astonishing isn't simply the win, but the fact Square actually approves of the win and didn't patch Pandemonium Warden. They seem to be comfortable with only AV giving them a stiffy.
    • The developers finally released a video of them killing Absolute Virtue themselves, in response to no one figuring out the tricks. The trick? When the player uses their own Eleventh Hour Superpowers it blocks Absolute Virtue from using his (making it a battle of wits — the party has to block him from using powers such as Mighty Strikes (every attack is a critical hit) or Benediction (heals user to 100%)). In practice, however, this trick doesn't seem to actually work, leaving AV pretty much undefeated...
    • Both (AV and Pandemonium Warden) have been beaten solo by a guy named Gradius0. Then again, here he might be nigh invulnerable himself.
  • Final Fantasy XIV has the invulnerability ability for most of the Tank jobs (the only real exception being Paladins, who are completely invulnerable when using "Hallowed Ground"):
    • Warriors have "Holmgang", which prevents their HP from dropping below 1 while active.
    • Dark Knights have "Living Dead", which confers the buff "Walking Dead" if their HP drops to 0 while active. While "Walking Dead" is in effect, their HP cannot fall below 1; but if they do not receive at least their Max HP worth of healing before "Walking Dead" expires, they will drop dead on the spot.
    • Gunbreakers have "Superbolide", which grants invulnerability for several seconds at the cost of reducing HP to One.
  • In Final Fantasy Tactics, the Lucavi possess people with the use of ancient gemstones. They are rumored to keep reappearing throughout Ivalice's history and wreaking havoc. They also have ridiculous amounts of strength and HP. How the hero is going to stop them for good doesn't even occur to him. The problem is apparently solved when the stones become stuck in an alternate dimension where the Lucavi leader's spirit was imprisoned.
• Final Fantasy Tactics Advance has Llednar Twem. For all your encounters with him except for the last, he's protected by a special law that makes any and all attacks against him useless.
• If you're a Fire Emblem villain (or The Dragon to the villain) you're made of Diamond to anyone that isn't wielding the legendary weapon of this game. Those that aren't made of diamond by an ability are made of Diamond by having RIDICULOUS Stats.
  • A special mention goes to Dheginsea. He embodied this trope three times over:
    1. Blessed by a goddess — even legendary weapons don't work unless they have also been blessed by a goddess.
    2. Amazing regeneration — there are very few ways for a single character to do more damage in a single turn than he recovers (in a game with about 70 playable characters).
    3. His stats are among the highest of any boss in the series. A good portion of this is already devoted to defense.
• Isaac and Garet in Golden Sun: Dark Dawn. When they join you as a Guest-Star Party Member, their attack and defense are so high that everything monsters throw at them, including the first boss, is nothing more than Scratch Damage and they have abilities that will pretty much annihilate everything that looks at them funny. Isaac and Garet's stats cannot be viewed, but they DO have their HP lowered when they are hit. However, since their HP is around 500 points and every attack does around 1 to 5 points of damage to them, killing them off would take forever. This is all justified since they literally saved the world 30 years prior and still retain all the training they had done from then to after.
• Grand Theft Auto:
  • The protagonists of each game certainly seem to have it. Shot in the face at point-blank range with a shotgun? Set on fire? Had a plane land directly on top of you? Caught trapped in an exploding car? Had missiles shot directly at you? Eaten and chewed on by a shark, hundreds of miles away from land? Your character will head to the hospital and be in-and-out no more than a day later, no worse for the wear.
  • The trains in Grand Theft Auto V are unintentional examples of this. Outside of the mission "Derailed", nothing can stop one as it's moving, whether it be a barrage of explosives or a pile of tanks in its path.
• An Asura player character in Guild Wars 2 will sometimes reference this trope almost exactly, saying "I'm nigh invincible!" whenever they get a protection buff.
• Sol Badguy of the Guilty Gear games has proven to be almost impossible to hurt, nevermind kill. In one instance, he was riddled with bullets from multiple machinegun-wielding assailants and immediately regenerated from the wounds with no lasting effect — he then activated his Dragon Install, which coincidentally incinerated most of his assailants and rendered him entirely bullet-proof, much to the shock of the survivors. He has also shrugged off being impaled by Ky's Thunderseal sword, which is a weapon specially designed to kill Gears, and survived being struck by Ky's lightning magic even when it was being amplified four times over. In Xrd, he tops this by tanking an ICBM going off in his face.
