Powers
[Favorite Trope] Time Abyss: When the immortal character is truly, unfathomably ancient beyond our ability to comprehend, and has actually lived through that time. I'm not talking a few hundred years. 5k, absolute minimum. A million or more to really count.
This is Jones, from Gunnerkrieg Court. She's one of the purest examples of this.
doesn't eat, sleep, or breathe
can't be injured or broken
has apparently never physically changed
remembers every moment of her existence
once got buried in magma and later woke up at the bottom of the ocean
wandered around with prehistoric humans
was around to watch Rome burn
And it goes from there. Originally, the images were in reverse order (most recent day to early creation) to showcase her recollections, but I put them in the order I did so it'd be more understandable to those who haven't read the comic.
Holy shit. I haven't thought about Gunnerkrigg court in ages. Wow the character design changed drastically through the years. People started off looking almost like they belonged in Hey Arnold.
Its still going. Ive been reading it since my high-school days (graduated 2010). It feels like it's nearing the end. I highly recommend it, the art was iffy at first but improves greatly over time, and the story has always been great.
Reminds me of Zebra Girl, another webcomic that was going for a really long time (since the 90s I think) and had a really uncertain art style and plot at first but then rapidly developed a super deep story and pretty art. It finished recently and has a few characters that fits this trope. One of the people the MC meets when she's banished by her friends is revealed to be Eve herself who's spent as long wandering dimensions helping humanity as humanity has existed.
Girl Genius is interesting because it started as a print comic in 2000-2001, then transitioned to a free-to-read webcomic in 2005.
It also has an example of a character who passes the 5k minimum OP set. Queen Albia is at least 7,000 years old (that is, if the English channel in their world is as old as it is in ours).
Schlock Mercenary is a particularly notable case of art evolution, what with the OG art being really, genuinely bad. But it was entertaining enough that people read it anyway, and he kept at it, and it turns out when you do something every day for decades you get pretty damn good at it.
Don’t do this to me. It’s Sunday afternoon and I have stuff to do. If I start something like this now I know I’ll be sucked in and won’t get anything done.
The Worker of Secrets says that he had already lived ten thousand lives when Raidriar was a child. But with the context that Raidriar is ten thousand years old, this implies the Worker may be over 100 million years old.
The Face of Bo from Doctor Who is like a billion years old. He is Captain Jack Harkness, a friend of the Doctor and Rose, who Rose brought back to life with Time Lord energy she temporarly had, but unknowingly made him immortal.
Little short lived for the trope isn't he? Thought he was only around 2000 after the Last Centurion stuff. Then we see his grave beside Amy's after the weeping angel got them.
"FOR THE SAKE OF PRISONERS AND THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS" feels like one of those sentences that manages to encompass the whole of the meaning of experienced existence into one sentence, and i cannot for the life of me help but wonder if Sir Pratchett's soul was struck by actual divine inspiration when committing those words unto history.
His presence being so vast that his YES takes up an entire page of Reaper Man along with Death sharpening a scythe so much that it cuts the prose talking about it are some of the cleverest uses of the medium I've ever seen. Pratchett was a master of the craft.
"Death sharpening a scythe so much that it cuts the prose talking about it"
It would have been a nice touch to sharpen the edges of the paper of that page as much as physically possible....but perhaps that'd be taking it too far.
I, for one, would have loved to get a paper cut while reading about how sharp death was making his scythe.
While the rest of the Necron race slept through the eons, the Silent King lived through the 60 million years the hard way, spending that time traveling and exploring galaxies beyond the Millyway.
The Chaos Gods (Not including Slaanesh) were born during the War in Heaven, as far as we can confirm they do not sleep, and while time is a suggestion in the Warp, they’ve been around longer than the end of the War in Heaven.
The Emperor spent over a million years in the Warp according to a Custodes during the Horus Heresy.
The C’Tan are also an immortal group from the War in Heaven who would have been active this entire time, what few shards of them that managed to escaped containment that is.
Aren't the beings of Chaos paracausal? So Slaanesh may have been "born" after the War in Heaven, but she's always existed prior to the Fall of the Eldar empire.
