Need to protect a character from dying? It's easy! Just:
- Make them a main character.
- Especially applies if their actor is still hired.
- Make them more popular than the main character.
- Unless the main character is particularly beloved by the writers, in which case make yours slightly less popular to avoid complications.
- Make them the main character's love interest or best friend (with plenty of Character Development to keep them from being a Friendly Target).
- Train them in Super Not-Drowning Skills.
- Refer to them to indicate that they're alive off-screen without appearing on-screen.
- Give them the superpower of biological invincibility.
- Send them on a trip longer than their life-span.
- Give them a Pocket Protector.
- Put them in an elaborate killing-machine, unsupervised.
- Put them in the Plot Device Witness Protection Program.
- Inflict lethal injuries when the plot doesn't call for death.
- Have rules against upsetting the Balance Between Good and Evil.
- Ensure that the opposing sides never actually come to blows.
- Make the other characters perfectly satisfied they're dead.
- Honorably discharge them from the cast with a possibility they could return.
- Allow the villain to indulge at having the perfect opportunity to kill them.
- Rewrite the show to make it safer/ lower the target audience age.
- Have their true love kiss them.
- Make them a baby or a dog.
- Unless the latter is in a work after the Newbery Medal.
- Put them through a situation that would surely kill them without showing them dead.
- Make them a talented or popular villain.
- Invite their arch rival to their battle with someone else.
- Comply with censors.
- Don't let anyone find their body.
- Wound them during a critical, dramatic, action-packed fight scene.
- Freeze them.
- Make them an incredibly cool hero with injuries that should be fatal.
- Make them too powerful to be killed.
- Have them get captured by an egotistical villain with a flair for the dramatic.
- Remind The Hero that If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!.
- Imprison whoever makes people die.
- Cast them in a Disney movie. (So long as you don't make them one of the parents of the very young protagonist.)
- Diagnose them with a fatal illness.
- Give them artificial respiration.
- Make The Hero defeat them in a duel, preferably on top of a building.
- Have them ask any killer to Get It Over With.
- Take the body to the morgue.
- Leave behind a decoy and escape.
- Make it very clear no one could have survived that.
- Use Time Travel to go back in time and make it look like they died, but really didn't.
- Literally cheat: Knock over one of His playing pieces, then reset the board while He isn't looking.
- Have Death take someone more expendable instead.
- Have them make a few "friends" on the writing staff despite the fanbase wishing to see the character stabbed to death with numerous sharp pointies.
- Make a new toy for them.
- Do not give them any stats.
- But, really, if you ever feel like it, just bring them back from the dead. However you like.
- Most importantly, make sure no one important in making the show wants you dead for no good reason.
- And if you can't follow this list, take everyone else down with you.
- Remember unless it is directly before the credits Never Ever have sex.
- Simply curse them with immortality.
- In certain circumstances, why not try having sex with it? It worked with a giant demoness in "Damned" either...
- Make them immune to poison.
- Make them an animated character in a show full of slapsticky violence.
- Make them a frequent victim of slapsticky violence in general, everyone loves having The Chew Toy around for stress relief.
- Have him play a game with Death incarnate, and/or have them literally cheat death.
- If they're at Death's door, never tell them to Please Wake Up or to "come back".
- If they receive medical attention, tell the doctor to never use the phrases "I did all I could" or "Sorry".
- If she's a woman, make sure she never gets pregnant to avoid Death by Childbirth, Tragic Stillbirth, or Convenient Miscarriage.
- If they seem dead, avoid showing a funeral or memorial or cutting to a church.
- Don't make them gay or disabled, or if you do, get enough people concerned about avoiding Unfortunate Implications on the writing team.
- Give them a personality so that they're no longer a Red Shirt or Mook.
- Make them star in three or more episodes, especially if they're a pet, especially especially if they're a goldfish, bird, or small mammal such as a hamster.
- If The Hero Dies, just simply summon a copy or an identical Alternate Self of the hero from the past, or identical Alternate Universe.
- Let Coco Martin play them.
- Never hook them up to an electrocardiogram.
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