• The GMan in Half-Life. The only characters who were able to stop him at all only temporarily restrained him, and even that didn't last long.
• Halo:
  • Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 has a mix of Extreme Luck and Made of Diamond. Standing 7 feet tall with nearly unbreakable bones (that are literally made of diamond at this point), having experienced Training from Hell, wearing power armor with plates dense enough to offer starship grade protection on a man portable platform, he has the added bonus of Deflector Shields to add to his Made of Diamond qualities just like all Spartans. But what really sets him apart and makes him the true One-Man Army is his extreme Luck:
    Cortana: Like the others you are strong, and swift, and brave. A natural leader. But you had something they didn't; something no one saw but me. Can you guess? Luck.
  • The Didact, thanks to his insanely advanced armor. Have a bomb explode in your chest and knock you into a slipspace portal? Wake up wherever you ended up and begin kicking ass like nothing ever happened to you.
• The House of the Dead 4 has Temperance, a morbidly obese, several-stories-tall zombie whose lifebar doesn't drain. You kill him by dropping a huge clock face on him.
• The Beast from inFAMOUS 2, to the extent that it can survive a direct hit from a nuclear missile.
• In Kartia: The Word of Fate, your heroes will quickly reach the Level 20 max and it doesn't take much to get high-end equipment. So every fight will be a cake-walk, until you encounter the Fynuse. The Fynus are the ultimate Phantom in the game and they really live up to that. The Fynus are melee only, but they hit for tremendous damage and move quickly. The worst part it that they have a ridiculously high defense. The enemy Fynus are carrying largely mediocre equipment compared to what your party has, but they're so tough that if you only use equipment conjured by Kartia, then just top 3 melee characters in the party of 5 can harm a Fynus (and of the 3, two of them only do minor damage). Against a Fynus, if you don't have the highest end Arena reward items or Level 20 Phantom items or the Pair rune, then you'll need to summon Dragons (longest-ranged artillery creatures and 2nd mightiest Phantom in the game) and send in your mightiest heroes to deal with the Fynus.
• Kirby: Kirby is of the Made of Diamond/Super Toughness variety. For such a cute little guy, Kirby is EXTREMELY durable. Thanks to his pink, stretchy body, he can survive being flattened, electricity, rocket flames, cannonball explosions, atmospheric reentry, sharp blades, and in Kirby: Triple Deluxe, a planet sized explosion!. This also the main power of Stone Kirby where he becomes indestructible.
• In The Last Remnant, The Conqueror is a prime example of this trope. In the many times the heroes face him, they can't even touch him ( All except Emma, who manages to make him bleed, though she gets promptly killed after this). By the time you get to the end of the game and give him a thorough thrashing, he's only a little bloody, and still almost manages to end the world, and after the credits we find out that he is still alive.
• In the League of Angels online game, your character and any party members you recruit are immortal — if defeated in battle, their deaths only last until the end of the battle. There are limits, however (being a turn-based game). In some challenges (mostly timed ones), there's a cooldown period that has to end before you can fight again, and in others, you only get a limited number of free attempts a day. (If you want more than the allowed number for that specific challenge, you need to spend Diamonds that you buy in their online store.)
• The Tank in both Left 4 Dead games. He has the most health out of all infected, ranging in the thousands, but on Expert, he has the same properties as steel since Tanks in Expert get 8000 health points. Shoving him does nothing and he doesn't even stumble from a Grenade Launcher shot or from explosive ammo (oddly, exploding propane tanks or oxygen tanks make him stumble). His sheer strength alone can launch survivors across the street or off a rooftop and he also has the ability to send cars flying your way. If you play on Expert, the Tank can down you in a single hit, even if you're at 100% health! A Tank will go down but you need a lot of firepower and your friends have to concentrate their fire on the Tank to bring it down quickly, otherwise you're in for a losing battle. However, most players will try to set it on fire and keep outrunning the Tank until he burns to death.
