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Complete Immortality

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"The only thing wrong with immortality is that it tends to go on forever."
Herb Caen

This character simply can't die. This is because they are both of the following:

  1. The Ageless — The character does not age.
  2. Nigh-Invulnerability taken to its logical extreme — The character cannot be permanently destroyed by any means, and if they can, the method must be very specific and is usually related to whatever grants them immortality in the first place.

Note that "mere" Ageless characters who can regenerate from a drop of their blood cell or survive point-blank nukes and the like, are not enough to qualify. To be this trope, a character must be unkillable by at least all physical means, such as by endlessly resurrecting every time you kill them, being Barred from the Afterlife and so can't move on, or being blessed/cursed by God or other similar entities so that they won't die.

Most Physical Gods or Powers That Be fall into this category, as do a lot of Cosmic Entities and Anthropomorphic Personifications. A Time Abyss will tend to be this as well, as accidents tend to happen over the millennia, and invulnerability is needed to keep them going. Most fictional souls also fit under this, if the work contains evidence of their existence. Ghosts can be banished to the underworld or sent on to the next life but not killed. Though there are exceptions.

This form of immortality can often be seen as a curse or a blessing. This is also the end-goal for the most ambitious Immortality Seekers, although it's rare indeed for them to achieve it. More commonly they have to settle for lesser and more impaired forms of immortality like Soul Jars, Fountains of Youth, or Life Drinking.

Also note that just because they are unkillable doesn't mean they are unbeatable. A sufficiently powerful character could still ruin their plans or subject them to a fate worse than death or imprison them for eternity or cause a shift in morality or amnesia.

This is a subtrope of Immortality. Compare Only Killable at Home, which grants a character some variation of this outside their point of origin.


Examples:

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    Anime and Manga 
  • Every Wu in 3×3 Eyes. Each Wu had his soul absorbed by a Sanzhiyan (Triclop), and as long as that soul is kept safe, the Wu cannot grow old, starve to death or be killed, regenerating from any trauma or wound, even if their entire body is disintegrated (which has happened). The only way to kill a Wu is to slay the Triclop who took his soul.
  • The Ancient Magus' Bride: Joseph/Cartaphilius who is the biblical Wandering Jew is cursed by the Son of God with both complete immortality (he looks like a preteen boy) and a body that's continuously, unstoppably decaying. Sure, he can't be killed by any means, but the only reason he's still ambulatory is because he works relentlessly to replace the bits that fall off.
  • Bleach: When Sosuke Aizen fuses with the Hougyoku, he becomes nigh-impossible to kill. Even when Ichigo activates a Story-Breaker Power and slices Aizen in half, Aizen simply fuses the injury into non-existence and gets back to his feet. Since he cannot be killed, he's placed in Muken, a special prison for criminals who cannot be killed by normal means. The length of his sentence? 20,000 years since the Central 46 point out he's immortal. Theoretically, the only way to kill him is to defuse him from the Hougyoku, and no one currently knows how to do that. In the Final Battle he utilities this against a shockwave and impaling attack from an already Soul King infused Yhwach, allowing Ichigo to finally get the drop on the Quincy king, and later buying Uryu time to acquire the Still-Silver Arrow and use it to create an opening for Ichigo to end the tyrant once and for all.
  • Code Geass: C.C. and all other possessors of Code. They are unable to age, get sick, or be permanently wounded. Any injuries they suffer immediately heal, even if they are incinerated, decapitated, blown up, vaporized, or even completely deleted, they will still return to life. Absolutely immune to all harm, nor can they die of any natural causes. They are also absolutely self-sustained, their mind and soul are as immortal as their biological body, immune to mental/spiritual damage. The only way to kill bearers of Code is to take their Code, and the only ones capable of doing that are those who have awakened Geass in both of their eyes.
  • Dragon Ball:
    • The Filler and Non-Serial Movie villain Garlic Jr. wishes for immortal life from the Eternal Dragon and actually gets it. The only thing that stops him is knocking him into a dark prison called the Dead Zone (which presumably would kill anyone mortal), and the first time that didn't take. The second time around he has no way of ever getting out of there again,note  and will foreseeably be stuck there for all eternity while drained of most of his power.
    • Achieving this kind of immortality was the reason that Frieza wanted the Dragon Balls of Planet Namek, in order to extend his reign as "the most powerful being of the universe" for eternity. However, Freiza made a fatal mistake when he began killing the inhabitants of Namek, as the Namekian Dragon Balls only recognize wishes spoken in the Namekian language. However, by the time of Dragon Ball Super: Broly, Frieza has abandoned this drive as his time in Hell has made him realize it really sucks.
    • In Dragon Ball Super, Zamasu achieves this by wishing on the Super Dragon Balls. Unlike Garlic Jr. who seems to be indestructible, he can be harmed but regenerates instantly. He exploits this fact in combat, allowing his partner to attack through him, knowing he'll be fine. Even when his immortality is compromised thanks to fusing with the still-mortal Goku Black, allowing him to be killed, his soul still remains as a living metaphysical paradox. Ultimately the only way to kill him is for Zeno (the Dragonball Universe's absolute Top God) to erase the entire future multiverse so that he has nowhere to exist in. In the manga, Fused Zamasu doesn't have the compromised immortality (balanced out by him being a fair bit weaker than his anime self) and is even able to shrug off the Hakai, which according to Beerus cannot kill a true immortal. He's still able to be wiped out by Zeno's multiverse erasure, however.
    • Zeno is suggested to be such. Whenever the possibility of someone killing the Omni-King is suggested, other divine characters flat-out state that this is impossible; nobody in all reality has the power to kill Zeno. According to Word of God the only being who could theoretically overpower Zeno to achieve this is Akira Toriyama's Author Avatar.
    • Super Dragon Ball Heroes: In the manga, Mechikabura gains this after wishing for eternal youth and absorbing space-time, the latter granting him infinite regeneration. He has to be sealed away to be dealt with.
  • This is one of the results of Ankhseram's curse in Fairy Tail. Those cursed can no longer age and it's said not even starvation or decapitation can kill them. To make it worse, the curse comes with an "Instant Death" Radius that kills anything the cursed one comes to care about. Two cursed ones, Black Wizard Zeref and Fairy Tail's founder Mavis Vermillion discovered there is a Curse Escape Clause in the cruelest way possible. The deity that cursed them both did it to deny them happiness. When they believed they found a way to subvert this by finding Eternal Love with each other, Zeref's curse was strengthened by their love to the point that it was able to kill Mavis despite her own curse. However, Mavis was only mostly dead. Once she fully revived nearly a hundred years later, she realized that Zeref's curse only overpowered hers because she didn't quite believe the curse was true at the time. In her final confrontation with Zeref, Mavis is successful in using the curse's effects to her advantage to permanently kill them both, although they do eventually get a second chance together in the epilogue.
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
    • Kars from Part 2 achieves it after he wears the Stone Mask with the Red Stone of Asia he becomes the Ultimate Life Form, immortal and incapable of aging. He's completely immune to Hamon and the sun - the Pillar Men's only weaknesses - as well. In theory he could be killed if destroyed all the way down to the cellular level (lava proved surprisingly good at the job), but there are very few things actually capable of doing that and doing it fast enough that he can't counter with both his Healing Factor and Adaptive Ability. The only way to stop him was to launch him into space to drift for all eternity.
    • Notorious B.I.G., Carne's Stand from Part 5, is utterly invincible, because the trigger for its emergence was its user dying, and Stands can only be defeated by defeating their user, leaving it with no vulnerability. Eventually the heroes just fling it into the ocean, where it occasionally attacks passing freighters.
  • Adolf K. Weismann a.k.a. Yashiro Isana from K. He became the Silver King at age 23, seventy years ago, and hasn't aged since then. He's also invulnerable. It is said that some do think of him as a living god.
  • Kaguya Otsutsuki from Naruto has this. Even her two sons who are god-like themselves can't kill her, and could only seal her in order to stop her from turning all of humanity into Zetsus.
  • The Big Bad from Ninja Scroll. If there was a way to kill him, none of the other characters found it.
  • In Nobunagun, Saint-Germain is heavily implied to be this. In Episode 9 his car explodes with him in it, and he shows up later completely unharmed, while Episode 10 shows that he's over 1,000 years old.
  • Garterbelt from Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt, who was a Jerkass up until he got killed, then, with the blessings of God, became immortal and lived through all of the world's history from the dinosaurs to the present. In Episode 13, it appears he's killed. Twice. However, he always put himself back together afterwards.
  • Soul Eater.
    • Free the werewolf from is hundreds of years old but still looks in his prime and no amount of injury has been shown to outpace his Healing Factor.
    • Crona's comment about Asura being unkillable, as the embodiment of an abstract concept, may mean he's this were it not for the fact that one of his fellow entities claimed Asura was responsible for the death of some of the others and Shinigami being replaced by Kid shows explicitly that the Great Old Ones can, after a fashion, die.
  • SSSS.GRIDMAN: Alexis Kerib cannot die from anything. During the final battle, Gridman kills him in ways including slicing him in half and blowing his head off, and the latter doesn't even interrupt Alexis's monologue. His immortality having left him bored to the point where all of his creative spark is spent, the only way Alexis finds pleasure anymore is by tormenting mortals, with a particular taste for giving them everything they think they want and letting them choke on it. Ultimately Gridman traps Alexis in a crystal and takes him back to Hyper World to stand trial for his crimes.
  • Undead Unluck: Andy's Undead ability negates any and all causes of death, from injuries to sickness and old age. He's developed a very unorthodox fighting style from it, taking advantage of his Healing Factor by cutting his own body to attack enemies with detached limbs or blood, among other uses.
  • Karin Yuuki of UQ Holder! is said to have the highest class of immortality, being a "blessing" from god or more likely a curse as she's most likely Judas Ischariot, Jesus' betrayer. Any damage she takes is immediately retconned away, although... Juuzou can bypass her immortality and might be able to kill her.
  • Yona of the Dawn: Due to the power of the Yellow Dragon, Zeno has not aged a day in two thousand years and is unkillable. In fact, attempting to kill him only makes him stronger, as any wounds he takes seal over with incredibly strong golden scales. He knows very well how to use this to his advantage: he escapes from a prison at one point by lopping off his own arm and, when it regrows, simply punches through the door hindering his escape. Other circumstances that his immortality has seen him through include hitting the ground at terminal velocity, being almost completely incinerated, and actual decapitation. Any time Zeno decides to get serious is typically a Moment of Awesome.

