Basic Trope: Anything giant is immune to all conventional weapons.
- Straight: The Kraken, in all of its 50ft glory, arises from the sea, and the army opens fire on it. Their weapons are completely ineffectual.
- Exaggerated:
- The Kraken's size eclipses even the tallest of mountains. Even thermonuclear nukes are as good as useless against the beast.
- The shots are worse than useless, as they ricochet back at the army.
- Downplayed:
- The kraken is immune to small arms fire, but a large enough tank can hurt it.
- Small arms can technically kill the kraken by infection and bleed-out. Unfortunately it can still do a /lot/ of damage while mortally wounded and angering it makes it go from destroying a few ships to destroying the whole city in its dying rage.
- Justified:
- Due to the Square-Cube Law, the Kraken needs to be impossibly tough just to avoid crushing itself under its weight.
- The Kraken has extremely thick and tough armor to protect its squishy insides. Part of the story involves finding a way to enter its body and kill it from inside.
- Inverted:
- A smaller creature is even more vulnerable to conventional arms fire.
- The kraken is more vulnerable to small arms fire than everything else, as the increase in size only gave it more volume, and less mass.
- Owing to the Square-Cube Law the kraken winds up being a Glass Cannon. While still incredibly strong and capable of throwing around boats and trucks like toys it cannot survive falling over.
- Subverted: The army opens fire with Five Rounds Rapid and successfully injures the Kraken.
- Double Subverted: ...Unfortunately, the monster has a highly effective Healing Factor, and they can’t muster enough firepower to kill the monster before it levels the city.
- Parodied:
- The local General Failure sends wave after wave of his army at the monster, not comprehending that they’re completely useless against the Kraken.
- The Kraken is just barely bigger than the average man and shrugs off the tiny pebbles the heroes throw at it.
- Krakens get bigger by inflating themselves with air. Krakens with no air are killed easily, and gigantic Krakens that are basically huge balloons with skin stretched thin over an absurd surface area are invulnerable.
- Zig Zagged:
- Five Rounds Rapid does nothing, but when they deploy satchel charges at the Kraken’s weak point it goes down easily.
- It varies from giant monster to giant monster: some are Immune to Bullets, some can be shot down, and a few can ONLY be hurt by normal guns.
- They can hurt the Kraken, but it’s like shooting at an elephant with a pistol: You have to wait for it to die of blood loss or infection, as you can’t muster enough damage to kill it outright.
- Averted:
- The giant monster is never attacked by humans at all.
- They never attempt conventional methods to attack the monster, thus we never see if they work.
- Enforced:
- The show is Merchandise-Driven, and they want an excuse to shoehorn a giant robot toy to boost profits.
- The writer insists on making the Kraken invincible, as it would ruin Suspension of Disbelief if could be hurt by normal armies.
- Lampshaded: “Gah... It’s too fat to die and too big to kill!”
- Invoked:
- Dr. Evulz makes his creations as big as possible so the free world is incapable of fighting back.
- Dr. Evulz makes HIMSELF into a giant in order to avoid being shot apart by police.
- Exploited: Dr. Evulz knows the creature is a) coming, and b) invincible. So, he uses the attack to gain tenure at his university for his massive Death Ray.
- Defied:
- “Men, don’t even bother fighting back; you’ll just waste ammo. We’ll work on the evacuation effort and let the Superheroes handle this one.”
- “Bullet-proof? Bullshit! That’s what Depleted Phlebotinum Shells are for; it’s just a bigger target.”
- Discussed: “Why is it that cannons never work against the Kaiju…”
- Conversed: “Y’know all those monster movies when they send the army to kill the beast? Why do they even bother?”
- Implied: We never see the bullets hit the monster, but we never see it slow down from the armies’ attack either.
- Played For Laughs: The Kraken doesn't even notice the army, and wonders why the humans haven’t sent anything to attack him yet.
- Played For Drama: It’s a race against time to find a weapon capable of hurting the Kraken before it eats the global ecosystem.
Hunt down Giant Equals Invincible. Just a warning, the trope is too big to hurt with normal bullets.