They have always existed in the warp, as time is more of a suggestion in that realm, but afaik when it comes to real space their impact on the materium only begins with the fall of the eldar dominion and the “birth”, that being the eye of terror and broader warp storms that led to the age of strife for humanity
Slanesh was “born” during the fall of the Eldar several million years after the war in heaven ended
But Yeah I think old lore had the rest of them have birthdates too I think Khorne came to be because of the war in Heaven while Tzeench was born during the Renaissance
My interpretation of it based on age of Sigmar is that since the Chaos Gods are multiversal they get “born” when a universe reachers a certain amount of emotions related to the chaos God even tho they existed before out of that universe
If i remenber correctly, one of the first persons cronologically on the setting to ear the title "And then there was this asshole that just HAD to fuck everything up for everyone."
Anghammarad, the beautifully crafted, delicate looking, but almost indestructible golem from Terry Pratchett's Discworld was talking about his previous employment as a messenger for several (now lost to time) ancient civilizations as the people around him slowly realizes he was almost 19 thousand years old.
“Many Kings,” said Anghammarad. “Many Empires. Many Gods. Many Gods. All Gone. All Things Go.”
The story lingers on a couple occasions on how his tremendous age effected the views of people around him.
You missed out the best part. They believe that time is a circle and that if you wait long enough, you'll end up back when you were. He still has an undelivered letter from a delivery that got interrupted by volcano. He planned to wait out the whole of time so that he could deliver it.
Absolutely, yeah. The reactions to the age of the golems stood out to me, though. Pump 19's "it was 240 years at the bottom of a hole." And the nightmare it gave Moist Von Lipwig was a good example, but I felt like Anghammarad felt proper ancient.
IIRC, He's the one who was shattered in the fire, and when Death showed up, decided to just sit at the entrance to the afterlife, since he was finally free, and didn't have to do anything, wasn't he?
Leave the horny Lovecraft dating sim to create a villain with one of the most metal goals I've ever seen.
Buck was granted immortality, and he can't even be killed when the Old Ones dreaming up reality wake up. Instead, he's just left floating in limbo until they fall asleep again. In order to stop his suffering, he goes from Elder God to Elder God, torturing them in a hope that they will awake screaming. Should that happen, Buck says that their screams will awake the Elder Gods² who are dreaming up the first set of Old Ones, finally killing him and everyone else. This plan essentially has a 1-in-a-million chance of actually working, but there's nothing to stop him from repeating the process a million times.
Damn, I forgot that was Buck's deal. He's the antagonist in Date to Die For, correct?
I also need to pick up Crush Landing at some point. Hard to tell from just the trailer, but it looks like they have tried to change up the gameplay this time around.
After the events of the main story take place the main character Phos is left alone on the earth, So for (implied) billions of years he wastes away until new life evolves (cute little pebbles guys) who keep him company until the sun eventually super novas, and he is able to finally rest.
Kongo Sensei from the same manga also works for this trope. While the gems belive that he is one of them, he's actually a machine that was created by the last of humanity as it was being destroyed by repeated meteor strikes to pray for them when they were all dead so they could achieve nothingness. After humanities destruction he too wandered the earth for (implied) billions of years until new lifeforms evolved, where he became a father figure to them until the events of the main story.
When the universe ends, there is always a single survivor, who becomes the arbiter of the dead when the next universe forms. Not only has Pharasma existed since the beginning of the universe, she survived the end of the previous one. She is arguably the most powerful entity in the cosmos, but her role is a neutral judge of dead souls.
The universe was made by two gods having a disagreement over how creation should be handled. After a specific point in time, they un-make it and make it again as part of their intended means to settle the dispute.
Andy is one of a group of people called negators. These people have the ability to cancel out one fundamental law of the universe. As the wielder of the negator power “undead”, andy just flat-out cannot die, and any injury that would be lethal to anyone else will instantly regenerate.
Even the gods destroying the universe can’t put him down, so he’s still kicking when the next one begins, and he has to wait for humanity to re-evolve for him to interact with people again.
Have you seen that scene in Futurama, where they take the time machine and keep moving forward with each new universe being the same as the one they're originally from? He just does that by himself
Lorien the first one from Babylon 5. He's the very first being in our galaxy that gained sentience, and one of the very few that are naturally immortal. He mostly just stands around observing the younger races. He knows his time is past, so he patiently waits for them to decide their own fates. Not above giving a nudge when necessary though.