    Comic Books 
  • Astro City:
    • Loony Leo discovers that, being a living cartoon, he cannot die. He spent six years Walking the Earth with no ill effects.
    • One of Infidel's early discoveries was how to use the base energy of the universe to make himself immortal. note 
  • "The Big Chill" by Alan Moore examines this trope in relation to the other absolute of the heat death of the universe. It's set at a time so close to the end that even almost all immortals have died already as the universe itself winds down. The last survivors who have banded together are the superhero Mister Majestic, another superhero from another dimension, a vampire, a hyperintelligent strain of syphilisnote , the Wandering Jew, a demon, a god, the computer calculating all the names of God, and the abstract spirit of arithmetic. Even they all know their immortality is not going to last.
  • Buck Godot: Zap Gun for Hire: The Winslow is truly indestructible, predates the universe and will outlive it. It's hypothesized to be the platonic ideal of a fuzzy green reptile. This scares the piss out of much of the galaxy.
  • The DCU:
    • Lobo: Not only does Lobo have a Healing Factor that allows him to regenerate out of a pool of his own blood, he has been banned from entering either Heaven or Hell, or to be more specific, every eternal place like Valhalla.
    • The Sandman (1989):
      • The Endless, being Anthropomorphic Personifications of universal constants, are immortal for as long as this version of the universe exists (Destiny is said to have been the first thing to exist in it, and Death will be the last). Killing them is about as possible as killing laws of physics. That said, the Endless can be 'killed' in a fashion; at least their current versions/incarnations can (with great difficulty). This causes another incarnation of the same Endless to take their place, with the same powers and station and all their memories, but a somewhat different core personality. Despair is said to have died at least once, and by the end of the series Morpheus has too, replaced by Daniel Hall.
      • Because of Death's immortality, an aspect of her becomes mortal for one day each century to keep her in touch with the lives she collects. At the end of the day, the mortal form dies, and she's waiting for herself.
      • The Sandman: Overture introduces entities who have been around since before even the Endless: their parents, Time and Night.
      • Morpheus's friend and drinking buddy Hob Gadling found out early that due to Death agreeing to never take him unless Hob specifically asked to be taken, he's not only immune to aging but quite immune to fatal conditions as well — although he's not immune to the pain caused by those fatal conditions. At the end of the series he's over 500 years old and counting, with no plans to stop any time soon.
    • Superman:
      • Doomsday is stronger and tougher than Superman, has Adaptive Ability against anything that does manage to injure him, rapidly regenerates and if you do "kill" him, he can regenerate back to life. In theory, he becomes more and more this trope with time as you can't kill him the same way twice.
      • Nothing has been found that can kill the Phantom Zone prisoner Nam-Ek. He does not age, is immune to all diseases and poisons, heals all injuries instantly, cannot starve or die of dehydration, and can survive in the vacuum of space even under a red sun.
    • Swamp Thing: Swamp Thing is an avatar of the Green, the collective spirit of plants. As such while you can destroy his bodies all day he can just regrow himself and could only be killed in theory by destroying all plant matter in the universe.
  • Gilgamesh the Immortal: Gilgamesh is a king of ancient Uruk who met an alien that made him as completely immortal as them, using his alien Immortality Inducer. He then goes across all human history: Assyria, ancient Egypt, ancient Rome, Crusades, middle ages, conquest of the Americas, Napoleonic wars, WWI, WWII, cold war, nuclear holocaust, And the Adventure Continues...
  • Marvel Universe:
    • Amatsu-Mikaboshi is revealed to be this, being as it is the Anthropomorphic Personification of the nothingness before Creation. It is not only older than the universe, it is older than the universe before that and the one before that, stretching back to the Beginning.
    • In a more limited sense, the members of the Cosmic Compass who represent the Anthropomorphic Personifications of key universal concepts, such as Eternity, Infinity, Oblivion and Death, could arguably qualify, since they always exist so long as the universe does and when a new one comes along will exist in that one also, so though they do ultimately die when it ends they may also be reborn. Each of them are aspects of identical entities who operate on an even grander multiversal scale.
    • The Phoenix is a Cosmic Entity of colossal power, which makes it/her almost impossible to kill to begin with. And as and when an attempt does succeed, the Phoenix can be relied upon to always, always come back. It's in the name.
    • Deadpool and Thanos. In addition to being insanely tough to kill in the first place whether it's due to a Healing Factor or being a Nigh-Invulnerable Physical God, both have at one point in their lives been inflicted with curses that rendered them untouchable to the Abstract Entity of Death. They could not die because Death itself could not claim them. Immortality doesn't get much more complete than the metaphysical concept of Death itself having no power over you. In their case it's a curse because they are both in love with Death.
    • Avengers: The Initiative: The Camp Hammond trainee named "Butterball" (Emery Schaub) gained the power of "immutability" through unknown means. Emery's body cannot be altered or disrupted in any capacity, meaning that not only can he not be killed, he also cannot feel any pain. However, this power also refers to "positive" changes as well; he cannot exercise or otherwise enhance his body, making him effectively "stuck" at the state he was when his powers activated. Also, his powers are only physical: Psychic Powers (and presumably non-physical magic) affect him the same as any other human being.
    • Doctor Strange: Shuma-Gorath and his fellow Many-Angled Ones can't die. Even if their physical forms are destroyed (a feat that usually requires the aid of another Cosmic Entity or using the Many-Angled Ones' own power against them), they will simply regenerate them over time. If someone used their power against them to do it, they will simply reincarnate themselves inside the people who "defeated" them this way. They are Enemies with Death, and Death is usually outmatched.
    • Great Lakes Avengers: This is the only superpower Mr. Immortal has. One story reveals he's destined to live until the end of the universe.
    • Ultimate Fantastic Four: The Maker, a.k.a. the Ultimate Reed Richards. He doesn't age, due to time travel shenanigans he’s hundreds of years old and hasn’t aged a day from the moment he got his powers; he doesn't need to eat, drink or breathe, and can survive indefinitely in an empty void if necessary; he can be physically harmed by immensely powerful attacks, but he can survive and heal from almost anything; but most importantly, he exists across all parallel universes, so even if you kill him, you haven’t really killed him.
    • X-Men: A minor villain named Cameron Hodge has this, having made a Deal with the Devil during the Inferno (1988) storyline. His immortality-ness expanded when he absorbed the techno-organic abilities of the New Mutants member Warlock.
  • Myth Adventures: In Phil Foglio's adaptation, the evil sorcerer Isstvan has been cursed with immortality. You can blow him up and all the bits will just squelch together again (fortunately along with his clothes).
  • No Hero: Carrick Masterson is immortal. He can't age or get hurt by anything. He does feel pain. That's it.
  • Suspense: In Issue #14, "Death and Doctor Parker", the titular character injects himself with a serum that makes him immortal. This allows him to survive millennia of misfortunes, orbital bombardment during an interplanetary war, and dismemberment by wild beasts, which leaves him as a still-living, insanely giggling head, eternally-beating heart, and assorted immortal viscera.
  • Watchmen: Doctor Manhattan appears to have a solid body of his own construction, in truth he's closer to a disembodied mind that can affect the material world while being untouchable to everyone else. The only thing that slows him down is the same thing that gave him his powers, and since he already overcame that problem to begin with, it's more of a minor hindrance than anything else.

