One to Million to One

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

A person has just been hit by a laser beam, or a truck. The person doesn't fly off into space, though. Instead, he shatters into hundreds of... animals? Which then flock over in unison to a different spot? Then regroups into that person again, whole and unscathed?

Alternatively, the person may not be in imminent danger of being splattered into pieces involuntarily, and merely decide to scatter himself into many many tiny bits which then fly away elsewhere. And even then, the go-elsewhere part is also optional; the person may just scatter into dust lest a truck runs him over.

Most of the time, the person in question has a superpower, or may also be supernatural, or may be in fact The Worm That Walks.

Unlike in the case of Literally Shattered Lives, those employing this trope don't die from being shattered. See also Pulling Themselves Together, which is similar to the second half of this trope, and generally trauma-induced.

Examples of One to Million to One include:

Trauma-induced

Advertising

  • This happens with cars in an insurance commercial (Liberty Mutual?) The car would be rear ended, and fly into little pieces, before reforming a short ways away.

Anime and Manga

  • Kinnikuman: When Kinnikuman uses his Megaton Punch to shatter Akuma Shogun's body, it breaks into hundreds of razor-sharp pieces that fly though Kinnikuman's body before reforming.
  • In Inuyasha, Naraku and some of his incarnations can still function when torn into tiny scraps of flesh, particularly Mouryoumaru.

Film

  • Gabriel in The Prophecy series sometimes teleports this way, as when a shot from a gun turns him temporarily into a murder of crows.

Music

  • Madonna's music video Frozen has one scene where she seemingly falls over and shatters into crows which then fly away.

Tabletop Games

  • In 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons, the crystalline beings known as the Shardmind have an ability that lets them separate into individual pieces and reform a short distance away after being successfully attacked.

Video Games

  • In Bayonetta, by dodging an attack at the very last second, Bayonetta can shatter into bats upon getting hit, negating the attack and gaining increased amounts of Witch Time in the process. For Jeanne, this is the only way she can get any normally.
  • This is an infuriating ability of the "Golden Knight" enemies in Karnov.
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker has Jalhalla, boss of the Earth Temple. Killing the smaller parts is what actually harms it, as evidenced by its lifebar.
  • Boolossus, the third boss of Luigi's Mansion, is defeated by luring him into the horn of a nearby ice unicorn statue, causing him to pop into many smaller Boos, which you can then capture.
  • This is how the player character "dies"/or just before they die and regroups themselves in Cat Planet.

At-will

Anime and Manga

  • In the manga version of Guyver, Aptom converts his own body into Gaster's organic missiles to attack an enemy. After Aptom converts himself completely, the manga cuts to a distant rooftop, where it is revealed that while most of the missiles blew up, some of them flew away and recombined into a diminished Aptom.

Film

  • The 2010 Clash of the Titans has Hades teleport by having demon imps fuse into him (and he can de-fuse into said imps). He also has a "conventional" Villain Teleportation where he appears from what is essentially a shadowy black hole that has sucked up a platoon of Argosian soldiers.
  • The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The vampire Mina Harker can split up into a swarm of bats at will, travel some distance and reform into a human again.
  • Snow White and the Huntsman gives this ability to the Evil Queen, who can disperse into crows.
  • No small number of Dracula films give him the ability to transform into and back from a swarm of bats.

Literature

  • Lance-Constable Sally von Humpeding, the first vampire to joing the Ankh-Morpork City Watch in Thud!, turns into a flock of bats, much like the movie version of Mina. This is theoretically easier than turning into a single bat since you don't have Shapeshifter Baggage problems. What you do have are "keeping track of where they all are" problems.

Tabletop Games

  • Exalted has the spell Flight of Separation, which turns the caster into a flock of birds.

Video Games

  • A variation is the central ability of the Yellow Devil and its many, many successors throughout the Mega Man franchise.
  • Dracula from Castlevania occasionally teleports this way. Being the good ol' Drac, he becomes a mass of bats. Curiously, the ability was first seen in an NES-era boss fight with Alucard, who uses Drac's classic pattern from the other games.
    • Some games also give this ability to the Phantom Bat. Similarly, Super Castlevania IV gives this ability to the mummy boss, Akmodan II, who teleports as a stream of loose bandages.
  • Nevan from Devil May Cry teleports across her room (read: battle arena) by dissolving into bats.
  • The fire elemental boss from Cadash looks like a big demon standing still in a pit of fire, that shatters in a multitude of fireballs before reforming into another fire pit.
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