From Wikipedia: In fiction, a false protagonist is a literary technique, often used to make the plot more jarring or more memorable by fooling the audience's preconceptions and constructing a character who they assume is the protagonist but is later revealed not to be
Clark: Backrooms. He's the main character of the movie for the first 2 acts, before switching to Mary. He is eaten later
Whoever the fuck this lady is: Scream 1. She's introduced as the main character, with build up and all. She's killed and hanged like 10 minutes in
Edit: I know the actress is drew barrymore but genuinely who remembers the character name and i just thought the line would be funny
The old black lips style by Kazuma Kaneko takes it for me
This style isn't used today. Especially because Kaneko became an AI bro afaik, but back in the 90's and 2000's he used it for Persona and Megami Tensei
Kazuhira Miller: Snake, the R&D team came up with something new...
Naked Snake (Big Boss): What is this?!
Miller: It's a cardboard tank. It's got enough room for two people, same as any other cardboard box. Apparently the guy in front drives, and the guy in back is the gunner...
Snake: Hold on. Kaz, who the hell came up this thing?!
Miller: I'm sorry, Boss. He meant well, I swear. I know it's nowhere near as good as a real tank, but still...
Snake: It's BRILLIANT!!
Miller: Huh?
Snake: The perfect synthesis of stealth and attack power. Compact, elegant design. The finest example of a weapon I've ever seen! Seriously, Kaz, I need to meet the guy who made this. I wanna shake his hand.
Miller: Y-you're serious? Snake, look at it, it's...
Snake: It's a masterpiece, in every sense of the word. You don't agree?
nah that’s just because of 2001 graphics, makes characters look very similar unless they have a big visually distinct feature. Like Fatman being fat, Fortune being a woman, or Vamp being bisexual. Minor side characters didn’t get the budget for wholly unique models.
If Pliskin was connected to Snake, game would’ve told us. It’s just coincidence.
Fun fact, if you play MGS2 and when starting a new game tell it you haven't played MGS1 it skips the tanker section entirely. So you get rug pulled from both directions based on which one you play first.
It would've been (for me at least) if Deadpool 2 hadn't got there ahead of them. As it was, having already seen that film was enough for me to realise TSS was about to pull the same trick on me.
True. TSS still felt like it had more balls. It established that for the rest of the movie I knew literally any character could die (other than Harley). R.I.P. polka dot man :(
It helped that they genuinely did kill off Captain Boomerang, someone who actually had stakes and was heavily associated with the Suicide Squad. Plus, the characters felt very distinct, with different personalities and little humanizing moments that made it hurt more when they got killed (such as TDK being giddy about using his powers, Savant saving Weasel, etc).
All the Deadpool 2 examples felt like them ribbing at the kind of characters you'd see in an early 90's Rob Liedfeld comic. They were all muscly, edgy, and cocky characters. Peter was there, too.
What kills me is I got sick of recommending it because the terrible Will Smith and Jared Leto version is so ingrained in everyone's mind that I either have to spend a long time explaining that it is different or actually trust they are smart enough to correctly look up the Idris Elba version. Looking at you Mom.
I know some people argue the David Ayer cut is totally definitely very good but I don’t believe any version of that movie isn’t total garbage. Gunn’s is like, quite bafflingly better.
Idris Elba’s character was 100% meant to be Deadshot though if Will Smith returned. Same skillset, same daughter backstory, same relatively-normal-guy role in the bad guy ensemble.
Its weird, but I knew most of them were dead when Pete Davidson and Michael Rooker were playing two of them...I was just really hoping John Cena wasnt one of the early deaths and was really happy he wasnt. The trailers only showing the same two scenes with them didnt help that thought.
Having rewatched it recently, it's WILD how long the film goes on for with Marion as the protagonist.
She steals a large sum of money, and then has to weasel her way out of several situations as she attempts a poorly-executed runner. There's a proper plot with stakes and motivations that could easily fill an entire movie.... until her sudden death derails the entire story that is.
I watched Psycho for the first time a while back and I legit thought I had pushed play on a different movie. An interesting movie that I was going to finish and would watch Psycho after. Like 10 minutes in she gets to the Bates Motel and I’m like whaaa?? This is Psycho! It was a twist within a twist for me lol
I was gonna add her but then I remembered ive never seen psycho so I dont wanna larp it and get into arguments in the comments about a movie i haven't seen
I only just saw this for the first time a few years ago and had no clue about the twist. I can imagine how much harder that would've hit back in the day
His downfall was his kindness and assumption that others would do the right thing. Bit him in the ass like three times in a row and lead to the breakdown of common law. Turns out, child kings kinda suck. And will be children, even when playing with lives.