    Fan Works 
  • Blood and Revolution has people with varying levels of immortality, and kami, chaos demons, and angels seem to fall here (aside from the God Needs Prayer Badly that can kill them, and in some cases the possibility of losing their "connection" to whatever location or idea they represent). This means that Rune, Kaworu, Folken, Bakura, and eventually Saitou, Shun, and Aoshi all have Complete Immortality.
  • In Child of the Storm, the Endless are this, as per canon. Notably among them is the Phoenix, aka Destruction, aka Lily Potter. A Phoenix host also becomes this, such as Surtur or Harry, though the process of resurrection can leave them briefly unstable and destabilise already fragile areas of reality.
  • Melusine/Merry is this in Darkhearts. In the story, she is the daughter of a pre-resurrection Grima. She spend an unknown about of time gathering followers to resurrect him. When she did so, Grima cursed her to be unable to die or suffer serious injury. At one point, she is blasted in the face by a fireball, which burns down to her skull. Her regenerative abilities kicked in, and with in moments, she had regained what had been burned away, without a trace of injury.
  • In Keepers of the Elements, all of the Immortals are this, but Radcliffe is losing his.
  • In Make a Wish, and its sequels, Mr Black eventually becomes a complete immortal.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanworks tend to display Discord as this, being both ancient and impossible to kill, surviving things ranging from decapitation to disintegration with nary a blink of an eye.
  • Buffy Summers is this as a side effect of being yanked out of heaven by her friends in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer / Star Trek: Voyager crossover series A Path All Her Own. In the story, being immortal has allowed her to join and leave and then rejoin Starfleet multiple times using multiple false names, but this time — the first in a long time — she joined as herself.
  • The Pony POV Series has several characters that are this.
    • All of the Concepts (the deities of the setting) have the bonus that even if their physical body dies, they themselves will live on in spirit with very few ways to actually kill them and killing them being far from recommended. The Concepts are divided into Alicorns, who are Nature's Order, and the Draconequui, who are Nature's fury. Among the Alicorns are the Princesses Celestia, Luna, and Cadance, and among the Draconequui is Discord.
    • Lord Tirek is also immortal, due to consuming Pandora's Box of dark magic and being heavily mutated by it. He's not only The Ageless, but incredibly durable and capable of regenerating from being impaled through the chest with no difficulty.
    • The Chaos Six in Dark World are this. The Elements of Chaos in their chest make them have eternal life and can regenerate From a Single Cell as long as their Element isn't destroyed or stolen from them. The redeemed ones keep it, but are likewise up against fellow immortals who can only die in very specific ways.
    • The Sirens share the same type of immortality as the Chaos Six, due to their gems being artificial Elements of Chaos. As a plus, they've intentionally enchanted them in such a way that they can't be stolen and destroying them is nigh impossible. The only thing capable of destroying them is a Rainbow of Light using all seven intended Bearers, including the destroyed Element of Trust which Sunset manages to restore.
  • In Red Lightning, Jimmy is this thanks to the storm, that happened in the year 50BC.
  • Resonance Days is set in the magical girl afterlife. One of the quirks of said afterlife is that the people there cannot die, no matter how much they try. They don't age beyond however old they were upon death (usually their teens), any injury is regenerated within minutes, and even completely dissolving someone into nothing or devouring them completely will just delay how long it takes for them to get back. Oblivion is the only one who can supposedly end their eternal existence, though a few characters like Kyoko or Mami think that she's simply faking it to attract followers. They're partially right; The original Oblivion could give Cessation of Existence, but she is missing and her Dragon-in-Chief Reibey has been steadily replacing her with a line of Puppet Queens to keep up the charade.
  • The Two Sides of Daring Do: Yearling explains that this trope is why Ahuizotl is still alive: he's a Demi-God and thus immortal. He's not only ancient, but things like being shot with a cannon or Buried Alive by a mountain collapsing on him will only incapacitate him. He's such a monster she'd gladly kill him to end his threat, but has yet to find anything that can do the job. This has caused her readers to complain about him having Joker Immunity.
  • Under the Northern Lights: Luna's curse on Wiglek is that he cannot die, ever — no matter how badly mangled his body is, his soul will never depart its flesh, and given time he will invariably put himself back together. It's treated as a rather horrific fate, as he still only endures as a walking corpse and spent a millennium trapped and aware inside a glacier; Luna, who did this shortly before becoming Nightmare Moon, isn't proud of what she's done.
  • The Weedverse: Ponies and other creatures can become gods, usually by attaching oneself to an abstract concept, which turns them into Physical Gods who can come back through Resurrective Immortality. It is only given if the person who's ascending is deemed worthy of the position. Unfortunately, Mayfly–December Romance comes into play should one try date an Alicorn.
    • Princess Celestia and Princess Luna are ancient Alicorn sisters who are tied to the sun and moon, respectively. But not just Equestria's sun and moon; every sun and moon in existence. The only way that could kill them would be an Omnicidal Maniac.
    • Double-subverted with Princess Twilight, who is an Alicorn Princess but not immortal. She later becomes immortal by replacing Eternity, aka The Nameless One in Ink by going through a process that ensures she accepts her own mistakes and takes care not to repeat the mistakes made by her predecessor.
    • Prince Gosling, Celestia and Luna's pegasus husband, became the Alicorn of Happiness through employing large-scale diplomacy in the war-torn Grittish Isles. So as long as happiness survives, so will he.
    • Princess Cadance is the immortal Alicorn of Love who became that way after Celestia used Animancy to graft a portion of her own soul onto her.
    • Cadance's daughters, Flurry Heart and Skyla, are a subversion; despite being Alicorns, they're not immortal, though they will be if they chose to.
    • Shining Armor initially refuses to Ascend due to wanting to show Equestria what a unicorn can do, but eventually he caves due to familial pressure and becomes an Alicorn. The author, Kudzuhaiku, confirms that Shining is immortal - when Cadance ascended him, she put in a sliver of Celestia's soul into her husband.
    • The protagonist of Blank, according to Cadance, can regenerate From a Single Cell and is The Ageless as well. This is because She is half-demon and the result of her mother's Dark Desire giving her up in exchange for more power in a Deal with the Devil.

    Film — Animation 
  • The toys in Toy Story appear to have this, given Woody and Jessie were toys created for a show that aired in the '50s, and are still going strong in present day. The only thing shown as being close to "killing" a toy for good is an incinerator at the dump, though they didn't end up actually in it. It does bring up the Fridge Horror aspect of whether they end up as a form of And I Must Scream consciousness when stuck in landfills or torn into bits too small to be put back together. Bo Peep is shown in Toy Story 4 to have broken some pieces in the ensuing years since she is made of porcelain, but a little tape and she's even able to use her limbs completely fine again.

    Film — Live-Action 
  • In a similar vein, Satan in End of Days mocks The Hero for thinking he can beat him, since "you are just a man, and I...am FOREVER".
  • Almost all ghosts in Ghostbusters that are not at least a Class 7 are this, which is why they get trapped and sent into the containment unit. The video game elaborates that they are capable of crossing over into the Spirit World, but the ones that stay in this plane are the kind that have nothing better to do than torment the living.
  • The Monster, from No Such Thing. Problematic since, after having lived from the dawn of time to the present day, he is quite tired of being alive and wishes to finally find an end, but nothing can harm him, let alone kill him.
  • Ramin Bahrani's short film, Plastic Bag, ends with a lamentation by the narrator that amounts to "I wish I could die."
  • Zombies in Return of the Living Dead cannot die of natural causes and are all but indestructible (Removing the Head or Destroying the Brain doesn't do jack). Only the complete destruction of the remains down to the cellular level will destroy one (and burning them is a terrible idea, as it makes the toxin that causes reanimation airborne). It is not fun, though - zombies in this series are subject to constant, agonizing pain from being able to feel their bodies rot, which leads them to eat human brains in order to ease their suffering.
  • In Wishmaster the Djinn claims to be this, to justify why nobody can simply wish him to die - as an eternal being, he simply cannot be destroyed. The way he proves this is pure Black Comedy. When the heroine of the first movie wishes that he blow his brains out, he pulls out a revolver and shoots himself in the head. He's perfectly fine afterwards, though he tells the heroine "it hurt like hell!"

