If a superhuman was completely invulnerable (like Luke Cage or Superman) and they were shot with a handgun or rifle would the bullets bounce off like in a comic book or would they deform and fall?
It’s your hypothetical, so you’d get to make up the rules.
In the real world, if they were to bounce off the person as if the person was made of some type of really hard material. The bullet would deform. Not only because it’s so much softer than what it’s hitting, but also because they’re designed to deform.
Depends on the angle of the bullet. Also the composition of same.
What if the bullet was kryptonite?
I’m sure that has been addressed over the years. My personal opinion is that it would shatter on impact. It takes a bit of time for the kryptonite to work its way on Supes, so he’d still be invulnerable when the bullet impacted.
I think.
- Would need to know the reason for the invulnerability. Tough skin? Force field? Inertia dampening?
- Whether or not the bullet was Kryptonite would only matter if we were in the DC universe and the person being shot was actually a version of Superman that was weakened by that fictional element. Since this wasn’t posted in Café Society, I am making the assumption that the OP is wondering what would happen is this particular ficton.
I explicitly specified they were invulnerable like Luke Cage and Superman so that means they have tough skin.
If the superhero were absolutely rigid, the bullets would “splash” into smaller pieces that would scatter:
If the superhero were rather softer (but still tear-resistant), you’d end up with something similar to what you see when people wearing bullet-resistant vests get shot: the bullet gets substantially deformed by the extremely high decel, but basically stopped without penetrating.
That’s a fun chart, but there are a lot of mistakes on it. For instance, Wolverine, Daken, and X-23 do not have dermal armor/dense tissue. Wolverine has the adamantium skeleton, but he’s the only one. And Ms. Marvel does not have invunerability.
John Byrne, who updated and redefined Superman’s powers, says that Supes has a biological force field that extends out to his skin-tight uniform, but not out to his cape…which gets torn to shreds in fights quite often. Other writers after Byrne have gone along with this idea.
Has anyone asked why Superman has a cape, then?
The cape is still mighty tough, and is good for wrapping around people for protection for high-speed flights.
I always assumed it was to taunt those tempted to tug on it.
If they’ll spit in the wind, they’ll do anything.
And what’s the difference between “invulnerable”, “unbreakable”, “bulletproof” and “dermal armor/dense tissue”?
Why does any superhero have a cape? Who even wears capes outside of superheroes and turn-of-the-century Prussian generals?
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The above statements are only true if the correct writer is handling the story. It’s the comix, and nothing is true forever.
No capes!