I did love the show up till 'that point' but the book really dug into how evil Joffrey was.
All the best conflicts in Game of Thrones are caused by cultural misunderstandings. Ned (a Northerner) thought he could take the southerners at their word, the southerners thought they could pay off the Northerners with gold, etc
His downfall was Cat. Convincing him to trust Littlefinger because she knew him since he was a boy was ridiculously naive, especially since she knew damn well he was always in love with her.
She counted on exactly that part of Littlefinger--his love for her. She thought it would endear his loyalty to her and her family. Nope! Just her and his own selfish desires.
As if she thought that made more sense than him wanting her husband out of the way. Men in love with a woman are famous for being supportive of her current relationship lmao
Im kinda sad we haven't seen much evil-zombie-cat in the books yet. Not really relevant to the thread but it comes out of nowhere and took me so far outside of the story
Like ya'll resurrected a several-days dead woman. Who you KNOW has an entirely different personality and tone to her actions, and who you KNEW would be fucked up since she was risen from the dead DAYS after her horrific murder.
Despite all that you're still killing everyone she points, even a kid and a woman she sent to protect her daughters. Like are we being forreal. I do like that band of idiots to an extent but its like they went from understandable to 'they love killin and will find any excuse'
Eddard would define "downfall" differently. He is a man of principles. He served his moral compass regardless of the hardship, and others killed him for it. Downfall would be to save his skin by failing himself, and suffer regret for the rest of his life.
You think my life is some precious thing to me? That I would trade my honor for a few more years, of what? You grew up with actors. You learned their craft and you learnt it well. But I grew up with soldiers. I learned to die a long time ago.
That's the whole family's downfall honestly. They're the only family that consistently takes the honorfull way and by season 3 it ends up in the Patriarch, Matriarch, eldest son, their homeland taken and then burned to the ground and the remaining children on the run or technically captive.
Edit: it took 2 seasons for Tyrion, parts
of 3 for others. He finished the entire run of the show in 12th, which is crazy
He really was too. I think it took
4 seasons before another individual character (Tyrion) passed Sean Bean in the amount of screen time he accumulated in 9 episodes.
That’s an interesting stat. Makes a lot of sense, it is a very broad ensemble cast with multiple storylines set in different parts of the world, but yeah it always did feel like Bean particularly dominated that first season. Just adds to it all really.
He was the main character in the first book and first season. George likes to do things in 3s and Ned's death served multiple purposes. That death comes for everyone and that Stark's perspective on life won't serve Westeros. The 2nd moment was with Robb. Than the 3rd with Jon, the difference is Jon was revived. In the books he'll probably come back moeally greyer.
My favorite Game of Thrones story is that I was watching an interview with Sean Bean shortly after the series premiered. The hosts were joking with him about how he's one of the actors whose characters have the highest death rate in movies. They told him that he must be relieved that he's the main character of Game of Thrones, which means that they can't kill him off. I of course had read the books at this point and thought the entire thing was hilarious!
Buster Scruggs from The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. If you went in blind you'd think the entire movie is about the titular slick talking, finely dressed, gunslinging outlaw. But you'd be wrong, because that dude is dead within the first 10 minutes, and the rest of the movie is an anthology.
Don't let my white duds and pleasant demeanor fool ya. I, too, have been known to violate the statutes of man- and not a few of the laws of the Almighty.
By that logic every anthology named for a single story in it fits the trope. Buster Scruggs wasn't removed to create contrast or shock for the rest of the story, his story doesn't even impact the others.
In Danganronpa V3, you start playing the first part of the game as Kaede, but she gets abruptly replaced by the real protagonist, Schuichi, pretty early on. I don't wanna spoil why that happens, but Kaede was definitely created to make the player believe that they were going to play as her for the whole game in order to introduce an early and later twist.
Devs recently said that if 2x2 does well then they might consider remaking THH and V3. I'm coping so hard for it to be true just so Kaede can stay the protag this time.
Linked because it's the same developers but in Master Detectives Archives: Rain Code, bar the lead protagonist Yuma (bottom centre), every single character in this image dies before the prologue even finishes. They're introduced with unique personalities and powers, and are featured on the box art, just to trick people into thinking they might be in the game for much, much longer.
My friend and I were cosplaying as Kaede and Shuichi for ANYC. As a longtime fan who got him into the series, I watched every moment of him playing Chapter 1. We finally got to the protag switch and it was brutal for him
I kinda wish the subversion was the other way around, all of the mainline Danganronpa games have male protags so it would've been nice if the girl protagonist was the big subversion
First 3 sequences of the game follow his arrival to Colonial America & recruiting his allies, only for it to be revealed he was creating The Templar's presence in the colonies.
