Character shield

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Character shields (also known as plot armor or plot shield in some circles) are plot devices in films and television shows that prevent important characters from dying or being seriously injured at dramatically inconvenient moments. It often denotes a situation in which it strains credibility to believe that the character would survive.

1 Origin
2 Other versions
3 See also
4 References

[edit] Origin

The phrase originated with fans of the television show Star Trek to describe combat situations where the Enterprise is not destroyed, but other ships without major characters aboard are lost. The idea is that important characters shield their ship from damage. It also applies to situations where important characters are on the surface of a planet, and the stars of the show survive difficult circumstances, but a minor character is killed. Expendable characters are sometimes referred to as "Redshirts," since red uniforms in Star Trek indicated security personnel, who were often the first to die on any given away mission.

The concept of character shields can be applied to almost any movie franchise or TV series. Police dramas, spy films, and science fiction dramas are particularly susceptible to this plot device, which tends to diminish suspense. Disaster movies and horror movies, on the other hand, often create suspense by putting the main characters in near-constant mortal danger and slowly killing them off over the course of the story. Due to the fact that the main character might die at any moment, many of these types of movies can be said to have "removed" the character shield.

Minor characters that repeatedly survive dangerous situations but do not express other major character traits are often referred to as Wedge-type characters, named after Wedge Antilles from Star Wars, an entirely non-integral character who survived the three original Star Wars films despite taking part in a pivotal battle in each film, during which other characters of equal standing in the story were consistently killed off.

[edit] Other versions

In the Paranoia pen-and-paper RPG, certain NPCs have a shield called "GM Fiat." This prevents them from being killed by PCs or other events.

The same idea is used in many video games, with most of the NPCs having shields (such as very high character levels or invulnerability), to prevent glitches and preserve the flow of the game. For example, it would cause a plothole if a character appears in a cut scene later in the game, but was killed during play. For example, Sergeant Johnson in Halo and Halo 2 cannot be killed, no matter how much fire he takes, because he is an integral part of the game's plot. In fact, he encourages the player to "Hide behind me!" during the player's first battle in Halo 2.

[edit] See also

Stormtrooper effect

[edit] References

The fourth wall-breaking webcomic Bob and George grants its title characters actual shields, which have saved them from many a ridiculous situation simply because their "names are in the title". Sometimes, these shields appear as an actual shield; on other occasions there is merely a massively improbable plot device.

In George of the Jungle and its sequel, George and several other key characters came close to dying at different points, only for the situation to be miraculously fixed by the narrator. In one particular instance, the narrator reset the situation after a main character was thrown off a cliff, telling her would-be murderers that the story won't continue without her.