J. Michael Straczynski, the nearly sole author and show runner of the series wrote 6.000 pages of script for the series and as a famous SciFi author, he dealt with the immortality theme a couple of times.
Lorien says that his species was born immortal but after a time period the universe decided that getting old and dying should be the norm. But a lot of other species were able to solve the mystery around immortality and most time it implicated that you have to murder a lot of other beings (Episode 9 Deathwalker) and in the end you will be scared, because everything you once knew will transform and eventually die while you will always be the same.
Still the best SciFi show thanks to the tremendous work of JMS.
Was born a Neanderthal. Transformed and made immortal by a strange meteorite that landed on earth. He was also either behind of WAS just about every famous warlord in history
https://giphy.com/gifs/mPOGx4hJtOWSA
The minions from Despicable me. They appeared when life on earth consisted of single celled organisms and developed alongside complex life forms. However, there is no evidence of them dying or breeding, only a long continuous existence
He is old, so very old, maybe older than God, at this point neither of them remembers. To him a thing like you is like a bacteria trying to talk to you and getting snarky. One tiny planet, in one tiny system, in a galaxy barely out of its diapers. He is old, and he invites you to imagine how insignificant he finds you.
Same. This was a low point in the show for me. Death should not have been able to die. In a show where things that should be immortal die all the time, death should have been the one thing that truly was unkillable. The scene would have been so much cooler the way you described.
I even like to imagine death wouldn’t have cared about the attempt at all too. To a being that can’t die there’s no such thing as “attempted murder”.
On the other hand, the pattern of the show is "if it's an extra-normal thing, it's A: basically just a dude, and B: a douchebag" so in that regard even Death being able to die is on brand.
Because he needed help getting rid of the leash on his neck as the little brat of Lucifer was having a tantrum against his father God and he was stuck in between.
To me season 5 should’ve been the last season. That 1- 5 was pretty solid, but most of all the show was best when it focused on its monster of the week, American Fantasy thing really. Give us neat lore on a monster, have the brothers do their research and then take it down.
Oryx the Great Navigator and his sisters Xivu Arath, the god of war, and Savathun, the witch queen (and other disciples of the witness by proxy, especially Rhulk).
They have been waging wars across the universe for a literal billion years, not too bad for a species that is considered short-lived (or, they were before the whole worm thing anyway) and to think it all started with 3 young sisters running away from home.
Far, far below the deepest delving of the Dwarves, the world is gnawed by nameless things. Even Sauron knows them not. They are older than he. Now I have walked there, but I will bring no report to darken the light of day.
Tatsuki Fujimoto's Magnum Opus, Fire Punch, features an immortal being that was born in a post-apocalyptic Earth that is on an Ice Age where the concept of movies and theater is an urban legend.
Agni, lived through it all, from his village being incinerated by a fire user, to him getting burned for almost his entire life because the fire does not run out. When Agni, found the root of Ice Age is also a human, he ended it all along with a girl that looks a lot like his sister. The girl sacrificed herself to become the Tree in order to end the Ice Age and bring back Earth's summer while Agni will stay in Earth to live.
The girl then proceeded to be the Tree in space, above Earth. Millenia of millenia of millenia later, long after the Earth lived its planet life and exploded. Millenia of millenia and millenia of millenia later, near the end of the universe, the girl, found Agni floating in space. Both long forgot who they are, what their purpose is, held hands until the universe's death.
I cannot believe I had to scroll all the way to the bottom to find this. Life changingly good I read it during jury duty selection and they dismissed me because I'd been obviously crying
Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy trilogy: Marvin the paranoid android lives through the entire life of the universe on multiple occasions across the six books
I had to scroll for this one. Marvin's a fun example because he isn't some Eldritch demigod entity, he's just an unlucky robot who keeps getting caught up in time travel shenanigans.
Douglas Adams was a genuine genius with how he wrote Marvin.
Basically just took your typical "unlucky guy who always gets screwed over" trope and tacked on "robot with a prototype implant that allows him to feel solely depression and boredom."