• This is a large part of the premise for Legacy of Kain; the main character is a ghoul that lives in the spirit realm and can construct a body in the material realm, if that body is destroyed (even when atomized) it just sends him back into the spectral realm. If mooks in the spectral realm "kill" him, his soul drifts around before settling in the heart of the underworld, where he regains his strength and starts again. It is said explicitly several times over the series that he is completely indestructible and that even the local god is unable to do more than play mind games with him or contain him.
• Ganon from The Legend of Zelda definitely counts. He has been killed (each time more painfully and unbelievably than the last) and he still manages to come back even stronger despite being killed over 9 times! Though this is probably because of his Triforce of Power, which gives him strength in the same way Link's and Zelda's pieces give and/or represent, respectively, their courage and wisdom.
  • The Continuity Snarl that is the Zelda timeline makes reconciling each of Ganon's appearances rather difficult, but it is explicitly known that the one from Ocarina of Time is the same being as the ones from The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Previous Word of God has also stated that Ocarina's Ganon reappears in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and the original The Legend of Zelda, but the stories of those games contradict each other on a number of points.
    • It is actually somewhat explained in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Ganon is actually the manifestation of Demise's hatred towards the humans who brought him down (Link and Zelda), whose bloodline Demise cursed to be forever haunted by him. Thus, Ganon always comes back, as long as Link/Zelda's descendants/reincarnations/whatever live.
  • Some games also suggest that Ganon is immune to all weapons aside from holy ones like the Master Sword and the Arrows of Light. Generally, this bounces back and forth from game to game.
• The Soulless of Lusternia are virtually indestructible, which is very bad news for everyone else. Big Good Estarra could theoretically kill them, but it would necessitate destroying the multiverse — which is the very threat presented by the Soulless. Bonus points for each Soulless being a different flavour of nigh invulnerable: Illith is The Juggernaut, Crazen is the Blob, Muud has a Healing Factor, Zenos is an Intangible Man and Kethuru is, uh, all of them.
• Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's Portable: The Gears of Destiny
  • The Materials are revealed to have kept the regenerative abilities of the Darkness of the Book of Darkness, able to reconstruct their physical forms out of nothing given enough time.
  • The Unbreakable Darkness meanwhile, is as unbreakable as her name suggests. She's both regenerative and is made of diamond. To give an idea, Amita manages to blast her at point blank range with a Desperation Attack that, according to the Wolkenritter, exceeded the Triple Breaker attack used near the end of A's to completely destroy the physical body of the Darkness of the Book of Darkness. It didn't even put a scratch on her, despite the fact that she was at around 10% of her full strength. In the end, the were only able to stop her by getting her to keep her destructive impulses in check. And even that required a lot of help from the Materials, who were revealed to have once been a part of the same whole with her.
• The Reapers in Mass Effect. They can be killed, but they are ridiculously powerful and their defenses nearly impenetrable. At the end of the first game, one Reaper is destroyed, but it takes nearly an entire fleet down with it. And it wasn't even trying to fight back.
  • Mass Effect 3 clarifies exactly what it takes to kill a Reaper: three of the human alliance's largest warships can outstrip the shield regeneration of a single Reaper, provided that they're all firing on it at the same time, while it takes four to have a decent chance of killing it^note Keep in mind, this is after Reaper-technology was partially reverse-engineered from the remains of Sovereign. Before that, Sovereign took two entire fleets to finally kill it. To put that in context: each of those ships is firing the equivalent of three Hiroshima bombs every five seconds, and it takes four of them (or 144 Hiroshima bombs every minute) to kill one. And even then, it's a "maybe", since the Reaper can fire back, with the equivalent of 35 Hiroshima bombs. The Reaper armada vastly outnumbers said largest warship. One of the smaller, frigate-sized Reapers takes multiple cruisers in orbit firing on it with broadside guns repeatedly Attacking Its Weakpoint to finally go down. The Reapers are taking casualties in the war... just not very many, and not nearly enough.
  • Kalros, the called Mother of all Thresher Maws. Her race is already known to be really hard to kill (heavy weapons and armored tanks are necessary to have a chance to kill them, and even then, sometimes that wasn't even enough), but Kalros take that to an insane degree: the Krogan, a race also known to be hard to kill, think trying to kill her is a suicide. This also become plot-relevant: the characters used Kalros as a mean to distract one of the smaller Reapers, and she managed to kill that Reaper in less than five minutes to the surprise of everyone involved.