    Literature 
  • Immortals in Baccano! obtain this form of immortality from drinking the Grand Panacea. Not only do they not age, but they reconstitute themselves on a molecular, if not atomic, level. The only way to kill an immortal is for another to "devour" them.
  • A Certain Magical Index:
    • Fraulein Kreutune, a mysterious woman who has been around since at least the Middle Ages. She doesn't age and she is seemingly completely indestructible. She had been tried as a witch in the past, but nothing the executioners did could harm her. When Accelerator, who is known for pulverizing buildings, punches her, it only knocks her back a little.
    • The Miracle of Endymion movie introduces Ladylee Tangleroad, who gained immortality from consuming ambrosia during The Crusades. While she can feel pain and get injured, she heals from anything, even getting sucked into space. Tired of her long life, she attempts to destroy the world, thinking this will be enough to kill her. When she is stopped, she falls into despair when Index says not even that would have been enough.
    • The being with code-name "DRAGON", aka Aiwass, seems to have this as well. "It" is an Eldritch Abomination almost beyond comprehension, capable of No Selling almost everything Accelerator throws at it. And the one attack that does affect it only works because the attack damages the system necessary for Aiwass to manifest in the physical world, and lack of said system will erase Aiwass from existence. Even then it simply wills itself back to existence. It states that even if it dies, it will manifest again in 1000 or 10000 years, since it is not of this world to begin with.
    • One-Eyed Othinus, the Big Bad of New Testament, a Reality Warper Physical God with the title "Magic God", is powerful enough to manipulate the fundamental laws of the universe. She nonchalantly blows off her own chest with a Reality Warper weapon, only to regenerate instantly. She can also end the entire universe without being affected by the lack of space-time to exist. Subverted later, when she tries to kill herself, and is only stopped due to intervention from the other Magic Gods.
    • Fitting this trope better, True GREMLIN group consists entirely of true immortals, at least when they reside in their Pocket Dimension. The group are actually a group of Magic Gods that are each more powerful than Othinus, having ascended to their own plane of existence to gain their immortality. However, the trope is then subverted when Aleister cast them down to Earth, stripping them of their immortality.
  • My Instant Death Ability is So Overpowered...: Yogiri's true form is an invincible void that embodies the end of everything. It cannot be destroyed by anyone or anything perhaps barring his own Instant Death ability, which he would never use on himself anyway. It is eternal and cannot be erased by anything, granting him this.
  • All Materials (summoned creatures) in The Unexplored Summon://Blood-Sign. They can't even be harmed by non-supernatural means, and if their physical bodies on Earth are destroyed, they can be summoned again with no ill effects.
  • Iar Elterrus' works:
    • The elements / paths in Burden of the Emperor series - Light, Darkness, Life, Knowledge and Wrath. They are alive and sentient, as Darkness once actually responds to an adept sacrificing souls of slaughtered enemies with a dismissive sneer.
    • The 9 controlling entities of the 9 Swords Multiverse, each split into Power, Knowledge and Will. The Incarnations of Power and Will, always a dragon and a human (maybe humanoid), are technically mortal and reincarnate as needed. The incarnations of Knowledge, the eponymous Swords, can at best be sealed or fragmented, but never destroyed.
  • The empowered people in The Accidental Superheroine seem to fit this trope. With complete control over their bodies, they're naturally invulnerable, don't age, and no longer need food, air, or water.
  • The Ellimist and Crayak, from K. A. Applegate's Animorphs series. While not all-powerful, they are quite god-like, often use the Yeerks and the Animorphs as "chess pieces" in their game, and have been living for millions of years. While it's not certain just how old they are, Ellimist ascends before the extinction of the dinosaurs, and he and Crayak had been fighting for an unknown amount of time before that. In addition, both were already quite old when their war began, though we do not know just how old.
  • Elves in M.C.A. Hogarth's The Blood Ladders Trilogy go beyond simply being The Ageless and also have a Healing Factor that makes it hard to kill them without cutting them to pieces and burning the pieces. However, as they get older their immortality uses up more and more of their innate magic; most of the race can't do more than light a candle without draining magic vampirically.
  • Lord Foul the Despiser in The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. He has been reduced to nigh-powerlessness numerous times, but always comes back. Much like Tolkien's Morgoth, he is the Creator's evil counterpart in some way, and at least within shouting distance of his power, but imprisoned. Unfortunately, this means that the other inhabitants of the world have to deal having him as an immortal source of evil messing everything up.
    • There's some crossover with Resurrective Immortality as well. The discrete entity that is Lord Foul can be killed, though doing so requires a tremendous amount of power and effort, but the cosmic principles he embodies are eternal, and eventually can always coalesce into Lord Foul the Despiser once again.
  • The City and the Dungeon: In theory, it is impossible to permanently kill a delver. On death their heartstone can be recovered and revived, and if their heartstone is shattered (something which can happen in the Deep or below), they can eventually be reassembled and revived. However, they need to eat crystal to survive, and the more powerful they are, the more crystal they need. If they "starve" they just revert to crystal again and can be revived, but they probably have no money, so no one will bother reviving them.
  • H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos:
  • The Divine Comedy: Not only God, but all souls are subjected to absolute immortality, no matter if they are in Hell, Purgatory or Paradise. Their mileage varies about this status.
  • Certain entities in The Dresden Files such as gods and the Faerie Queens are absolutely unkillable under normal conditions. Even if their bodies are reduced to their constituent atoms, they will eventually recover completely. However, there are certain places and times where this does not apply such as on Halloween, and they can be killed just like anyone else. Provided that you can get past the defenses of a Physical God. And then there is the fact when the Faerie Queens do die, the mantle of their power will go into another mortal. If the mortal doesn't have enough strength of character to resist the mantle, then in due time the mortal will become a copy of the Fae Queen that came before.
  • The needle-symbiote-infected humans in Eden Green can regenerate from a few cells; the title character's mission is to find a way to permanently die.
  • The Empirium Trilogy: It's impossible for an angel to die of old age, disease, wounds, etc. The only way to successfully kill one is by severing their connection to the empirium, the magical source that everything in Avitas is made out of.
  • Jason and Anna in Finding Gaia. Subverted at the end of the book.
  • Firebird (Lackey) has the Katschei, who is immortal unless his heart is destroyed at his feet. Wounds instantly heal and he cannot bleed, age, or die.
  • The Flying Dutchman and his crew in Tom Holt's Flying Dutch. They drank a magical potion—by accident—and now they can't die no matter how hard they try, and have an unbearable stench that makes them unable to come ashore, except for a brief period every seven years when the stench fades. One crew member spends all his free time jumping from the crow's nest in the hopes that maybe this time, he'll finally die.
  • Dementors in Harry Potter have no soul and cannot be killed. You can merely slow their breeding.
  • Horus Heresy: Vulkan has this. He can return to life no matter what. Attempts at killing him include Macross Missile Massacre, rapid decompression, immolation, crushing, starvation, impaling, fork to the chest, suffocation, orbital drop, beheading, getting shot (multiple times), stabbing (multiple times), magic spear to the heart and finally getting thrown into a volcano. Nothing worked.
  • Journey to the West: Sun Wukong used five different methods of obtaining immortality. Because of this, he is one of the most immortal characters in history. Not only is he immune to aging, but his body is Nigh-Invulnerable to the point that even mystical weapons used by demons broke on him, and in the rare case that his body is damaged due to extremely holy and powerful weapons used by gods themselves, he feels little if any pain, can survive without a head, and can grow a new one on the spot. Even if his body were to be destroyed beyond a point from which he could regenerate, he can resurrect himself more than 70 times. Yank his soul out of his body or make him use up all of his resurrections? His immortal soul can survive and fight on its own, and can reunite with his body if it is left intact. His immortality is so powerful that not even being thrown into a mystical furnace with powerful flames capable of killing even gods and immortals and being left there for 49 days could destroy him.
  • Max Frei's Labyrinths of Echo has "Invisible elves" - the elsidiayas are immaterial beings who somehow inhabit items and sometimes communicate with other sentients. There is no information suggesting that elsidiayas age, can be hurt or can die at all.
  • The Licanius Trilogy: The eleven Venerate. Not only are they unaging, but each can only be killed by one specific method (one has to be pierced through the heart, another has impenetrable skin, etc.) On top of that, if they do die they return to life in a random body unless they were killed by the titular sword. Which, given that their existence is holding open a gateway to Hell, is highly inconvenient for the protagonists.
  • In Magic 2.0 books, one of the standards things done by those who discover the File and learn to manipulate reality through it is to stop aging and make their bodies immune to permanent damage. There are a few exceptions to this, though. For example, they still feel pain, at least immediately, but since there's no cellular damage, the pain quickly goes away. Also, they still need to eat, drink, and breathe, so it is possible for them to starve, die of thirst, or suffocate. Attempts to make them immune to those had... less than pleasant results, as the body still feels as if it needs those things, so they still feel hunger, thirst, and the need to breathe. Others with knowledge of the File can also remove those protections or simply delete them from the File, effectively ending their existence.
  • The One Who Eats Monsters has Ryn, a primordial deity of darkness and vengeance. While she can be injured and her body would die if she sustained enough damage, she would simply be reborn after. As she herself says, she's too old to die for long.
  • In The Participants by Brian Blose, observers sent into the world to watch it on behalf of an absent creator are complete immortals. Any damage done to their bodies (including death) is reverted within five minutes. This can be inconvenient, such as when your colleagues bury you alive for hundreds of years as punishment for participating too much in the world.
  • Windle Poons from Reaper Man. He returns as a zombie, and despite the best efforts of his colleagues (and himself), he just will not die. However, it's possible he wasn't really a zombie, due to Death Being Fired, as other zombies are apparently capable of dying or at least being harmed.
  • Galla in Vadim Panov's Secret City. Galla is for all ends and purposes a Physical God; according to his own recollection, he is merely the first thing / being created. Assuming he's telling the truth, his creator, the one and only creator and keeper god of the universe, obviously also fits the trope.
  • In She, the title character discovers over the two thousand odd years she spends waiting for Kallikrates to be reincarnated that she is not only ageless but invulnerable. Holly reflects that if she were not some accident would have put an end to her long ago.
  • Lionel Suggs has created a large cast of characters that simply cannot be killed by any means within his Suggsverse titles. And yet...
  • Sweet Story: Timmy's wish that he and Sally would be married "forever" backfires on him by causing this. Since marriage is supposed to last "until death do us part", it causes them to be cursed so that they can never die. As a result, they end up living through global extinction and are left as the last people on Earth, doomed to starve and dehydrate eternally on the now barren planet with no hope of escape.
  • The Undying from Tale of the Unwithering Realm. They come from the alternate Earth called "Cainem", where humanity was never exiled from the Garden of Eden, and so they cannot ever die—they regenerate all injury and can reassemble their bodies when dismembered. This is not necessarily a good thing; there's a reason they're called "Those Who Seek Death in Vain". Seeing as they cannot die and are still capable of feeling pain, this lets the villains go wild when coming up with interesting and exciting means of torture, and they're suspectible to And I Must Scream situations.
  • David Eddings:
    • In Eddings's The Belgariad and The Malloreon the remaining "prophecy", essentially the sentient spirit of the universe, fits this trope. UL, father of the gods, probably does as well, as would the king of Hell who is implied to have power close to that of UL. The other gods are more open to debate. One is killed, but this is only because he was a mistake to start with. Whether any god could be killed when the universe itself isn't trying to get rid of them is never addressed.
    • The Tamuli:
      • It is revealed (which retcons it to have also been true in The Elenium) that Bhelliom and Klael are immortal beings who vie for control of the planets Bhelliom creates. Their fights can kill gods and destroy planets, but they can never actually harm each other, they can only banish each other from the planet they're currently fighting over.
      • In the same series Zalasta, who turns out to have secretly been the bad guy all along becomes effectively immortal, but not in a good way. He is trapped in a frozen moment of time and set on fire by the troll gods, so he will be burning to death for eternity, but can never age or actually die.
  • Tolkien's Legendarium:
    • Eru is both timeless and non-physical, being a Crystal Dragon Jesus of God Himself. The temporal, physical world was created partly for death to exist in the first place, in order to resolve the climactic conflict between Good and Evil.
    • Morgoth is the only true example of this in Middle-Earth. The elves are The Ageless, and most other Valar and Maiar can have their bodies destroyed, but can just make new ones. But Morgoth turned the entire planet into his Soul Jar, meaning he cannot die until the end of time. Doesn't save him from being a Sealed Evil in a Can at several points, but technically he's still out there, waiting...
  • The Tucks in Tuck Everlasting. They don't age, and nothing they've encountered yet can kill them.
  • In Void City, there are some beings called True Immortals. The only way they can be destroyed is if their soul is absorbed by another True Immortal; and this is rarely done, as it poses a great risk of causing mental or even physical changes to the absorbing True Immortal.
  • Discussed with respect to God in Orson Scott Card's The Worthing Saga. A village that has been protected against all pain and suffering for as long as anyone can remember suddenly has that protection withdrawn, leading one little girl to speculate that God Is Dead. Her father scoffs, saying that God cannot die because He is The Omnipotent. The girl replies that He must therefore have the power to die if He wants to. The question remains up in the air because it turns out that their protection did not come from a divine source, but from immensely powerful human psychics, who DID self-terminate. If God exists in the setting, we never see Him.
  • In the Young Wizards series, the most powerful of the Powers That Be (including the Lone Power) exist mainly outside of time, and the mortal characters only ever encounter fragments of them which have been inserted into the timestream. Since death is something which takes place inside of time, those Powers couldn't die even if they wanted to.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
    • The Mayor is this during the 100 days before the Ascension.
    • The Judge apparently doesn't age and can't be killed. He can be cut, but since he can kill people just by being near him the first time he walked the Earth it took an army to cut off his limbs and head — and they remained mobile afterwards, and reattached themselves instantly when placed back together. Buffy used a bazooka to break him into a lot more pieces (and then advised her friends to keep the pieces apart).
  • Henry Morgan in Forever has been physically 35 for 200 years and is teleported into the nearest body of water whenever he dies, where he wakes up perfectly fine (and naked, unfortunately). Another immortal posits the only way for him to die is to be shot by the same pistol that caused his first death, but the finale proves this theory wrong, so Henry is an absolutely straight example of this.
  • Kamen Rider Wizard: The Phoenix Phantom revives every time he dies with more magical power than before, and faster than the last time: by the end of his tenure as the main enforcer of the villains, he's gone from taking weeks to revive to taking milliseconds. The only thing that's brought up as potentially being able to kill him is Kamen Rider Beast, whose belt eats the magic of Phantoms he kills to fuel his own. This doesn't get tested, however, in favor of Wizard kicking Phoenix into the sun, where he'll spend billions of years dying over and over again but never be able to withstand the sun's flames nor escape its gravity.
  • On Misfits, this is Nathan's power until he sells it for twenty grand and gets minor reality warping instead, so it might not count after all.
  • It's implied in the Mr. Young episode that Ms. Byrne has this, as when Adam shouts "I'm gonna be here forever!" she replies "You get used to it. The first thousand years are the toughest."
  • The Smallville version of Clark Kent. Maybe. In one episode, a boy is able to see how people will die when he touches them. He touches Clark Kent and does not see a death, only an image of Superman's cape flying through the cosmos.
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation:
    • The evil liquid entity Armus in the episode "Skin of Evil" is stated to be immortal and unkillable. He has already spent an immeasurable amount of time on a barren, uninhabited planet after his creators left him there. Picard ensures that he will be trapped there for as long as possible without any means of escape.
    • Nagilum from "Where Silence Has Lease" does not age and cannot die, which is why the concept of death applying to other creatures fascinates it so. He then decides to sacrifice a large part of the Enterprise crew to satisfy his curiosity, and only Picard planning to blow up the ship in defiance manages to dissuade him.
  • Supernatural:
    • Death claims that he is the one thing in existence that will last forever after he reaps GOD at the end of time, although he's so old that he can't even remember anymore which of them came first. Though Crowley mentions that there are rumours he can be killed with his own scythe. The S10 finale seems to confirm this. Then Double Subverted when Death is revealed to be a Legacy Character, with the Reaper known as "Billie" inheriting all his power and knowledge. To drive this home further, Billie is later killed herself after suffering Big Bad Slippage.
    • The S10 finale reveals that The Mark of Cain makes its bearer so strong that even Death himself doesn't know of any way to kill someone who has it. The Darkness, the entity that the Mark contains, is initially implied to be an example, given that the combined might of God and the Archangels could not kill it. Subverted in the S11 finale, where The Darkness reveals that killing God would wipe out all of reality, herself included (and vice versa).
    • It's implied that this also applies to "Eve", the mother of all monsters who formed part of the Big Bad Ensemble for season 6. Although the Winchesters kill her by injecting her with the ashes of a phoenix, her Achilles' Heel, much later (season 15!) they learn that she just respawned in Purgatory and re-asserted control over monsterdom. Even the Leviathans bowed down to her since their former leader was ironically Killed Off for Real.
  • Captain Jack Harkness in Torchwood and Doctor Who is this. Blow him up and the body gradually begins to reassemble. He has been stated to age very slowly. It's suggested that he may become the Face of Boe, who did die, but whether that's an in-joke or truth was answered with a Shrug of God, the writer saying that the joke stops being funny if we know if it is or isn't true.
  • Maryann Forrester in True Blood. As a maenad, she is at least as old as ancient Greece and is allegedly older than written history. She's also completely unkillable; her immortality is based on her beliefs, which means that as long as she believes she's immortal, nothing can kill her. The only way to kill her was to make her believe that her god needed her to die.
  • Ultraman Ace: The main villain of the series is Yapool, an Inter-dimensional Demon Lord which cannot be killed; whenever bested in battle, he will regenerate and resurrect himself through The Power of Hate, in fact after the series ended Yapool returned to torment Ultraman Taro, Ultraman Mebius, Ultraman Ginga and various other ultra-warriors.
  • The X-Files: Alfred Fellig in "Tithonus" is this until he manages to look into Death's eyes. It is possible that he passed this condition to Scully.

