Wow. That has to be, like, my clearest thread title ever. Naturally I can’t just leave it be, though. I’m looking for literary (not cinematic) examples of characters who have a singular weakness on their person. I specifically DON’T mean things like Kryptonite, because while that is Superman’s greatest weakness, it’s not actually PART of him. The access port on the Death Star would be better example, but, as I said above, I am hoping for examples from books, not movies or TV.
Thoughts?
The first thang that popped into my mind would be novels involving, The Spear of Destiny (alt.- Holy Lance, Spear of Longinus, etc.). Posess the spear, you control the world, but if you lose it…
The wiki link has some pretty good examples of fantasy novels that feature the Lance.
Well, for a book example, in the novelization of Star Wars: A New Hope, the Death Star’s weakness was a small exhaust port, just a few meters above the main port… 
In Lord of the Rings, the One Ring makes Sauron really freaking powerful, but just lop off his ring finger, and the guy goes poof. Doesn’t kill him, but it takes away his ability to actually directly affect anything.
EDIT: Oh, and from the Hobbit, Smaug almost literally had an Achilles’ Heel, in the form of the one unarmored spot under one of his arms, which lead to his spectacular undoing thanks to a hobbit, a bird, and some effective anti-aircraft archery (or, as we call it in the Air Force, Triple-A )
Except there was no aircraft involved. Anti-wyrm archery, maybe?
This was my first thought too; almost a literal Achilles’ heel in that it was literally the only penetratable spot on his body.
In Sten by Allen Cole & Chris Bunch, there’s a type of powered armor with a design flaw; it can be defeated by a primitive with a spear who gets close enough to thrust a spear through the waste port and into the soldier inside.
Obidiah Stane’s Iron Monger armor from the Iron Man comic was dependent on an outside computer to help the inexperienced Stane control the armor. When Iron Man blew up the computer Stane was screwed; he couldn’t fly in a straight line much less fight.
The Punisher killed a bunch of the High Evolutionary’s power armored flunkies by shooting them through the relatively weak visors of their helmets.
At one point the mostly-indestructable Ultron could be disabled by breaking those rod-things on the side of his head, as I recall.
The elves in Partchett’s Lords and Ladies are highly discomfited, even paralyzed, by the presence of iron.
And no, this isn’t like Kryptonite. This is an *integral * weakness.
Allow me to explain. Pratchett’s elves are highly sensitive to magnetic fields. In many ways, this sensitivity is their primary sense, more important than sight or hearing. It gives them perfect sense of direction, which means that they always know exactly where they are; distorting this sense with ferrous metals - especially magnetic ones - makes them feel lost, unbalanced, even blind. They hate the feeling, and fear it.
Because magnetism is such an integral part of their being, I posit that any interference with magnetism could be called an Achilles’ Heel.
That reminds me of Mercedes Lackey’s elves. Magic is a inherent part of them, even part of their body’s functions, down to the tissue level. Iron and ferrous metals in general distort the particular “frequency” of magic that is innate to elves; it warps and disrupts their magic, and if touching them will burn them by disrupting the magic that actually runs their body. Certain creatures that are wholly constructs of that form of magic will go “poof” if struck with iron.
The vampires of the sci-fi novel Blindsight are an offshoot of humanity, evolved in ancient times to prey upon us and superior in many ways. However, straight lines intersecting at right angles gives them an epileptic fit due to a quirk in their brain; like crosses or windows made of panes and so on. That didn’t matter when they evolved, but the rise of civilization doomed them.
Tom Deitz wrote a novel - I think it was Darkthunder’s Way - which had a giant snake monster with a jewel in it’s head. Very hard to kill - unless you hit the jewel, which disabled or killed it with even a fairly weak attack.
In Fantasy Lit and well, most literature, in general. Women are many an antagonist’s and protagnist’s achilles heel.
I recall a short fantasy story where a woman killed the evil wizard who had a spell that meant no man could kill him, and of course that meant a woman could. What made it funny is that as he lay dying the woman took the time to mock him for being an idiot, and sitting around thinking himself invulnerable when "your spell left you defenseless against half the human race ! "
The Paratwa of the Paratwa Trilogy use personal force fields that are nearly invulnerable front and back, but open to the sides.
IIRC, Lord of the Rings included Eowyn declaring that she was “No Man!” right before she smited the Witch King, who could be killed by no man (but could apparantly be maimed by a hobbit, who, IIRC, bought Eowyn a few seconds by slashing the Witch King’s Achilles Tendon, appropriately enough)
Also, a friend of mine, as a class project, made a student film called “John McGee’s MacBeth 2000” which ended with Lady MacDuff killing MacBeth via a Beretta 9mm to the back of the head (man, that rocked so much more than Shakespeare’s version).
Macbeth himself: “no man of woman born shall harm Macbeth”, just the product of Caeserian section.
Yes. A man is a human male, which Eowyn wasn’t; and a Man is a human, not a hobbit.
Ouch, most people get screwed because of one loophole in a prophecy. Witch King got screwed by TWO loopholes. Dayum.
If you want to go outside the Western tradition, the Indian hero Duryodhana was invulnerable everywhere except his 'nads :eek:
If you want to stay Greek, then Talos had a pretty literal Achilles Heel.
I recall a funny crossover scene someone came up with on another forum. From memory :
WITCH KING : “No man may hinder me !”
TERMINATOR : “I am not a man. I am a Cyberdyne Systems Series 800 Model 101 Terminator, a cybernetic organism. Vat grown tissue over a metal endoskeleton.”
WITCH KING : “?”
GONDORIAN SOLDIER : “Look ! That guy just ripped the Witch King’s heart out ! Now he’s ripping him to pieces !
.
.
.
Uhhh he IS on our side, right ?!”
I was always under the impression that he was simply blustering, and really anybody could kill him, given that they bested him in a contest of arms, which he assumed nobody could.
Does Voldemorte count, insofar as his weakness to Harry Potter was intrinsic to him after he tried to kill him? I guess, technically, other things COULD kill him, though.
What about powerful computer systems that can only be “killed” by turning them off or powering them down? I’m sure there’s a lot of examples of that (though it being late, I can’t think of any…)
It was a prophecy of Glorfindel, an elf lord. When the Witch King was defeated long ago, he warned his aliies not to chase him : “Do not pursue him! He will not return to these lands. Far off yet is his doom, and not by the hand of man will he fall.”
So, technically, he was vulernable to women, hobbits, elves, dwarves, treants, wizards, dragons, goblins, orcs, uruk-hai, balrgos, Tom Bombadil, the thing that lived in the lake, Shelob, and Bill the Pony.
Not really much of an immunity, when you come right down to it.
Not really, as I understand it. It wasn’t a spell of immunity, but a prophecy. Like prophecies tend to be it was worded only so it was obvious only in hindsight; "That’s what he meant by ‘no man !’ " He died because the circumstances were right; because he faced a woman on that day who had the opportunity to stab him in the face after he got stabbed in the back by a hobbit ( wielding a sword forged specifically to kill him in the book ). If some random woman attacked him at some random time, he’d have killed her; he probably killed any number of them over the years. He was destined, apparently, to die that day, that way.