• The infamous "Cardboard Immortality" trick from the Mega Man Battle Network games requires only three components (a Wood-element Style Change, the Under Shirt status/Navi Customizer Program, and a Grass Panel or nine) and combines constant regeneration with the ability to survive an otherwise lethal hit with one hit point. The only way to combat this is to alter the stage. Fortunately for anyone facing this setup, Grass Panels get burned away by Fire attacks (doing double damage in the process), which Wood-element enemies take double damage from.
  • Was weakened in later games by making the rate of health regeneration decrease as your got lower on HP. At one HP, it takes a few seconds to regenerate a single point of HP.
• Metal Gear games might have one here or there, most notably Fortune (whose "luck" means bullets cannot hit her and grenades are all duds) and The Sorrow and his army of people you killed (who are all still dead, and you can't exactly shoot a ghost). Not to mention Vamp, whose already potent regeneration abilities were enhanced with nanomachines.
  • Also Snake, not just gameplay-wise anymore: It may be a case of incredible determination, but in the fourth game alone, despite an artificially advanced age that other character say should preventing him from moving, he is shot, stabbed, electrocuted, lit on fire, and forced to crawl though a hallway full of microwave radiation.
  • Speaking of nanomachines, Senator Armstrong in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance can shrug off all Raiden's attack on him, even shatters Raiden's HF blade, despite Raiden being a combat cyborg, thanks to this. Thankfully, Sam's katana can bypass that defense.
• Dark Samus from the Metroid Prime subseries posses extreme regenerative power, mainly since "her" (technically its genderless) body essentially consists of pure Phazon. In Metroid Prime 2, Samus fights her multiple times, and after every fight she explodes into a cloud of Phazon particles, only to reassemble herself later. According to one scan of her, only a complete atomic disruption can kill her for good. In the 100% ending it's even shown that she survived the destruction of Dark Aether, somehow reforming in space above Aether. She is finally killed in Metroid Prime 3 when she possesses a cybernetic computer connected to the planet Phaaze, which is made primarily out of Phazon. When Samus destroys this form, all Phazon in the galaxy goes critical, destroying Dark Samus, the entire planet, and ridding the galaxy of Phazon once and for all.
• In Level Eight's (formerly Chillingo's) Modern Command, the Ghost Op has an unbreakable energy shield. Even top of the line energy weapons won't break it down. You have to wait until the Ghost Op is about to call in an air strike on your base, he has to drop his shield in order to signal the attack. With his shield, it doesn't take much to kill him but since you'll likely be under constant enemy attack — your best bet to kill him without needing to dedicate your time to him, is to have one of your missiles loaded with an incendiary or chemical warhead. Fire on him when he stops moving. The force field will stop the flames or corrosive cloud, but eventually he'll drop it and the lingering environmental hazard will kill him painfully.
• This is the default in Monster Loves You!. There are only two points where you can actually die in this game — the Ascension/Dissolution Ceremony, and the ending. You may be humiliated or beaten up on your adventures, but not killed.
• Bryce Boltzmann, the protagonist of Never Dead is Cursed with Immortality. In his case, he is literally indestructible. Dismemberment and Decapitation are mere inconveniences to him, and he can even use them both to his advantage.
• Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man: Two of the earlier examples. Early on, this is averted; when Pac-Man or Ms. Pac-Man eat a power pellet, the ghost monsters become vulnerable and our heroes have up to 10 seconds to attack their enemies for bonus points. After reaching the more difficult levels, the amount of time the monsters remain vulnerable to attack gradually decreases, until the 19th level where eating a power pellet does nothing to faze the monsters; they will reverse direction but Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man must simply avoid their pursuers.
• The demon morph Super Mode in Painkiller has invincibility to everything except falling to death and the final boss's attacks.
• Paper Mario has Bowser and Tubba Blubba. Bowser uses the Star Rod to get diamond defense that prevents all damage and status effects until the defense is taken down by the Star Spirits' power. Tubba Blubba's method is a Soul Jar in the form of his heart, locked behind a door opened by a key he closely guards. Oddly enough, it might have made sense if Tubba Blubba had sent his heart to Bowser. Granted, the Boos were the ones holding Tubba Blubba's Star Spirit, but they would only have released him upon Tubba Blubba's defeat, and if Bowser and Tubba Blubba guarded each other's methods of Nigh Invulnerability, there would be nothing to stop Tubba Blubba from wiping the Boos off the map *or* deadlocking Mario's quest.