    Music 
  • The B-52s: Noone ever dies on Planet Claire.

    Mythology and Religion 
  • God is usually understood to be this, being the Creator of absolutely everything, including Life, Time, Space, Death and whatever happens after or outside it. Angels, perhaps including Satan and other demons/fallen angels, may also qualify in that the only way they could "die" is to be uncreated by God Himself, and this is not something God is generally believed to do.
  • Greek Mythology:
    • The gods and their ancestors, the Titans, had complete immortality, which is why the Olympians did not die when their father Cronus ate them as infants (and they emerged alive and full-grown when he was forced to vomit them up). Likewise, this is why the Olympians imprisoned most of the Titans in Tartarus. Immortal beings could be injured or even indefinitely incapacitated, but were impossible to kill, even for other gods.
    • The Hydra had a single immortal head in addition to the heads that would be replaced by two new ones if they were severed. After chopping off the other heads and cauterizing the stumps with a torch to prevent new ones from growing, Heracles trapped the Hydra's immortal head under a rock.
  • In most pantheons, unless gods are explicitly said to die, a state of complete immortality may be assumed, for at least the most powerful beings and perhaps several more besides. Even in some pantheons in which gods do die, their "death" may be more a matter of ritual or spiritual significance than an actual cessation of life or even particular loss of body.
  • How much it counts as this trope when the person in question already has died once may be debatable, but it's definitely a feature of quite a few religious traditions' afterlives — once you're there, you're not generally thought to have to worry about ever dying again (though exceptions aren't unknown).

    Tabletop Games 
  • In Exalted, when the Primordials were designing reality they didn't include provision for their own deaths. When the gods rose up to take Creation from them, more than a few were killed, but didn't have a way to die. A lot of the threats Player Characters face come down to these beings wanting reality to just end so they can finally die.
  • The Deceived of Mummy: The Curse are flat-out eternal. Most mummies have Resurrective Immortality, and can be brought back to life even if their bodies are destroyed, summoned into a new body, unless all trace of their existence is erased. The Deceived take it a step further, as even if they're completely forgotten, Fate will still bring them back when the stars are right, summoning them into an intact corpse. If no corpse is available, then a fragment will do. And if all trace of humanity is wiped from existence, they'll still get called back by the echoes of their True Name throughout the cosmos.
  • The Eternal of Spears of the Dawn can't be killed, ever, at all, don't age, don't need to eat, drink or breathe, and suffer no more than minor inconvenience from having pointy bits stuck through their internal organs. On the other hand, broken bones seriously cramp their style, and sufficiently extreme damage can render them incapable of moving at all and beyond the point where they have any way of ever recovering... and they still won't die, ever. Add to that the fact that their undead state turns them Always Chaotic Evil, meaning that anyone living near them is going to have to try to disable them in that way just to keep them from constantly trying to kill them, and it turns into a definite case of Blessed with Suck. But then, what do you expect when you make a Deal with the Devil with a bunch of Elder Gods-worshipping Snake People?

    Toys 
  • Beast Wars: Uprising: Rampage, as in Beast Wars, is nigh-indestructible by any means. Most of him time throughout the story is spent looking for something to do, and more importantly something that will kill him, to no avail. In the finale, he manages to recover from being atomised, and his first response is a horrified, anguished scream.