So pretty much any time he ends up in a shitty situation, it's just made 1000x times funnier by the fact that my guy is literally programmed only to suffer
Indeed, the true horror of Marvin's existence is that no task he could be given would occupy even the tiniest fraction of his vast intellect. Marvin claims he is 50,000 times more intelligent than a human (or 30 billion times more intelligent than a live mattress), though this is, if anything, an underestimation. When kidnapped by the bellicose Krikkit robots and tied to the interfaces of their intelligent war computer, Marvin simultaneously manages to plan the entire planet's military strategy, solve "all of the major mathematical, physical, chemical, biological, sociological, philosophical, etymological, meteorological and psychological problems of the Universe, except his own, three times over", and compose several lullabies.
The zombie Black Bob from Stickleback, after getting his memories back, reveals that he was once a king on Pangaea. Even with all he's seen and knows to exist, Stickleback is still shocked since that defies literally everything science knows about humanity and how we evolved.
He wouldn't really outlive it. Galactus will die when the current universe ends, but a native of the current universe will be the Devourer in the next one.
So yeah, Galactus had predecessors and will have a successor. One possible successor is Franklin Richards.
Bill is interesting because he started in his original universe as a seemingly normal child, accidentally destroyed it, then escaped into the Nightmare Realm for long enough for that dimension to begin to naturally fall apart, and then started looking at our universe and fought Time Baby, accidentally killing the dinosaurs in the process, and then had to wait for humans to evolve and eventually reach the modern day. The Book of Bill really expanded just how long he's lived.
Leader of the Necrons during the War in Heaven roughly 60 million years before the time of the current setting. Once the war was won, he ordered all Necrons into the Great Sleep to wait out the rise and fall of other species so his people could retake the galaxy in peace since their strength was heavily diminished after the war. However, he stayed awake, and took his ship out beyond the edge of the galaxy in self-imposed exile since he felt guilty for his people being turned into mostly soulless robots, and watched as life in the galaxy moved on without him. Though he was forced to come back with the arrival of the Tyranids since he would have no hope of undoing the process that turned his people into robots if they ate of all organic life in the galaxy.
Speaking of Tyranids, the Swarmlord is as ancient as the Tyranids are, being called to lead the feast when prey proves particularly problematic. Every time the Swarmlord shows up, it is always the same Tyrant.
He is beyond time, age does not mean anything to him, he existed as soon as the spirits that made time existed, for his role is to eat each kalpa, each world when its time has come, so a new one can take its place
And dragons are basically soul eating biological time machines
Shame he died to a tomato being telekinetically thrown at him by a pantsless khajiit, blasted out of his mind on every potion ever but such is the nature of things
Emanon from Wandering Emanon remembers everything since she and life on Earth first emerged billions of years ago as a microbe to the present day as a human woman, transferring her immortal memory into a new body whenever she reproduces as a means of survival.
The God Emperor Of Mankind was born before the first permanent settlements were made. For about 40 thousand years he wandered Earth and then decided to unite humanity. He was mortally wounded and has been on life support for 10 thousand years now.
All the super serious immortal edgelords in a bar…and Tom Bombadil just busts in with his Beauty on his arm, downs a few shots, sings a jolly tune and dances out as everyone broods in the dark.
The Endless were there when it all started, when the great forces of the universe came together to decide the rules of creation, most of them will be there once the last speck of dust fades away to nothingness, just so their sister can close the book on this existence.
One of my favorite highlights of how old and seemingly powerful the endless are....they go to a party, many gods are there, but there's also some personified stars there. Despair goes and starts chatting one of the stars up about this fantasy they have, of a solar system where all the planets in it die, leaving one sole survivor, to leave that solar system and spread their message of despair (and hope) across the galaxy...the star thinks its a lovely idea and will definitely do that.
That star is the sun that Krypton, the home planet of Superman is from. Literally his entire origin story was a drunken conversation for just one of the endless.
It's perfect for Despair to do this too as each of the endless represents not just their title, but it's opposite. So of course, a part of Despair wants their to be this symbol of hope in the universe. What good is despair if you have no hope to lose? What is hope without despair?