  • Bowser is absolutely ridiculous even without the Star Rod. Throughout his long villainous career, he's survived lava, bottomless pits, more lava (this time getting his skin boiled off and keeping on going without it), being thrown through a star, and being smashed by an asteroid into a black hole. He always gets back up in time for the next game.
  • Also, the Armored Harriors from the second game. The only way to damage these hard-heads is to knock one into the other.
  • Nabbit from New Super Luigi U cannot be harmed by enemies, but does die from the standard death traps (i.e. Bottomless Pits, crushing, running out of time).
• Trogdor the Burninator in his second appearance in Peasant's Quest is invulnerable when you try to kill him. But congratulations on getting to the end!
• From the Persona series, every Big Bad has this. This is because Philemon, Nyarlathotep, Erebus, and Izanami are representative of an aspect of humanity's collective unconscious, which means they will never die As Long as There Is One Man.
  • Nyx from Persona 3 even more so. Gameplay-wise you have to beat her 14 times, and even that didn't kill her, since the last battle is just a scripted battle where you have to sacrifice the main character to stop her. 'Stop' and not 'kill'. She is unkillable.
• In Planescape: Torment, it is The Nameless One's defining characteristic that he can't stay dead. As a plot point, every time he dies he returns to life as an amnesiac, generating a completely new personality for himself every time. In gameplay terms, it means the game doesn't end when he dies — the player just sees TNO wake up in the closest morgue, and the game continues as before (for gameplay reasons, and Hand Waved in-game, the amnesia doesn't kick in on these deaths). Only a being of godlike power can kill the Nameless One and make it stick, though it's hinted cremation could do the trick as well. The Nameless One also doesn't age, and the total age sum of his lives is likely counted in millennia.
• You can kill the pygmies from Pocket God all you want, but as long as their Gem of Life is intact, they'll come to life...eventually.
• In Pokémon, the ability Wonder Guard causes a Pokemon to take no damage from attacks that it is not normally weak to from its typing. Spiritomb and Sableye have no weaknesses, so if they obtain Wonder Guard they cannot be hit by ordinary attacks. (However, Sableye can only legitimately get Wonder Guard in the third generation; in later games they can only obtain the ability by cheating, since Skill Swap, used to swap Abilities between two Pokemon, deliberately cannot swap Wonder Guard.)
  • Spiritomb and Sableye have a Fairy-type weakness as of X and Y, meaning that they are no longer nigh invulnerable even if Wonder Guard is hacked on to them. In Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, Mega Lopunny's Fighting STAB and Scrappy ability serve to enforce how phenomenally dumb it is to keep using Wondereye and Wondertomb. A teaser video even has Mega Lopunny topple a Mega Sableye under its own ruby just to emphasize the point.
  • In Black and White, the ability Sturdy causes a Pokemon to survive any attack with at least 1 HP if it is at full health. The Pokemon Shedinja has a maximum of 1 HP, therefore if it obtains Sturdy, which it can do legitimately, it cannot be KOed by ordinary attacks.
  • Multiscale provides a downplayed example. Cutting in half the damage done when you are at full health, and naturally found on the already incredibly resilient Lugia and Dragonite, both pokemon will likely laugh against anything that you throw it if they have the ability active, even super-effective moves. Even most Ice moves fail to OHKO Dragonite, even with the x4 weakness.
• [PROTOTYPE]'s Alex Mercer has potent Regenerating Health, he can also consume people and monsters (although those must be weakened first) to regain health, he can grow shields and armor from his own body mass, and he even regenerates himself from death by a nuclear explosion.
  • Even without the eating people to gain health thing, instory he's pretty much indestructible. If the game were closer to it's story, there wouldn't be a healthbar because you wouldn't need it.