    Video Games 
  • Banjo-Kazooie: The Big Bad, Gruntilda, has never been killed once despite all the odds. She is susceptible to methods of death that would invoke natural causes, but despite that, there is absolutely nothing that can kill her for good. Trapped under a rock? She'll have her soul transported into a robot. Said robot is destroyed? Her soul returns to her body, which is now an animate skeleton. Said skeleton is blown to pieces from an exploding drill? Her skull remains intact and is placed in an android. Grunty can wither away and be blown to pieces, but she always remains alive and kicking.
  • The Banner Saga: The final boss Bellower, leader of the enemy was immortal, the only way to "kill" him was To make him believe he was dead. Even then, he will wake up in a thousand year to understand he didn't die that day. Let's just say he will be pretty pissed off.
  • In Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, Gabriel Belmont eventually becomes the immortal Dracula. Since he's still God's chosen champion, Dracula does not have the typical vampiric weakness to holy weapons, making him effectively invincible. The only thing that can truly kill him is the Vampire Killer Combat Cross his former weapon.
  • In Crystal's Pony Tale, getting hurt simply causes Crystal to lose a few horseshoes necessary for exiting stages.
  • From Devil Survivor 2: Record Breaker, Canopus controls (and in some sense is) the primary factors of the universe: Heat, Force, Time, and Space. As long as this is the case, it will continue to exist. Yeah, about that? Its destruction becomes possible because the protagonists can Skill Crack these forces for themselves.
  • God, the final boss in Duel Savior Destiny is ageless and completely impossible to kill, though not impossible to damage. The damage just doesn't stick. After being beaten in a fight, he'll just stand back up again and keep going.
  • Dwarf Fortress: Due to an Ascended Glitch, it's possible for a necromancer to reanimate the skin and hair of butchered creatures alongside their skeletons. The resulting undead have no vital signs, cannot bleed out (they don't have blood), and do not breathe - which means there is no way to kill them. The only means to stop them are to encase them in ice or obsidian, or to take advantage of another glitch by crushing them under a drawbridge or luring them into a cave-in (which essentially erases them from the game).
  • The Elder Scrolls
    • This is a trait of the et'Ada, the "original spirits" who formed from the raw energynote  of the early universe. Depending on the actions of these et'Ada during the creation of Mundus, the mortal plane, they would become either the Aedra or the Daedra:
      • The Aedra (meaning "our ancestors" in Old Aldmeris) sacrificed large parts of their divine power to create Mundus, and have thus lost their Complete Immortality. There were originally many Aedra, the majority of whom sacrificed so much during creation that they died, becoming the "Earthbones" (essentially the laws of nature/physics/reality that a functioning world requires). Of the survivors, the eight most prominent have been grouped together as the Eight Divines, who are worshiped in the primary religion of Tamriel. As they've sacrificed much of their power and their true immortality, they can be killed. (According to some versions of the myth, they are already dead but "dream" that they are alive, allowing them some influence over the world they created.) As such, they prefer a lighter touch in dealing with mortal affairs and prefer acting through mortal agents whenever possible. They generally save any acts of direct Divine Intervention for the most dire circumstances to avert The End of the World as We Know It.
      • The Daedra ("not our ancestors") did not make any sacrifice during creation, and thus retain their full divine power and Complete Immortality. If a Daedra manifests in a mortal form on Mundus and that mortal form is slain, their spirit simply returns to Oblivion to reform. The Daedric Princes are the 17 most prominent and powerful Daedric beings. While they have been battered, beaten, banished, and fundamentally changed, nothing in the setting has ever been able to actually kill one, not even the other Daedric Princes.
  • Ardyn Izunia, the Big Bad of Final Fantasy XV, was cursed with Complete Immortality when he, in ages past, cured innumerous individuals of the daemonic Starscourge by taking the plague into his own body. Only Noctis Lucis Caelum, the last of the royal Lucis family and the ascended Chosen One, armed with the Glaives of Rulers past, wearing the Ring of the Lucii and blessed by both the Crystal and the Six, can muster up the power to purge him of his curse.
  • FromSoftware:
    • Bloodborne: There are several implications in the game that Hunters, by nature, cannot die from old age, with Henryk, for example, being noted as owing his "tragically long life" to his and his hunting buddy Gascoigne's efficiency together. Any Hunter who becomes tied to The Hunter's Dream effectively gains complete immortality as, if they are killed in action, then they simply "wake up" again, no worse for wear. The only way for Hunters to regain their mortality again is if they willingly allow Gehrman, the Host of The Hunter's Dream, to Mercy Kill them.
      • Annalise, the Undead Queen of the Cainhurst Vilebloods, explicitly has this form of immortality. When the Church Executioners arrived at Castle Cainhurst, they were able to slaughter all of the Vilebloods down to the last, except Queen Annalise who they had to settle for locking up in her throne room and then guard the gates of for the rest of eternity. At present, Martyr Logarius, the leader of the Executioners and guardian of Annalise, has been reduced to a skeletal form, (yet still somehow alive,) but Annalise has remained unchanged from the day the Executioners first locked her up... If you follow Alfred's quest to its conclusion, he goes for overkill and reduces Annalise to Chunky Salsa. Said chunky salsa is still moving, and picking up a piece of it reveals that the flesh is still warm... Placing said piece on the Altar of Despair, upon which time flows in reverse, resurrects Annalise again. Note that the altar does not revive beings that are already dead.
    • Dark Souls: The Everlasting Dragons were said to have had this kind of immortality, and the one example of a true Everlasting Dragon the player encounters in the game is completely impervious to any of the player's attacks. You can chop off its tail and get a weapon for it but it doesn't even care. The source of their immortality was their scales. Unfortunately, if the scales are gone all bets are off. Lightning is great at removing the whole "immortality" thing. Seath the Scaleless was the only Dragon born without the scales and thus lacked immortality. He betrayed the Dragons and sided with Gwyn and the other Lords against them out of envy, and later went mad trying to find a way to give himself the immortality he lacked. He eventually found it in the form of the Primordial Crystal — a Soul Jar that makes him completely immune to all damage. Fortunately it's very fragile and shatters with just one hit.
      • Undead/Hollows also do not age and have Resurrective Immortality, but they suffer from a form of Resurrection Sickness that makes them more mindless each time. Undead are imprisoned rather than executed because they just get back up, the (Undead) player character can't be kept down and Hollow enemies infinitely respawn. Undead NPCs, however, stay dead. This is probably for balance reasons—it's implied they do come back, presumably as Hollows, you just don't see them (or can't tell them apart from any other Hollow). The third game has several NPCs who come back when killed, with varying reactions to you doing so. The series goes back and forth on whether or not Undead can permanently die if killed after fully Hollowing; there are implications either way.
      • In the second game, Lord Aldia was obsessed with immortality, and spent the last years of his life researching it as a way to escape the Undead Curse, including an effort to re-create the Everlasting Dragons of old (which failed). In the Scholar of the First Sin edition: Aldia actually appears to have succeeded in making himself truly immortal... by purging himself of any semblance of either humanity or a soul, becoming a mass of burning tree roots that vaguely resembles a human face if you squint at it from a certain angle. It's unclear whether or not he's happy with this result. Even after being "killed" as a boss, he just keeps talking as a disembodied voice like nothing happened, and he gives no souls nor does he drop his own soul on defeat.
    • Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice has the Final Boss, Isshin "the Sword Saint" Ashina, who's completely immortal, which is translated into gameplay into being the single most durable enemy in the game. Even after several Deathblows, it's only after he's slashed at the throat with the Mortal Blade, the only weapon that can harm immortals, that the the immortality is severed and he goes down for good.
  • Ghost Trick features an odd form of this. Having a Temsik meteor fragment embedded in one's body is as fatal as a meteor wound should be, but doesn't let the victim die. Instead the body is suspended at the moment of death, instantly regenerating any harm done to it. The kicker? This "caught between life and death" deal also applies to the person's soul, which can stick around and animate the body again, or freely leave it to perform whatever Ghost Tricks they were lucky enough to end up with.
  • In Granblue Fantasy, Ferry is completely immortal as a result of becoming a spirit upon her death. While she still has a physical body, she does not age and while she can apparently be hurt, she cannot be killed by any means. She is explicitly stuck in a state between life and death forever, which makes her an irregularity even by the setting's standards. She does not see this as a blessing as her biggest wish was just to re-united with her family someday.
  • Guilty Gear has Raven. Originally a German soldier in The Crusades, he was due to be executed by being turned into a Human Pincushion, and while that was happening had a vision of a world full ravens flying everywhere and staring at him. He woke up to find he had survived his execution, and ever since then he has been unable to die no matter what. By the time of the games he's well over a thousand years old but doesn't look a day older than when he first "died". His Instant Kill in Xrd has him set himself on fire, grab the opponent and burn them both to ashes, shortly followed by his hand bursting from the ashes as he regenerates himself. It has been posited the theory bythat the only possible way he could be killed be completely erase his soul from existence, though even he doubts that it could work.
    • It had been stated that both Sol Badguy and Justice are also in this category due to the Information Seeds, Adam and Eve, which are merged into their Gear Cores. These Seeds keep their very beings affixed to the structure of the universe itself, which renders them indestructible and immortal.
    • Slayer's wife, Sharon, is ageless and unkillable. He drains her of her blood in his intro, and she doesn't even blink, since she'll get back up soon enough anyway. When Eddie attempts to possess her in one of his XX endings, he ends up melting on the spot. According to the creators, she's biologically human, but there's a bug in her Backyard information that renders her indestructible.
  • In Infinity Blade, the Worker of Secrets is the only true immortal in the series. Even the fully-charged Infinity Blade cannot permanently kill him since he wasn't stupid enough to create a weapon capable of killing himself. In the end Siris uses the same technology that erased his memory when he was Ausar the Vile to erase the Worker's.
  • The immortals of Lost Odyssey are completely indestructible in the story — but Gameplay and Story Segregation means they function like From a Single Cell-like immortality during gameplay (can be hurt and "killed" during gameplay, but revive on their own).
    • To give you an idea how implacable the story considers them, at the end of the Action Prologue, Kaim gets hit directly by a pyroclastic flow. When the duct clears, everything in a multi-mile radius is as dead as you'd expect. He's not even knocked off his feet.
  • The Unbreakable Darkness of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's Portable: The Gears of Destiny, an Eldritch Abomination that was sealed in the Book of Darkness. Despite looking like a little girl, she's older than the previously established immortals of the series. She's also unable to die no matter how much she wants to, a fact demonstrated when she takes the strongest attacks in the entire franchise without receiving a scratch even when she's at just a fraction of her full strength. The Sound Stages even hint that she's probably alive in the main continuity where her can was completely destroyed without her awakening... it's just that returning from complete disintegration may take 10 or more years.
  • Mortal Kombat 11 introduces Geras who, no matter what the Kombatants throw at him, cannot utterly die as he's a fixed point in time. It gets demonstrated early on when Kung Lao slices his head off thinking it was just that easy, but then he pops right back up good as new. The only way he's dealt with later in the story is when Raiden ties him to an anchor that drags him to the Sea of Blood, which is bottomless leaving him to a Fate Worse than Death.
  • Yaobikuni from Onmyōji (2016) after digesting mermaid flesh became way Older Than She Looks, walks away unscathed from a suicidal ritual and is Barred from the Afterlife, among other things. She even goes so far as to ask a random guy who she's just seen in her dreams to end her life. This makes it all the harder to deal with her as she is later revealed as The Dragon to a Greater-Scope Villain.
  • The gods of Perihelion have this as their biggest perk as energy beings - except for the Unborn God, which as of the game's events is a Physical God and thus killable. As part of its plans, it seeks to ascend from its current form to an energy being like its fellow gods, enabling it to complete its rewriting of reality unopposed.
  • In the Persona, there are multiple characters that fit this category due to the concepts introduced in the series, particularly, the Sea of Souls.
    • Nyarlathotep is the embodiment of humanity's evil, along with Philemon, the embodiment opposite of Nyarlathotep, are impossible to ever kill, due to both of them being an undeniable aspect of humanity, and so long as a single human exists, they cannot die.
    • Erebus is a being similar to Nyarlathotep and Philemon, but he embodies humanity's desire for death. Erebus sees to make contact with Nyx to enact the Fall, which would wipe out all of humanity. The protagonist of Persona 3 sacrificed their soul to become the Great Seal that keeps Erebus from Nyx. Erebus has been destroyed in the epilogue chapter of Persona 3 FES: The Answer, and has also been destroyed on a yearly basis by Elizabeth as seen in Persona 4 Arena. However, it was stated repeatedly that Erebus would continue to revive itself every year, and can only cease to exist if humanity stops wishing for death.
    • Nyx is an entity that is the very embodiment of Death. Unlike other beings in Persona, who are embodiments of humanity's collective unconsciousness, Nyx is a being that existed before humanity, and ultimately exists outside of reality. When Nyx's awakening was at hand, her avatar in the form of Ryoji stated that Nyx cannot be stopped or defeated, regardless of how much strength or power one has, as she is a universal force that cannot be stopped. However, the protagonist of Persona 3 managed to return Nyx to sleep by becoming the Great Seal, preventing Nyx from hearing the call from Erebus, humanity's desire for death.
  • The Nameless One from Planescape: Torment had his mortality stripped from him and is therefore a true immortal in the exact literal sense. There are ways that will kill his body (thus, for all practical purposes of gameplay, kill him) due to ruining his Healing Factor (And I Must Scream scenarios, being killed by a god, god-like being like The Lady or a sufficiently powerful magic user like Lothar, cremation, dissolved in acid), but on a spiritual level he will never die: His spirit can never move on, he can never reach the afterlife, and because the Grim Reaper essentially sees him as a blank in the books, someone else dies in his place every time he would die instead.
  • Mephiles and Iblis from Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) cannot be killed as they instantly regenerate from any wounds they suffer. The only way to completely destroy them is to make it so they never even existed.
  • Dark Gaia and Chip/Light Gaia from Sonic Unleashed are natural embodiments of light and darkness, which effectively renders them indestructible as killing either one of them would upset the world's balance.
  • Fujiwara no Mokou and Kaguya Houraisan from Touhou Project are immortal in the truest sense. While it functions somewhat like From a Single Cell and mostly like Resurrective Immortality, they cannot die. Even if they were to be completely destroyed, they would be restored back into existence immediately and completely, meaning that they can come back from nothing. Due to the laws of reality in Gensokyo when someone enters an area designated as the afterlife, where people can come and go, they count as dead. Mokou and Kaguya near literally run into a wall they cannot pass. Yuyuko has the power to cause anything to die at will. The two immortals are completely unaffected. They will probably exist till the end of time or probably even after it. Others could share in by temporarily killing either and devouring their liver, but few (even in Gensokyo) are mad enough to try the immortality the Hourai Elixir they drank brings. It's implied that the Elixir itself was created by distilling Kaguya's power over eternity into a liquid, thus removing the users from the cycle of life and death completely, not just from when they drank it and, according to Word of God, even if you went back in time to kill them before they drank the elixir, death still wouldn't stick. Presumably, the only way to actually kill them would be to somehow defy eternity and force them back into the cycle again, and no one either has the interest or the ability to figure out a way how.
  • Sunrider: Kayto gains this when he becomes a time lord. He does not age, can tank the collapse of the multiverse, regenerate from the complete erasure of his body and reform anywhere and anytime he wants, and simply "undo" his own death as if he never died in the first place.
  • In the Wario Land series, Wario cannot be killed by any means in Wario Land II and Wario Land 3. Burning into a pile of ashes just causes him to regenerate, and most enemy attacks revolve around inconveniencing him.
  • SoulSacrifice: The character Magusar was given immortality. Unfortunately he's driven mad by the gods. The previous hero, Geoffry Librom, his best friend and confidant would do battle with him, and ultimately lose. But rather than die, Magusar purposefully spills his blood over his corpse. This heals him, granting the same immortality, only to force him to fight again, and again, and again. After countless years of nonstop fighting, Geoffry is left as a throbbing pile of flesh unable to move, and unable to die