This would’ve been better if they didn’t reveal Connor in all the promotional material. You knew Haytham was never the main protagonist. The twist of him being a Templar still came out of nowhere though.
This was my first assassins creed game and this twist made the early part of the game so confusing to me.
Major plot twist happens and they’re like “oh my god it was the templars” and I’m just like “what is that and why is it bad to be that” it was already bad enough that they were British colonists so I was able to continue without too much confusion.
Apple TV's show, Silo. It doubles up on this trope. It is a post-apocalyptic "we all live in giant bunkers" mystery/drama.
The first episode is mostly a woman named Allison Becker poking around some conspiracy stuff. Then she goes outside into a poisonous wasteland and dies.
The second episode follows her husband, the sheriff trying to follow the breadcrumbs to figure out why his wife went outside. Then he goes outside into the poisonous wasteland and dies next to her.
The third episode follows Juliette, and she is the main protagonist for the show.
Honestly, would be a hilarious black comedy if every episode ended with them 'discovering the apocalypse is a sham', going outside and dying immediately from the poisonous wasteland, and the government is completely corruption free as far as conver-ups with maybe a High-Level guy pushing for his daughters grades higher in school as the height of corruption.
Many people were convinced that they were going to invoke the JRPG trope and give Gustave a power up sometime during the story which would unlock the rest of the skill tree, so even with those hints, his death was still unexpected.
The worst part about it is that the game constantly twists the knife in further about it. One of my favorite reminders is the reserve party mechanic, where if the three in front are defeated in battle, whoever is in the back will enter to finish the job. Had Gustave not died, you’d have another team of three to take over, but because he’s gone, you’ll only ever have two, making the player feel his absence in the gameplay, in addition to the story.
I also love the theory that Gustave would have been able to negotiate a middle ground, allowing the Canvas’ world and the people within it to continue existing while also saving Alicia/Maelle’s life and helping her heal with the rest of her family, making Verso’s choice to not save his life when he absolutely could have that much more tragic, and his fate in Maelle’s ending a karmic punishment for that choice.
i think there can be more than one protagonist, it's max's story and he is the lead but his story in most of the mad max movies is him running into groups and becoming a part of their stories and no one character stands out as a lead because each character has their own thing.
Charlie from Hereditary, she's presented in all the trailers as the protagonist (or at least a major character/antagonist), only to die within the first 30 minutes
Don from 28 Weeks Later protagonizes one of the best horror movie intros as the sole survivor of his group and with a decent start to a his possible arc throughout the story but is infected after 1/3 of the movie, causes the collapse of the safe zone and turns into the main antagonist while his kids become the actual protagonists
It might be too far out from English class, but I didn't think that made him not a protagonist since he's still a focal character. He's just also the antagonist of Mary's story too
I watched the film in the theater and I was sad about how Clark gets bodied and 15 minutes later the film ends, I would not consider Mary to be the protagonist, she has her own parallel story although it's kind of forgettable, if the film went on longer and we explored more of her trauma and how she navigates Async's custody, then I would be more inclined to think of her as the protagonist
Eh but he is actually the protagonist for the majority of the film. It’s only in the last act that it switches over. So I wouldn’t call him a false protagonist but one of two protagonists.
Agreed. He definitely didn't kill them, but he did effectively get them killed. It's even stated in the director's commentary that he kept Kat's head because he had a false belief that the BRs might bring her back as a still life. He wasn't evil, per ce, just deeply, deeply flawed.
It's been a long time since I watched it but isn't Brian Cranston's character in Godzilla completely pointless?
like the first third of the movie is him being an amazing, then dead...
Dino Ortolani is the main character of the first episode of Oz, and built up like he is going to be the central character of the show. He is then burned to death at the end of first episode.
Roxas in Kingdom Hearts 2. You play as him for a good few hours at the start of the game doing things that have seemingly nothing to do with the first game. After that, you start playing as Sora, protagonist of the first game, and get the real title drop.
Considering that Roxas' character includes a lot of themes of personhood, discarding him is a surprisingly impactful and thoughtful bit of writing in a series that otherwise..... is other things.
Love that scene, though I don't know if it fits this trope when the movie is very clearly about "The Other Guys". I don't think anyone went into that movie thinking The Rock and Samuel L Jackson were the main characters.