    • To count the ways he is indestructible. You can throw cars, throw broken tank parts, break armored vehicles with your bare hands, destroy entire buildings with large special moves, kill virtually everything around you in one shot, throw someone so hard they turn into red paint on the wall, take missiles to the face, take tank shells to the face, take gunfire to the face, gatling guns, grenades, various explosions, cruise missiles, thermobaric rounds, other mutants, a nuclear missile, and even can become immune to vaccines and gases DESIGNED to kill him, and walk out of it either slightly charred or smelling minty fresh, and all damage can pretty much be recovered instantly by eating any of the squishy snacks known as humans wandering in large quantities everywhere. If the sequel, Prototype 2, is to be believed, Alex can most likely also rip tanks apart instantly, and has enough mass to wipe out the entirety of New York fairly instantly, all while happily chucking helicopters everywhere and taking down mutants the size of entire buildings. Put simply, Alex is almost entirely invincible and can do virtually anything to get himself back into safety again. Of course, obviously if he COULDN'T die, there would be no need for a life bar.
    • The health bar mechanic is justified through incredible Fridge Brilliance: The game over text is "Alex is dead", which is completely true, but the player character isn't Alex Mercer, it's the Blacklight virus embodied. Losing all health merely leaves the virus vulnerable to being captured by the military or Greene's mutants — it doesn't die.
• The Aozora Nine in Ring Runner: Flight of the Sages can equip up to three abilities that let it cheat death; on average you'll need to kill it three times in thirty seconds before the death sticks, which is made harder by the fact that it's invisible. The game describes the ship as being "extremely hard to kill."
• In Romancing SaGa the boss Soulgutter cannot die since it has no soul, it can only be resealed. However it can still feel pain, so deal 30,000 damage to it and it will reseal itself to escape pain.
• The Boss in Saints Row: The Third can get this way. Note: this is not discussing the superpowers from 4. Just normal upgrades like '100% resistance to bullets'. Ever want to no-sell a machinegun?
  • When all upgrades are unlocked the boss becomes invulnerable to bullets, fire, vehicles, falls from any height and explosions. Ultimately the only way for the boss to even be injured is by being physically beaten, which most mooks won't even try; and if they do he'll render that futile with his Regenerating Health. This ultimately makes the boss harder to kill than when he gains super powers in the next game.
• The Blind Rage Super Mode from Scarface: The World Is Yours gives Tony invincibility.
• In the final stage of Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, the party splits up into two teams. Each one ends up fighting a boss with ridiculously powerful shields at one point. When Knuckles' team faces the Gizoid Centurions, you have to survive two or three turns against them and their shields before you get a cut scene of them losing; then Sonic's team seeks out some inactive Centurions and Tails studies them to understand how the shields work and is able to jam them, allowing Knux and crew to fight them for real. After that, Sonic's crew encounters Prefect Charyb underwater, where he has a humongous advantage (plus you can't use POW Moves. After three turns, you get another cut scene, and action switches to Knuckles' team. After beating Prefect Scylla, Knuckles is able to reach the drainage switch for the room the others are in, allowing Sonic to fight Charyb for real.
• Minor subversion: Zasalamel in Soulcalibur 3 perfected the art of reincarnation, thus allowing him to die and resurrect multiple times throughout history, retaining all of the skills and knowledge he amassed before then. The subversion is that, instead of being a boon like he thought it would be, it quickly turned into a horrible curse, as his newfound power deprived him of a peaceful death, and the literal sinking feeling that his soul was damned to hell just a little more with every death and revival, and since that revelation he sought the game's MacGuffin to try and undo his hubris.
• In Star Ocean: The Second Story the Big Bad and his minions cannot be damaged unless you gain the Sword of Plot Advancement, Void matter.
• Chance, The Mole and Final Boss of Syphon Filter 2, wears a special advanced full-body armor suit that is not only Immune to Bullets, but also apparently to even the shockwave of grenade explosions at impact, and its weight doesn't seem to slow him down, either. His Achilles' Heel? The spinning helicopter tail rotor.
• In Tales of Vesperia, Estelle has a spell that temporarily grants Made of Diamond status. She also has an ability that, when equipped, has a chance of making all buffs, including this one, last until the end of battle. This combo (removed from the PS3 version) is a rather easy Game-Breaker to put together, particularly useful in extremely long battles.
