Problem with Plot Armor

I have been noticing a growing trend across the internet to treat Plot Armor as an inherently bad and objective sign of bad writing. Also, it's universally being used as something that can only apply to protagonists/heroes.

Now, obviously, it's not TV Tropes' job to police the internet's perspective on tropes, but I think it's something TV Tropes has been partially responsible for, and something that's leaked back into TV Tropes.

The current page image, for instance, encourages this sort of interpretation.

Villains can absolutely have Plot Armor. In fact, I'd argue they're even more likely to have Plot Armor due to Villains Act, Heroes React. Generally, villains are the ones going out there, causing trouble, and making enemies, while heroes often start as nobodies and wouldn't have a target on their back for half the story anyway.

You Can't Thwart Stage One is basically a villain-specific version of Plot Armor, where even when the Heroes do "react", events will conspire to protect the villain until later in the story, no matter how unlikely that is.

A hero surviving until the end of their story isn't a flaw, it's just what a story is. That's the Anthropic Principle, not Plot Armor. Decoy Protagonist aside, we tend to follow the character who survives because they're the one that survives. A story about a Red Shirt who dies three pages in isn't a story about that Red Shirt because it can't be, not because the character who survives "has Plot Armor".

This isn't the first time I've seen a trope gain mainstream recognition and in the process have its meaning diluted and used increasingly as an insult. We're going to have to keep an eye on this, because that's the first step in widespread misuse.

Edited by Jokubas on Oct 8th 2023 at 4:09:37 AM

Yes, putting an image that mocks a trope on its respective page doesn't sound right. I think it would be better to change it to something else or have no image on the page at all.

I suspect villains with plot armor are filed under other tropes, like You Can't Thwart Stage One and Joker Immunity.

Most villain examples probably should but there are tons on the page.

I'm also seeing a ton of examples that I remember from Ass Pull or other tropes that attract complaining. It wouldn't surprise me if those examples got cut from those tropes and people just threw them onto similar tropes.

One paragraph of the description talks about how Superman surviving because of his powers isn't Plot Armor since it's explained In-Universe. Honestly that makes almost every example from a fantasy story invalid where they have some power that lets them survive. Especially for the examples that say it happens constantly, in that case it seems pretty obvious that their powers are helping and not just dumb luck. Having a Healing Factor or being Made of Iron are pretty common in stories for this reason.

Other examples could go because they involve characters making a suboptimal decision. To put it simply, if it takes someone several paragraphs to explain how a character should have made a split second decision differently (especially when a character doesn't have full knowledge of a situation), then it's not really unrealistic or plot armor.

I think Plot Armor applied to the heroes is considered a flaw not because it's bad for the main characters to survive until the end of the work (that's perfectly normal and good storytelling), but because the story should have been written to not break Suspension of Disbelief such that it seems natural and probable that the main characters survived, or if it is improbable it feels like something they got out of using their own skills and help from things/people that were set up before hand, rather than it feeling like the narrative is conspiring to save them when based on the facts of the narrative they should have died.

Edited by molokai198 on Oct 13th 2023 at 7:58:28 AM

• If there is an in-universe justification (that isn't just a Hand Wave) for a character's ability to survive/escape injury, like Superman's invulnerability, then it is not Plot Armor. For this reason, most superhero stories are out, unless the character is a Badass Normal with no special abilities.
• Villains, as noted, get their own tropes.
• Examples should go on the most specific trope for a particular situation, not on every possible trope that vaguely applies. Thus, if something fits Ass Pull better, it should go there and not on Plot Armor.

Edited by Fighteer on Oct 17th 2023 at 11:46:30 AM

I agree with molokai: Plot Armor is a phenomenon that only becomes a problem when you notice it, and the bad writing lies in letting the audience notice it, not in its existence. When the hero (or indeed main villain, before the climax) gets into some predicament (shot in the chest, falls off a cliff, inside a vehicle as it explodes) and then survives for no clear reason, and unnamed mooks get into the same all the time and clearly die, that's when audiences know that plot armor is in effect. So much of making good fight or disaster scenes lies in disguising that plot armor.

So it's not so much bad writing in itself, but rather the times when it's noticed that are bad writing. And those are the times that will be placed as examples. That makes it hard to trope without treating it as bad.

My recommendation would be to make it a definition-only page.

I would argue that any character who has to survive to advance the plot has plot armour. However, there is an audience reaction side to this, in that the audience knows that the main character, and probably most of the supporting cast is safe. The villain will only die at the end, unless he has Joker immunity.

There is probably a "Saved by plot armour" trope, but that may be covered by other tropes.

Superman can and has died, but the fact that bullets don't kill him isn't plot armour.

Edited by ry4n on Jan 7th 2024 at 5:28:11 AM

Yeah, plot armor is more the oversimplification of the basic fact of fiction-writing that you can't kill off a named character unless it's narratively appropriate. Like the fact the Imperial stormtroopers in A New Hope cut through the Alderaanian Redshirt Army in under a minute with hardly any casualties, but then can't hit any of the primary characters for the entire rest of the movie, but then in The Mandalorian they're able to hit Din and Bo-Katan et al. all the time—but the Mandos are wearing literal armor so they can take it.

"Bad" plot armor is really just a failure of the author to maintain Willing Suspension of Disbelief.

Edited by StarSword on Jan 7th 2024 at 1:10:13 PM

I think it's kind of the thing where if it's done well the audience won't even notice. It's when a character should have died that it becomes obvious.

As far as what to do with the actual page, I think it should be reworked as an Omnipresent Super-Trope to Acceptable Breaks from Reality, Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy, Nominal Importance, etc. Meaning that only examples of Played With Plot Armor should be listed, if any (e.g. a Medium Aware work like The Order of the Stick making a joke about Plot Armor).

Call it a related trope then. Or maybe it's the Super-Trope to Plot Armor.

Edited by StarSword on Jan 7th 2024 at 4:15:07 AM

Acceptable Breaks from Reality is not a valid subtrope; it's much broader than this.

Should this be moved to the TRS?

I mean, if you mean "make a TRS thread" you'd need a wick check and stuff first.

Perhaps make a YMMV reaction related to Plot Armor?

Don't think so. You can objectively point to a moment where Plot Armor happens. I'm more in favor of turning it into an Omnipresent Tropes because this actually happens in all works in one way or another.

Edited by SoyValdo7 on Jan 15th 2024 at 9:04:28 AM

I think we should make it exampleless like Plot Hole. Both of them fall under the same "writing flaws that exist but that the internet loves to exaggerate"

Yeah, I dunno if this is the right way to put it but the particularly noteworthy examples seem to be covered by other tropes already.

Just to point out even more problematic examples, some video game examples mention getting a game over if someone dies which seems like blatant misuse.

Video game characters may have cutscene plot armor, but if they can "die" in gameplay, resulting in a Game Over, that's not an aversion, inversion, or any other use of the trope. The reason is that, in a video game, you can reload, respawn, or restart, and try again. In a movie or show, that's not usually an option.

I'm not averse to the idea of making Plot Armor an Omnipresent Trope. It is a fundamental necessity for most action narratives.