Plot immunity

Plot immunity is a phenomenon in fiction (particularly serialized fiction, such as television series and comic books) that allows for major characters - usually the protagonist and/or antagonist - to avoid the consequences of events that would remove them from the plot. The most common variation of this is the protagonist's seeming invulnerability to fatal consequences. Killing the hero would end the story without resolution. Audience awareness of this "immunity" drains the dramatic tension, as they know that the main character won't die in the middle of the first act. The result is the hero being locked in a deathtrap while the audience yawns or laughs.
One way in which a story might work around this is by causing a form of near-fatal injury or consequential setback to the "immune" character. Another is to kill a supporting character, particularly one which the audience has likely grown fond of (for example, the sidekick or love interest, or the hero's pet dog); the sacrifice of s" do not convince the readers that the main characters are in actual danger of even emotional harm.
Role-playing games have an additional problem regarding immunity. Fatal consequences for a player character are a way of keeping the player's goals down to earth. If the character is never perceived as being in any danger, then the player will never surrender or back down from any adversary or obstacle, regardless of how ridiculous it might seem to do so. On the other hand, character death leaves the character's player with nothing to do in the game for the remainder of the session; a good gamemaster is able to find balance between these two extremes.
Cases of exception to plot immunity
Some authors have found that killing a central character perceived by the audience as "immune" to death due to the nature of the piece is a powerful plot device. Some character deaths that fall into this category include:
*Within the first half of the film Psycho, Marion Crane, seemingly the protagonist at the beginning of the story, is famously killed off in the shower scene. This may be one of the most famous examples of a defiance against the convention of plot immunity, as it shocked much of its original theater audience.
*The same method is used in The Departed, in which almost every major cast member is killed off in a sudden and cold way, including Leonardo DiCaprio's part.
*Nick Andros, a protagonist in Stephen King's The Stand.
*In Dan Simmons' novel Summer of Night, the seeming protagonist is killed early in the book.
*Spock in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (but was revived in the following movie)
*Data in Star Trek Nemesis (but a similar role survived by his 'brother', B-4, also played by Brent Spiner)
*Carson Beckett and Elizabeth Weir, protagonists in the TV series Stargate Atlantis.
*Joss Whedon killed off Jesse McNally, seemingly a main character, in the second episode of the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer; near the end of Season 6, he then promoted Tara Maclay (played by Amber Benson) to main character status and gave her a credit in the title sequence, in the very same episode that she was killed off.
*Joss Whedon killed off Allen Francis Doyle, a title credit character, in the tenth episode of the TV series Angel.
*Wash and Book, protagonists in the movie Serenity and tv series Firefly.
*The television series Lost is an exception to Plot Immunity, as many of the lead characters, who were thought to be critical to the storyline, were killed off.
*The television series 24, where many key characters have died, including the protagonist's wife.
*The cartoon ExoSquad, where Deleon (a main character and second in command, intelligence officer) was killed off in a battle, without any heroic fanfare even. Many other main characters in ExoSquad were also killed off as well (both human and NeoSapien).
*The Japanese anime series Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, where Kamina (one of the core main characters) dies suddenly after only 8 episodes, less than halfway through the show.
*In Executive Decision, Steven Seagal's character is killed off within the first 10 minutes of the movie - despite being listed on the movie and in advertisements as a main character of the movie, and being set up as a conventional action hero in the film up to this point (playing on Seagal's established type). The other main character, played Kurt Russell, has a character shield, despite being an unconventional action hero type.
*In L.A. Confidential, the same token is used when Jack Vincennes (played by nominal star of the film Kevin Spacey) is killed by the villain in a sudden, anticlimactic way before the film's main showdown.
*In Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Sergeant Paul Jackson, a playable character is killed in a nuclear explosion less than half way into the game.
*The television series Earth: Final Conflict was known for frequently killing off main characters (actually having the original star die after a single season). It should be noted, however, that this was frequently due to an unwillingness of the production staff to re-negotiate contracts when actors demanded more money.
*The film No Country For Old Men, based on the novel of the same name, develops the apparent protagonist (played by Josh Brolin) in great detail, only to have him murdered off-camera mid-film. This recenters the film on what originally appeared to be a secondary character, played by Tommy Lee Jones. The story also breaks with convention in that this character acts in a way that provides minimal plot resolution.
* Albus Dumbledore and Sirius Black were both main characters in the Harry Potter series until their unexpected deaths in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix respectively.
*George R. R. Martin is known for the killing off of many named and important characters in the Song of Ice and Fire series.
*British TV spy drama Spooks surprised many people by having a key character played by Lisa Faulkner tortured and killed only a few episodes into the first series. It established a trait which has continued to this day, in that any character in the show may be killed at any time without warning.
* It is common in superhero/comic book movies for the main villain to be killed off at the end of the film, despite that villain surviving many near-death experiences in the works the film may be based on. A good example is The Joker in Tim Burton's Batman, where the character is killed at the climax of the film, despite being the most persistent opponent of Batman for many years. This point is later made note of in The Dark Knight where the Joker survives and makes reference to the longevity of the characters' bitter history; You and I, we're going to be doing this forever.
In the Star Wars Expanded Universe novels prior to the New Jedi Order series, over a dozen core characters from the films and from the Heir to the Empire trilogy had plot immunity, as did planets associated however tentatively with the films. Characters such as Luke Skywalker would frequently find themselves in life-threatening situations but survive unscathed, while a host of supporting characters introduced for the novels, such as Streen and Gaeriel Captison, along with villains, would be killed, and minor worlds created for the novels, such as Carida and Thanta Zilbra, would be destroyed. The New Jedi Order series deliberately breaks with this by killing central film character Chewbacca in the opening novel and then destroying the planet Ithor, creating greater tension for the rest of the series. The early parts of the series also feature Han Solo undergoing an emotional breakdown as a result of the loss of plot immunity. Characters would continue to die and turn evil during this and the subsequent Legacy of the Force series, and other important worlds would be devastated or destroyed, maintaining tension in the frequent near-death encounters.
Character deaths were almost unknown in the early series of The Transformers cartoon, as all characters with continuing toys were maintained in circulation. This was to end drastically with Transformers: the Movie, in which many characters whose toys were being phased out were killed or transformed, including Optimus Prime, Ironhide, Ratchet and Megatron. This switch is clearly due to franchise marketing issues, and 'killed' characters who are retained or reintroduced as toys, including Starscream and Optimus Prime, later turn out to have undergone only comic book deaths. It leads to anomalies, because characters are killed in the movie by means which only slightly injure them on other occasions. For instance, Brawn is apparently killed by a single shot from Megatron, despite having survived a similar shot in the cartoon series, and Optimus Prime dies of wounds apparently less severe than those suffered in earlier fights. It has previously been established that Transformers can survive drowning, being buried in lava, exploding, crashing in a ball of flame, being caught in a landslide, and various other apparently lethal scenarios, including being hit repeatedly with one another's weapons. It seems, therefore, that this situation is akin to that in computer games where characters can only be killed at plot-crucial junctures and not in 'routine' fights. To complicate things further, many 'dead' characters later reappeared in the cartoon or even the movie itself due to animation or continuity errors.

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