• In Team Fortress 2, The Medic can do this; if he managed to heal enough without dying he can make himself and his healing target invulnerable for about ten seconds. A good medic with fast fingers can constantly move his medi-beam to make a good quarter of his team invulnerable at once. Obviously, it’s a good uber-charge that can be a game changer.
• Touhou Project: The main protagonist, Reimu, has a Spell Card called Fantasy Heaven, which makes her completely impossible to touch. It's even implied by secondary character Kirisame Marisa that the best strategy against this ability is simply to run away. However, Reimu rarely, if ever, uses this Spell Card, and it only appears thrice in the series: First time in Touhou Eiyashou ~ Imperishable Night, where it's essentially an unlockable bonus boss (you have to dodge all her attacks within a time limit). Second time in Touhou Hisouten ~ Scarlet Weather Rhapsody as well as its update, Touhou Hisoutensoku ~ Choudokyuu Ginyoru no Nazo o Oe, where it's probably the most powerful Spell Card in the game but is rarely actually used as the restrictions for using it are rather ludicrous. The spell's third appearance was as her Last Word in Touhou Shinkirou ~ Hopeless Masquerade. It has been stated by both Marisa and Word of God that Reimu was born with this ability, and it's one that she never has to use. The implications are that being intangible is simply a natural state of being for her, and that she holds back on purpose. That's right, if she wanted to, she could defeat ANY boss ANY time without getting hit ONCE. However, that wouldn't make for a very fun game, so she's almost always in a tangible state.
  • Of note is that the explicit description for how Fantasy Heaven works says that Reimu, with her ability to float, floats away from reality, meaning she's even completely immune to Reality Warping, so not even characters on the power level of Physical Gods, like Yukari, could affect her.
  • A long time ago, when she was still a citizen of the moon, Eirin made the Hourai Elixir, which makes the drinker absolutely immortal by effectively Ret Gone-ing their death from their entire existence, so that not even going back in time to kill them before they drank the Elixir would have any effect. Kaguya and her "rival" Mokou (and possibly Eirin herself) are the only characters known to have drank it, and as a result have lived for almost two millennia (and counting) and are impossible to kill. When fighting the latter, a character with the explicit ability to kill anything wasn't able to kill her, and in the end she only stops fighting because of the pain (she instantly regenerates all damage, but it still hurts). To quote Mokou:
    "With but a single taste, you will never become an adult. With a second taste, you will forget all disease and illness. With a third taste... your soul will forever churn in torment!"
  • Many, perhaps most of the cast fits the trope (however, since the fighting they do is simply a game, many literal god characters are very easy to beat). Nearly every listed variation of this trope is in the series, including a literal made of air example in Suika, who can turn into a heavy mist.
• The Trapped Trilogy has Inorgamzics. It was made by the Armor Gamsees to turn humans into gods. It just so happens that Dialla and McNeely were the first to consume it.
• Lord British in the Ultima series. He is nearly impossible to kill (if not outright impossible), and even the Armageddon spell, which destroys every person and object in the entire world does not affect him. Usually, the only way to kill him involves either creative exploits or (in one instance) an Easter Egg.
• Archimonde has this in the final mission of Warcraft 3 where the objective is not to kill him but merely to stall his advance for half an hour. Oddly, while his armor is Made of Diamond, he still takes 1 damage per hit and thus can theoretically be killed by massing archers (though he has an Ankh of Reincarnation and thus must be killed twice).
• Wario in the Wario Land series (excluding the first and fourth game). In Wario Land II and Wario Land 3, nothing can kill him. In fact, he has to get hit in order to take on hilarious different forms so he can solve puzzles in the third one.
• In X-Men: The Ravages of Apocalypse, Cannonball appears as one of the cloned X-Men and is completely invulnerable while rocketing around, forcing the player to wait until he powers down before perforating him.
• Xenosaga:
  • The Gnosis is the 'Made of Air' variety as the only way to combat them is to hit them when they making a phase transference to fire their energy weapons, or use of the Hilbert Effect to force them into Real Space from Imaginary Space.
  • Also, Albedo is Cursed with Awesome in being immortal and having super regeneration powers; he cuts/tears/blasts off his own head to demonstrate. Unfortunately, the realization that other people aren't immortal causes him to go insane. The only one who can kill him is Jr., who was specifically designed to do so... his technobabble cancels out Albedo's.

---