False protagonist

In fiction, a false protagonist is a literary technique, often for making part of the plot more jarring or more memorable by fooling the audience's preconceptions, that introduces a character who the audience assumes is the protagonist but is later revealed not to be. It involves presenting a character at the start of the fictional work as the main character, but then generally disposing of this character, often by killing them (usually for shock value or as a plot twist), but sometimes simply by changing their role (i.e. making them a lesser character, a character who (for reasons other than death) leaves the story, or revealing them to actually be the antagonist). Especially in film and literature, the false protagonist may begin as a narrator. In video games, a false protagonist may initially be a playable character, only to be killed or revealed to be the antagonist. Due to the episodic nature of television, it is possible to accidentally create a false protagonist, when an actor leaves a series prematurely or becomes busy with other projects.

Notable Examples

• Wes Craven's hit horror film Scream opens up with Drew Barrymore as Casey Becker. As soon as she is stabbed in 12 minutes of the film, audiences were shocked because they thought since Barrymore was in the film, that she would survive the entire movie. Barrymore was originally going to have the role of Sidney Prescott, but changed her mind 5 weeks prior to shooting the film. In the show Inside Story (about the making of Scream), director Eli Roth remarked that Barrymore's character's death "was almost like the Psycho switch".
• Alfred Hitchcock's film Psycho opens with actress Janet Leigh as the main character. When she is killed partway through the film, the murder is far more unexpected and shocking and builds Bates up to be a far more fearsome villain. Hitchcock felt that the opening scenes with Leigh as the false protagonist were so important to the film that when it was released in theaters, he compelled theater-owners to enforce a "no late admission" policy.
• The tale of Aladdin in the Arabian Nights is initially told from the point of view of a magician setting off on an arduous quest from Morocco all the way to China. Only gradually does the reader understand that the boy Aladdin whom the magician meets in China is the true protagonist while the magician is in fact the villain of the piece.
• In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World readers are initially led to believe the protagonist is Bernard Marx until the introduction of John the Savage, at which point the story starts to almost entirely focus on John.
• In Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, the player initially plays as Solid Snake, protagonist of the original Metal Gear games. However, the majority of the game after that is played with Raiden, with Snake taking on only a minor role in the story. Pre-release promotion for the game at E3 showed only clips featuring Snake as the main character, thus preserving the surprise switch. The purpose of which, Kojima stated, was for the player to get a different perspective of Snake, "one you don't get when playing as him and can only be seen through the eyes of another person".
• In George R. R. Martin's fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire, Eddard Stark is made out to be the main protagonist, with most chapters focusing on his thoughts and actions in the first novel A Game of Thrones. When he is beheaded towards the end of the first book, the focus shifts to a host of other characters.
• In Fire Emblem: Seisen no Keifu, Siglud is the main character at the beginning in Prologue to Chapter 5. However, at the middle of the story, he is killed by Alvis, and his son Celice takes over from him as the protagonist for Chapter 6 to the End of the Story.
• In the last installment of the Call of Duty series, Call of Duty: Black Ops the player is introduced to Victor Reznov. it's not until later in the game that the player finally understands that Victor Reznov was indeed dead, and the person that accompanied the player was only a figment of the protagonist's imagination.
• After Optimus Primes dies in the 1986 Transformers Movie, Hot Rod assumes to the rule of Main Protagonist, and leader of the Autobots until the end of The Transformers, where Prime returns to life for good.
• In the 2006 Bollywood film Don: The Chase Begins Again, the lead actor Shahrukh Khan plays two roles - Don and Vijay. At one time in the film, Don who was apparently in a coma died of a heart failure before Vijay went to his gang disguised as Don. However at the end of the movie, it is revealed that Don was still alive and was pretending to be Vijay the whole time. It was actually Vijay who died of heart failure as Don quickly switched places with him.

See also

• Plot twist
• Red herring (narrative)
• Anti-hero

External links

• Decoy Protagonist on TV Tropes