    Web Animation 
  • Red vs. Blue: Singularity ultimately reveals that all sentient lights (like Huggins and Muggins) can never truly be killed, as light is information and can't be truly destroyed. Not only are (mostly) intangible and impossible to injure, but even throwing one of them into a black hole just has them end up back at the beginning of the universe.
  • RWBY: Salem and Ozpin have been at war for thousands years because both are immortal, although they have different types of immortality. After trying to resurrect her dead lover, Ozma, Salem was cursed by the gods with complete immortality to prevent her from being able to reunite with Ozma in the afterlife until she learned the importance of life and death. For trying to turn humanity against the gods in revenge for her curse, Salem condemned the entire human race. Ozma was resurrected to give humanity a single chance at redemption by guiding them to peace and harmony, pitting the two former lovers against each other in a bitter, eternal war for the fate of humanity. Salem cannot be killed because nothing can destroy her and she doesn't age; even when something can completely obliterate her body, her body reforms a moment later in the same spot, completely unharmed. Unlike Salem, Ozma can age and die; he just doesn't stay dead.

    Webcomics 
  • In Cucumber Quest, the Nightmare Knight can't be killed. Only made Sealed Evil in a Can.
  • In Grrl Power, there is a super code-named Achilles whose power is 'proper, aggravating invincibility'. He is completely and absolutely indestructible, withstanding things that destroy conventional matter on a subatomic scale, and has a measure of heightened strength since he doesn't have to worry about his tendons and bones failing under the strain. He is so invulnerable that not even time can harm him, making him look exactly like he did back when his powers kicked into gear — nearly thirty years ago.
  • Gunnerkrigg Court: Jones has survived, in reverse chronological order: a sword to the face, ground-zero of a SC50 bomb, a munitions factory explosion, a spear to the abdomen, the burning of Rome, a barefoot walk across the Gobi desert, a bare-chested hunt with Cro-Magnon men (her technique is to grab the giant bull by the horns), a nude hike across a glacier (frozen eyes? No problem), waking up underwater after being buried in rock for 3 billion years, and spending the first 2 billion taking a lava bath. To drive this home, in a dispute with Ankou (who is The Grim Reaper) over who Mort's soul belongs to, the third party goes with seniority and sides with Jones. She doesn't age, nor (apparently) eat, sleep, breathe, expel wastes, emote, create, imagine, or remember anything prior to taking that lava bath (and she remembers everything since), so she doesn't even know what she is.
  • Lord English of Homestuck has "unconditional immortality" and on top of that, You Can't Fight Fate always works in his favor (since he is a superpowered Lord of Time), so that even if someone went back in time to prevent his rise to power, that event would be instantly Ret Goned. It has been hinted that there is one specific thing that can kill him, however.
    • After being asked if Lord English was a Lord British Expy, Andrew said that he wasn't (instead just named that to keep the Felt's pool theme). The result? "He's rumored to be killable only through a number of glitches and exploits in spacetime".
    • Lord English achieved complete immortality by smashing his own God-Tier Clock (which normally determines whether a God-Tier will die due to Heroic or Just circumstances) with the anti-time crowbar juju. It's possible that the cueball which can kill him is the same cueball that was part of his Clock's pendulum, and that is why it can negate his immortality.
    • There are also two slightly lesser forms of this trope. Those who have reached the God Tier have "conditional immortality" and will revive when killed unless the death was Heroic (died protecting someone or for other noble causes) or Just (they were jerkasses and deserved it). Lord English's minions, on the other hand, have "conditional mortality" and are unable to die until Lord English permits them to do so.
      • Interestingly, these conditions are calculated by SBURB itself. Under mind control to be evil and get killed? It's considered a Just death for example.
  • Jix: Kelelder the Planet Thief, regenerative type, he's been teleported into the sun twice and his spirit just went back to his ship and generated a new body.
  • Kill Six Billion Demons:
    • The angels mix this with Resurrective Immortality. Energy Beings housed in Applied Phlebotinum bodies, it is very, very difficult to kill an angel (to the point that a common saying is "only thing that can fight an angel is another angel"), and on "death" they are simply sent to the Void, from which they always eventually return (the time it takes to reform is proportional to how long their previous incarnation existed). They retain all their memories and skills, though not always personality. This means that there are the exact same number of angels now as there were when they were first created long, long ago, even if most of them don't bother leaving the Void these days. They proudly refer to themselves as a circle "perfect and infertile." This also contrasts with the other, semi-mortal inhabitants of the multiverse; most species can reincarnate, but they can be killed permanently or create more of themselves.
    • Jagganoth has a straight-up "invulnerable"-type immortality: According to Mottom (and Word of God) he is invulnerable to any kind of damage from known sources. He obtained this immortality by acquring thirty feathers from an angel, which he forged into enchanted nails and hammered into his own flesh; the result turned Jagganoth conceptually invulnerable, so that the impossibility to harm him is a law of reality itself. Presumably he can be harmed if the nails were somehow removed, but good luck getting them out of a thirty-foot tall demigod who controls a seventh of Creation.
  • In The Silver Eye Melete Dolan cursed herself to be eternal so she would't have any chance of being reunited with her husband in the afterlife. Although the full extent of her invunerability is unknown, she can heal herself unless kept in extreme pain, and there is no evidence that her wounds would kill her.
  • Tower of God:
    • The background information mentions how Jahad and his 10 Warriors got immortality granted by the Guardian of the 100th floor of the Tower. The FUG, who want to destroy Jahad and the others, are very keen to find those very specific things that can kill them — no-one in the Tower can, so it has to be someone from outside it...
    • Another character called Arlene Gracenote  got the same kind of deal — and regretted it later when she was driven mad with grief and tried again and again to commit suicide.
  • The golem girls in Wapsi Square have this kind of immortality.