And then Morpheus finds our Sun, which was basically a runt on account of being so young compared to his peers, tells him that he sees his dreams, describing the age of heroes that would come to one of its planets, and says they will come true.
Dude just went and made the rest of superheroes because he felt like showing off because he got cucked and was feeling insecure lmao.
She's a slob by design. Literally incapable of coming up with an original thought. That part where she opens her eyes to stare at the ancient lobster? According to the writer it's the first time she opened her eyes. at all. It didn't occur to her to do that for all those eons.
Jones is extra interesting. As far as she knows she just kind of showed up. Life hadn't even been a thing yet but she crawled out of the primordial Earth anyway. She's just kind of there. She's also not just invincible but ends up being super strong because of it. She can crumble concrete with a touch and bend steel as she can't break. She's an immovable object so things crumble or bend to get out of her way when she applies force to them. She genuinely has no idea what the hell she is but hangs around humans because she looks like us.
It's also very important to note that she is, in fact, not a robot.
Technically this can apply to any Cybertronian, since they live a LOT longer than humans (Bumblebee is considered a "young" Transformer, and he's at least several million years old). However, Alpha Trion in particular really encapsulates this trope. He's one of the Thirteen Primes, who are basically the very first transformers ever created by the Transformer God Primus, which makes him several billion years old. He's so old that he's watched Cybertronian civilization rise and fall multiple times, and he's usually portrayed as a mentor/father figure to Optimus Prime, who himself is so old that he's been leading the Autobots for millions of years.
My first thought. To elaborate (although you should just watch it if you haven't seen it) it's about a college professor who has a group of colleagues and students over to his house for a going-away party, and reveals to them that he is thousands of years old and was born in the paleolithic period, and moves every 10 years to avoid people suspecting anything about his true nature. The movie almost entirely takes place in one living room, but has a surprising amount of "action", in the sense of the story going places and things actively happening, not in the gunfights and fisticuffs sense.
Serie from Frieren, the main character is over 1000 years old. Serie is old enough to have met the goddess from when the world was created (or might even be the goddess, probably not but maybe). Its unknown how old she is.
Tiamat from fate grand order is theorized to be the first lifeform to ever grace the planet, but her actual at minimum age is that she was mentioned to be around during the Jurassic period, around 200 million years ago.
She's one of just a few dozen creatures we have no idea what the ages of these things are. For example, Typhon is mentioned to be a rival star ship that survived the end of the previous universe alongside the olympians, meaning he could possibly be older then the universe
Melusine is a fragment of Albion, who was mentioned to be as old as the planet
There's a random ass elephant that we know of that is at LEAST older then the gods that somehow survived to the modern era, which can be anywhere form 15000 to several million years of age
Just to make sure I've got this right, she's currently in a romantic relationship with a guy that she raised at some kind of boarding school since he was elementary-school age? Am I missing something?
ETA: This isn't an "age-gap" thing, it's a grooming thing. She's super old, sure, as long as everyone's an adult generally IDGAF. But when it's sbd you've raised from a child that's weird
I know this is about the same as saying "slavery was actually okay in the eyes of the colonists" but in all fairness someone who's lived THAT long would see hundreds of thousands of morality systems go in and out of the public eye. By all means her having a moral compass at all is astounding
If you know her character honestly it's hard to say which of them is taking advantage of the other.
She isn't human. She really is not human. You have to read it yourself to understand just how uncanny she really is. She was told to watch over and be there for him. So she will do that until he is dust.
Dream and Death of the Endless (Neil Gaiman’s Sandman) (Yeah, that POS sadly wrote good immortal characters and stories)
Both have lived since the beginnings of the concepts they are personifications of and have developed interesting relationships with humanity, seeing the best and worst of humanity and been through tragedies that deeply effected them, even if they don’t want to admit it
I like how Death is so very welcoming in her personality. Also kinda sad that she will be the last one to effectively die when the universe ends
"When the last living thing dies, my job will be finished. I'll put the chairs on the tables, turn out the lights and lock the universe behind me when I leave."
Death used to be a huge bitch, until a mortal convinced her to incarnate a piece of herself as a regular human and try experiencing life from the other side. Once that piece reunited with the rest of her, it shook her to her core, and led her to reshape her personality until she was the sort of person her human incarnation would have wanted to meet when she died.