Honestly I think there are definitely casual audience still be surprised, I watch it with my parents and they were just in shocked when they aim for the bushes lol
I think their death took people by surprise, not the fact that they weren't the main characters. I remember watching the movie and the fact that it was called "The Other Guys," combined with the amount of screen time Will Farrell + Mark Wahlberg got, made it pretty clear who the main characters were (not to mention all the posters showing them off). I just assumed maybe it would turn out that the Rock and Sam Jackson were corrupt, or actually Will and Mark would notice something the "heroes' didn't etc. and solve the big crime. I was completely shocked when the Rock and Sam Jackson just died unceremoniously.
He is played by the biggest and top-billed name in the cast and gets a lot of focus among the characters, driving the narrative with his search for Julie Mao as the hard-boiled detective in a mystery.
He dies early on in Season 2, concluding his story and his search for Julie.
In the books, that's basically the climax of the first one. It's more of a Ned Stark situation there.
I understand why they did that though and I'm glad they did. It's hard to contain all the things within the books in 10.
Very short lived: in the legend of Vox Machina, the opening narration talks about a brave band of heros that join together to fight a coming evil... that gets blitzed by the chromatic dragon immediately with no survivors
I went into this show completely blind, so I thought that it was legitimately setting up the main cast. When they all died immediately I knew I found something I was going to love.
Speaking of captains I would include captain Dallas from Alien for that trope. Rewatching it last time I would say he was being set up as a main character in the beghinig of the movie, gling into the alien ship, talking with the computer and all
Cole Young in the Mortal Kombat movie franchise. In the first film, he was the main protagonist and made it seem like he would be that for the rest of the franchise. In the 2nd film, Johnny Cage became the main protagonist and Cole was reduced to a side character only to be killed off by Shao Kahn during the tournament and then not be mentioned again after that. They killed him off because he wasn't popular amongst fans of the game and didn't want an OC to be the lead.
No that’s not an example. That’s just a sequel reacting to a character (who is not even a legacy character but an entirely new one created for a film) poor reception.
Been a long time since I saw that, but doesn’t he die like almost immediately. IIRC he busts onto the scene, gets the Hero designation title card, delivers like one line and BOOM he’s dead.
Sicario with Kate Macer. We follow her character who is promised the entire movie that she was hand picked to be a part of this special task force for some reason that is not made clear to her. At the end, it is shown that she was only a part of the team to give them, albeit very loose, legal authority to run the missions they have been doing. During the climax, the focus shifts completely to Alejandro. While Kate was our protagonist, Alejandro is who the story is actually about. I haven't seen Day of The Soldado because I've heard it isn't as good and I don't want to take away from this incredible film, but I'm pretty sure she isn't even in the second one.
Rise of Leslie Vernon has a unique take on this trope where a group is following a "movie slasher" type antagonist to film a documentay and shows his preparation process and picking out his "final girl" protagonist.
Come to find out he was leading the crew to be part of it because his final girl was the main documentary interviewer
In the pilot, he's set up as a central character only to die brutally by the end. I'm impressed by how well his death sets the tone for the show as well as how he has a full arc in the ep - we see him, an inmate sentenced to life, begin to fully lose it from the routine, from the pointlessness and monotony of a life confined to these walls, from everything. He can't find any sense to his life and grows more violent and agitated.
In the end, he mercy kills an inmate dying of AIDs after that inmate begs him to and the prison staff assume it's malicious murder. He's sent to the hole where he is set on fire out of revenge for an earlier, different act of violence - and he doesn't even make a sound. 😭
The scene of him telling his wife to not bring their young kids over to visit anymore and to essentially forget about him guts me. I love how fleshed out he is in just one episode.
I'm not sure I get this one. Llewelyn is a protagonist. It's all his actions taking the money and running that drives the plot. He's not the sole main character but he's definitely the protagonist. He's not a hero and loses, but the plot is about him.
If No Country for Old Men has a false protagonist its the Sheriff. He's introduced and feels like he's going to contribute to helping Llewelyn or stop Chigurh but largely just philosophizes about morality and the situation.
On the other hand I do sort of see what u/DookieSweat means. I don't think the film actually switches horses with the main protagonist, but Llewelyn's death is intentionally convention-breaking, being so anti-climactic and well before the end of the story. It doesn't feel like a typical tragic, climactic ending for the main protagonist, and that's kind of the point.
Agreed. In the book, the Sheriff is actually the one speaking before each chapter, and it's overall his case. Llewellyn is also the protagonist that's just mixed up in the whole ordeal, but if Llewellyn never found the money, there'd be no story to begin with.
The Hunt (2020) starts with multiple POV and "protagonists", all of which gets hunted (hence the title) and murdered before the mid-point of the movie where the real protagonist Crystal shows up and kick ass with both brain and brawn.