    Web Original 
  • The Narrator of "Immortality Blows" has immortality "so perfect" that he/she survives the end of the universe.
  • The character Anne Poole, from Fine Structure, is cursed with this form of immortality. She is indestructible and immortal, which becomes a problem near the beginning of the story when she's accidentally teleported into solid rock. By the time they get to her, she's gone insane from deprivation. She eventually gets better, and she goes on to live tens of thousands of years longer; it's revealed that she actually goes through phases of insanity, as the human mind isn't meant to have that kind of continuity. From the woman herself:
    Sometimes the discovery becomes massive and everybody in the world finds out at once and I end up on a pedestal. Sometimes they make me their leader, sometimes they call me an abomination, sometimes I get arrested and studied, usually it's all of this at once. I've been everywhere. I've done everything, spoken every language, built a pyramid, survived re-entry. History goes in cycles. If you watch it for long enough you can see the tipping points coming and be there when they happen. I invented fire, the wheel, the electric motor, antibiotics, you name it, every era, every country. Fought in X number of wars. Once, I actually ruled the whole world.
    I've walked on the Moon barefoot.
  • SCP Foundation:
    • SCP-682 is described as a "Hard-to-Destroy Reptile". It's a homicidal, regenerating dinosaur that adapts to whatever you throw at it. They haven't tried things like nuclear bombs on it yet, because the last thing they need is a radioactive, red hot homicidal indestructible dinosaur. Between experiments, they keep 682 stored in a tank of concentrated acid, because while that won't kill it, having its muscular system constantly dissolving will at least make it hard for it to cause any trouble. Though it still manages to break out of it occasionally. It once fought a creature (created by the Foundation) with the sole descriptive factor of being able to kill 682 completely and utterly. 682 won. On other occasions, 682 has shown formidable resistance to being written out of reality itself and can operate in situations where the fundamental laws of physics are radically different. 682 even enjoyed the latter. SCP-738 suggested at one point that it would be capable of killing 682... but the entire human race combined could not pay the price necessary for such a feat. Some of the Foundation's staff are even wondering if 682 can truly be considered 'alive'.
    • SCP-014 is immortal because he believes he is — he's also completely immobile because what he believes is that he was cursed and turned into concrete.
    • Not only is SCP-138 unable to die, he is also unable to heal from the multiple seemingly-fatal injuries he has sustained. The poor guy was buried alive for 4000 years before the Foundation found him, and the Foundation's multiple attempts to euthanize him have only made his condition worse.
    • There are other complete immortals in the SCP holding cells, including the Demon Born of War, but 682 is the most famous. The site now disapproves of these sorts of SCP's being written, and having an SCP be absolutely immortal is an instant deletion. Able, 682, and several others continue to exist solely by virtue of the Grandfather Clause. The site's admins refer to this as the "Able Rule" - if your creation is more powerful than Able, it's toast.
    • SCP-1440 is an old man who won a card game with Death and is immortal as a result...and has come to regret it. He has been wandering the Earth hoping to find Death so he can return his "gift".
    • SCP-7992 is a shapeshifting gorilla possessed of total immortality; it doesn't age, drugs can't affect it, it can't be wounded, it doesn't need to eat or sleep, and though it hasn't hurt anyone since its containment, the Foundation is struggling with the effort of keeping it contained indefinitely - to the point that they rejected the idea of just dumping the damn thing at the bottom of the ocean because it will still be alive when the oceans dry up. And then it turns out that it's not a gorilla at all and probably not a shapeshifter either: it's a Foundation researcher that cracked immortality and imbued himself with it against protocol... and it's implied that the security measures are in place not because he's a threat or even all that powerful by immortal standards, but because the O5 Council are torturing him through incarceration - either for disobeying orders or to force him to reveal his secrets.
  • 17776 is set in a world where all of humanity became immortal on April 7th, 2026. No one is able to die or age... but no one can be born, either. At first, people could still die from accidents, murder, or suicide, but the widespread use of nanotechnology has since removed that threat by the 36th century. This newfound invulnerability has led to humanity managing to conquer war, disease, and all its other pitfalls - thus, recreation (such as American Football, the story's focus) is their main purpose in life.
  • Dreamscape: The Overlord of Evil and Melinda had to be sealed away for this very reason.
    • If you do manage to somehow kill the Overlord of Evil, such as trying to Ret-Gone him, he'll just appear back in puffs of Super Smoke.
    • Immortality is why Melinda had no need to master the cycle of life and death, unlike her former apprentice Melissa and her Resurrective Immortality.

    Western Animation 
  • In the final episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Frylock and Carl acquire this through magical "Ceaseless Shampoo". They become ageless and immune to pain and are able to control any severed bodyparts of theirs following mutilations and decapitations. They can also regenerate from puddles of blood.
  • Archer reveals in "Drastic Voyage: Part II" that he believes himself to have this, which is weird considering he'd already died and come back once before.
  • The demon Luci from Disenchantment had this stripped from him when he helped Bean and Elfo escape from Hell.
  • In Gargoyles, Demona and Macbeth are complete immortals thanks to the Weird Sisters' spell. Their lives are linked in such a way that as long as one lives, the other cannot die. Even getting a sword shoved into their gut is little more than a minor inconvenience from which they can quickly recover. Their aging is also halted. They can only die if they kill each other. Given that the two have grown to despise each other, they end up attempting to do just that every time they meet. Though Demona is stuck since she doesn't want to die yet, while Macbeth does.
  • In Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H., The Collector has been shown to be one of these. This is because he is one of the Elders of the Universe - a collection of beings who are the last of their race. Each wields the Power Primordial and is known for one obsessive characteristic.
  • Bill from It's Such a Beautiful Day, should you believe the narrator at the end of the third chapter.
  • In Jackie Chan Adventures, the Dog Talisman grants immortality and eternal youth, while the Horse Talisman grants healing/regeneration and apparently deals with pain. Whoever has the power of both is this trope.
  • The Justice League incarnation of Vandal Savage appears to be a complete immortal: He doesn't age and shrugs off practically all damage. During his three appearances he goes down with an air-plane in the Atlantic Ocean, stands at ground zero for a Colony Drop, and finally gets stuck on an irradiated Earth pushed out of its orbit that is inhospitable to human life. None of this seems to bother him, although the latter version became Ret-Gone after Superman went back in time and stopped the cause of the disaster.
  • In The Legend of Korra, the Great Spirits of Light and Darkness, Raava and Vaatu, are both truly immortal. Even if one were to be physically destroyed, they would regenerate within their counterpart and emerge once more ten thousand years later. They fight an everlasting battle for dominance over the world, Raava for Light and Order, Vaatu for Darkness and Chaos.
  • Looney Tunes: Marvin the Martian may have this. While his repeatedly surviving explosions powerful enough to destroy planets could be interpreted as Rule of Funny (given that Bugs, Daffy, and Porky also survived), he mentions in one cartoon that he's been working on a doomsday device for 1000 years.
  • Ninjago: The Overlord has been implied in the show to be immortal, as his physcial forms have been destroyed thrice in a way the would have meant certain death to a mortal being, yet his spirit cannot truly be destroyed because, as the embodiment of darkness in Ninjago, his existance is necessary to maintain the balance between light and darkness.
  • In The Real Ghostbusters, virtually all ghosts and other paranormal entities are this, as ectoplasm can not be destroyed. As such, the protagonists trap them and place them in the Containment Unit to dispose of them. The cartoon once in a while featured a few ghosts and demons get their Complete Immortality revoked in various, often spectacular ways, often through Phlebotinum Breakdown (both accidental and deliberate), getting their faces stuck in the barrel of the latest prototype BFG, or getting eaten by something big and unpleasant.
    • In one episode of the cartoon, a Corrupt Corporate Executive stole the designs of the proton throwers, and built his own robot to bust ghosts. The second half of the episode then shows exactly what happens when you don't trap the ghosts one busts. They just come back angrier.
  • Samurai Jack: Aku has never aged since he was born, and is immune to most attacks. The only thing that can harm him is the power of the Gods, as three destroyed the Eldritch Abomination that spawned him, and Jack's sword was forged by them. In addition, the goddess from "Jack and the Gangsters" is powerful enough to defeat him, as are her elemental creatures.
  • Klarion the Witch Boy in Young Justice is chaos personified and thus cannot be killed by any possible means. Though if his anchor to the physical world is broken (in the form of his cat Teekl), he will be sent back to his home dimension.

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The Djinn

Being an ancient evil spirit, the Djinn cannot die.

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