Their elder brother Destiny is even older, having come into being just before the creation of anything.
Cain, Abel and Eve are likewise all super old, Cain noting that they didn't look remotely human when the story involving them happened, insinuating they were the first ever mortal beings.
Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged in hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, who uses his immortality to insult every living being in the universe, in alphabetical order.
The Crawlers and the Crawl, DCC. Art is from Levi Cleeman.
Earth is 4000k years in a backlog of worlds to be crushed and mined out. Life was seeded hundreds of millions of years before that, at least. Those living in core systems are immortal and the older Crawlers and other characters are potentially millions of years old. Those serving pretty "reasonable" contracts have been at it for millenia trying to earn their freedom.
Former crawlers like Tipid are likely tens of thousands of years old, maybe far older, and they are far from the most well-off people.
We're not precisely sure how old Hoid is. What we know is that he had already been around for a while when he and a group of other people decided to kill god 10,000+ years ago.
Since then, he has bounced around helpling where he can, pursuing a goal no one quite knows.
He also has to use magical means to store his memories and keep his sanity.
Ajimu Najimi - Medaka Box
A 3.4 trillion year old being who orchestrated the entire events of the series in order to find an impossibility in her life because she is able to do anything and everything.
Maharet in Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles. every single other ancient vampire has either died, turned to "sleeping stone," or at least "gone to ground" (aka long-ass naptimes) for a few centuries of their lives. Maharet, however, has lived every day of her approx. 6000 years, and ensured her human descendants continued and flourished into an enormous family over the entire world.
(photo is the incomparable Lena Olin in the horrible Queen of the Damned movie)
In the movie there are a group of immortals that fight for the prize(a wish) in duels. Our protagonist Connor McLeod a Sottish highlander lives through different time periods up to the present. The movie demonstrate a sad reality of being immortal. Also, the movie has a kick ass soundtrack by Queen.
It really is, I’m sorry you were robbed of that. Originally, with 3 pages a week, we weren't sure how far back it would go. And the joke at the end of cutting to Annie's astonished face was such a nice touch.
"I walked away from the last great time war, I marked the passing of the time lords, I saw the birth of the universe and I watched as time ran out, moment by moment until nothing remained. No time, No space, Just me. I've walked in universes where the laws of physics were devised by the mind of a mad man. I saw universes freeze and creations burned. I have seen things you wouldn't believe, I have lost things you wouldn't understand. And I know things, secrets that must never be told, knowledge that must never be spoken. Knowledge that will make parasite gods blaze." - The 11th Doctor to Akhaten.
The Doctor was about 1300 years old when he said that, but since then, he was stuck in a 4 billion year time loop of which he remembers every single loop. It was also revealed he had an unknowably long life before becoming The Doctor
And they're still young. The Doctor could outlive the universe several times over and that's after considering that each instance of the Universe will last a googol years
Hell, that 1300 years I said the 11th Doctor was, is his guess. He mentions he's so old he lost track by that point
Not even other members of his species could match his age or wisdom
Abaddon the demon from Haunted Hotel, possesses the body of a small child from he 1700s until current day and has also been to the beginning of time and then lived through all of creation several dozen times
I remember an SCP where its a simulation that you can create planets. The foundation figured you can also enter them, one day some error was made and they sent a team to investigate, they soon find a man there who then casualy tells he's the one who has to manually make these planets and has been doing so for quadrillions of years.
This is Andy, from Undead Unluck. He was born 100 iterations of the Earth ago. He was one of the first two humans to exist. In an arc where his memories are manifested as a manga you can enter, the book goes outside the atmosphere.
Technical example: Time God Jessica (Rick and Morty)
Jessica is trapped in a Narnia-like dimension for a few millennia. The inhabitants kept her frozen in place as bait to lure Morty back. Being conscious and unable to shut her eyes, she personally experienced civilisations rise and fall in real time, to the point where her mind evolved beyond trivial teenage desires like relationships.
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u/LeftonRhed Sep 13 '26
Holy shit. I haven't thought about Gunnerkrigg court in ages. Wow the character design changed drastically through the years. People started off looking almost like they belonged in Hey Arnold.