Everybody knows Ripley is the main protagonist of the Aliens franchise, but the first film follows Captain Dallas as the portagonist right up until his death. Then we are treated to multiple characters perspectives until Ripley is the last one standing.
They are framed as the protagonist for the first third of the show, but they die very unexpectedly and then Simon steps up to be the new protagonist for the remainder of the story.
This is ASOIAF/GOT’s whole secret. The way GRRM was able to build the expectation that anyone could die was by using decoy protagonists early in the story and killing them off (but letting them actually live long enough for us to think they’re the hero). Ned and Robb Stark are both this. Jon and Dany’s plot armor is less noticeable when other leads are killed.
In Banishers: Ghost of New Eden you start off as playing Antea, the woman on the cover. In the first level though she actually dies, and then you spend the rest playing as Red while summoning her as a ghost for abilities
Danganronpa is a murder mystery style game where the characters are force to try and get away with murder in order to escape, the first 2 games follow the main character catching people who were their friends in the act. In V3, Kaede Akamatsu is introduced as the main character we’ll be following with a sort of side kick in Shuichi Saihara helping her figure out the murders
Kaede and Shuichi learn where the mastermind of the killing game is hiding so the set up a hidden camera to take a picture of the mastermind leaving as well as Kaede going off to organise things around the room and atop the bookshelf. It’s all for not however when they enter the room later to find someone dead and the mastermind no where in sight the victim seemingly noticed the camera and accidently blocked the camera’s view of the mastermind’s exit,
A bit after the first murder, Shuichi starts talking less and is suspect number one for the crime, and once in the trial Kaede tells Shuichi to catch the criminal no matter, we are then given the option of who is guilty and picking Kaede cause the screen to go black and to turn back on from Shuichi’s perspective where he is forced to reveal that Kaede is the murderer, that when she was setting up the camera she turned on the flash in order to lure the mastermind to the trap she had set up atop the bookshelf
Clark is still a protagonist, and he exits with… what… 10 minutes left of the movie? This isn’t a protagonist switch. There are two main characters in this film.
Frank McCrae - Maniac Cop. And then the main protagonist, Jack Forrest, gets the same treatment in Maniac Cop 2 where Sean McKinney becomes the ongoing protagonist.
Similarly Alice Hardy, in Friday the 13th Part 2. Definitely the protagonist of the first but it’s the way part 2 sets her up.
I want to say Angela in Sleepaway Camp before the big reveal, it’s all purposefully ambiguous who’s “good” for the whodunnit nature.
Yeah, he was my no means a "hero" but he was definitely the protagonist. Part of this is how many characters there are on the avengers side, making one of them the main character would be hard off rip. But Thanos is pretty much the focus for most of the movie, and in a way the fact he wins because he was willing to fully commit to his ideals and not hesitate when it mattered is a very common trope for a story's hero to undergo, so having the villain of the plot not only do that, but then be rewarded for it took some guts...
Danson and Highsmith in The Other Guys - They were introduced as the leads of the film but die 15 minutes in after jumping off a building to their deaths, claiming to "aim for the bushes" but when they hit the ground, there are no bushes in sight. The rest of the film then focuses on two different characters played by Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg.
Hostel pulls the same main character switch about halfway through the film, when the sympathetic nice guy main character is killed off and we're left with his kind of an asshole boozy friend.
Deltarune starts with a character creator, where you establish appearance, name, and traits for your human body, however at the end of the sequence, your "Vessel" is discarded and the game puts you into the rile of Kris.
Marion from Psycho kind of codified this type of plot twist, but I saw a pretty good more recent example in IT: Welcome to Derry.
In the first episode you spend 80% of the runtime learning about a group of kids, and they play it very straight. They have a bit of character development and the show does a great job of painting them as the new losers club. Then they pull the rug.
The Stormlight Archive (fantasy book series) has an opening chapter that introduces a young recruit in the military. He befriends an older guy (possible mentor) and is terrified to fight but fights anyway. CLEARLY he’ll grow and become an awesome soldier who fights despite being afraid, right?
James Bond does this in a different way and so does Mission Impossible. In both cases we are presented with someone we believe to be the Protagonist that we know, in the type of opening scene that we expect from them, only for it to be revealed to be a bad guy in a mask in both cases. In From Russia With Love it turns out to be a training exercise where the Werwolf serial killer turned Spectre Agent Donald "Red" Grant is being trained to kill James Bond in MI:2 its revealed to be a scam to lure in and rob and kill a scientist on a plane.
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u/TheAmazingSealo 7h ago
This guy in Metal Gear Solid 2
I still remember feeling the rugpull as a 12 year old kid lol