Inspired by the “Superhero who kills without remorse” thread.
Ever see one of those characters that has either no or very few explicitly stated superhuman abilities (often described as “no superpowers” in the official guides), and yet continually manages to pull of things that not even the greatest real-world athlete, mechanical genius, or scholar could ever dream of?
The Punisher is the most obvious example, particularly the Max version. There’s nothing in any of his backstories that suggests he’s anything other than a big, tough jarhead who’s really good with guns. Over his career he’s taken literally hundreds of punches, kicks, stomps, burns, knife wounds, and bullet wounds, and none of it slowed him down in the slightest. In Bullseye (the second book), a doctor reads a laundry list of ailments, and in Frank (the third), he himself claims to be “old and broken”, and he keeps on racking up impressive bodycount right up to the final battle where he faces with the Kingpin and an entire squad of gunmen and kills them all. The coroner, when asked about cause of death, says that he’s up to eight pages of injuries and still counting…two would be plenty sufficient for Mick Foley, let alone an aging ex-military. Besides his astounding toughness, he also has an uncanny knack for always finding a convenient friend, ally, bleeding heart, or starry-eyed fool whenever he needs one. He’s been close to death many times and always managed to pull one out of his hindquarters just because he knew the right people. (Oh, Bullseye also hints that he may have some inferior version of a Spider Sense.)
Bullseye, definitely. The Marvel bio states that he always hits his target. That’s good. Better is that he can move his hands can move at near-supersonic speed and are just about indestructible. Not only can he throw things like coins and batons hard enough to kill, he has incredibly powerful punches; he’s held his own against The Punisher for crying out loud. He’s shown an incredible intuition for predicting when someone’s about to attack him (useful for avoiding/deflecting bullets, slugging a hitman sneaking up on him, or surviving an a full-blown ambush). He’s never, ever gotten a concussion, and…this is the weird one…no matter how many teeth he loses, he always shows up in the scene with a full set. It’s like a highly specialized low-level healing factor. Oh, and as Bullseye shown, he can also swallow a gun and retrieve it undamaged when it…comes back out, and he can throw up at will…not very useful-sounding abilities, but trust me, he finds a way.
Indiana Jones not only has incredibly tough flesh, his bones are just about indestructible…hands take no damage no matter how hard he punches someone, he takes a bullet at close range in the arm and the bone isn’t even nicked, and while escaping from the Temple of Doom, an arrow hits him and bounces off. His stamina is essentially limitless. On the rare occasions something is able to make him bleed, the blood vessel closes on its own, sometimes in a matter of seconds. Deadly poisons take a long, long, long time to have any effect on him whatsoever. Magical substances like the blood of Kali affect him only temporarily; he can just shake them off. On the mental side, he’s an astoundingly fast learner, able to pick up things at just a glance. How does he know, for example, that he needs to avoid looking into the ark or die? Or that “penitent” means “hit the deck, then roll out of the way before those other saws get you”? He just does.
Shredder, whatever the incarnation (except maybe the very first), has always had one power…the ability to fall any distance and not die. Given that falling is actually the biggest hazard in his line of work, that’s actually pretty useful.
