Often in the first chapter or story arc of a series, Anyone Can Die. The main characters are not established yet, so when someone dies it is quite surprising since everyone is given equal character development. Of course, the death of friends and family motivates the survivors, who go on to acquire a very dense Plot Armor from there on out, not suffering a casualty ever again, except in the most highly dramatic way.
Compare and contrast Sacrificial Lamb (when a minor character is there just to be killed early and show that anyone can die) and Decoy Protagonist (when the story tricks you into thinking someone is The Protagonist until the real deal appears). It'll usually result in a First-Episode Twist, which is a Plot Twist that happens very early in the story, and later becomes crucial to the story/series' overall plot. Related to Anyone Can Die, the general trope for indicating that even significant characters are prone to dying at any point.
Warning: As a Death Trope, spoilers abound.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Attack on Titan: It establishes its credentials as a series where Anyone Can Die in the battle of Trost, where many of the 104th Trainee Corps (which the audience has been following thus far) are killed off. Many of their roles and importance in the story are in flux before the battle of Trost; with several of them having been detailed a reasonable amount despite dying in that battle, while others having virtually no characterization until that time and yet became important players later on (e.g., Marco Bott). Among the principal characters, it took 75 chapters for another one of them to die after the battle of Trost despite the body count remaining extremely high among the rest of the cast.
- Elfen Lied: Many an anonymous guard is violently killed in the opening sequence, but surprisingly enough, so is the clumsy but lovable secretary Kisaragi, who you would've thought was well on her way to being a developed character. Dr. Kurama and Director Kakuzawa —respectively, the Arch-Enemy and the Big Bad— do survive the massacre and don't meet their ends until near the ending.
- Outlaw Star: "Hot Ice" Hilda appears to be an important character at the beginning of the show. Unfortunately, her ship is destroyed while being pursued by pirates. She tries to use a cable wire to pull herself to Gene Starwind's ship, but it just so happens to snap at the last minute. As she floats into the nearest sun, she leaves The Protagonist with the parting words, "Outlaws never go down easy, no matter what happens to them."
Fan Works
- The Promise: Nariko Inabikarito, despite being the four-tailed fox youkai, survives the prologue where her siblings are slaughtered. There's the added symbolism of her having black fur, a color associated with life in Japanese Mythology.
Films — Animation
- The Transformers: The Movie: Tons of established characters are killed off in the first battle but from there on out no one can permanently die.
Films — Live-Action
- Mission: Impossible (1996): In the opening, Ethan Hunt's whole team is killed off, including characters played by big-name actors Jon Voight, Kristin Scott-Thomas, & Emilio Estevez. Voight got better, but you don't find that out until later.
Literature
- Halo: The Fall of Reach: There are seven characters who join the Blue Team at some point in the novel: John, Fred, Linda, Kelly, Fjahad, Sam, and James. Sam and James both die and Fjahad is crippled and leaves both the team and the series, all in the first book. The other four, however, go on to survive all the way up to the latest media in the series.
- Imajica: The plot gets really started with a failed assassination attempt on Judith, which she manages to survive. This cements her role as one of the main characters.
- Wings of Fire: In the second arc, the seven dragonets of the Jade Winglet class are introduced and set up to be the main cast, only for one of them, Carnelian, to die halfway through the first book. However, none of the others of the main cast, nor any other character who's not a villain, dies after this.
Live-Action TV
- Battlestar Galactica:
- Battlestar Galactica (1978): Billions are killed in the Cylon attack but once safely away, the fleet manages to avoid substantial losses for quite a while.
- Battlestar Galactica (2003): Helo was supposed to die, having been left behind on Caprica, but the fandom took a liking to him, and he showed up in the series as a main character.
- Heroes: Almost everyone who survived the first season became virtually immortal in season 2 and after. The characters introduced from the second season onward weren't that lucky.
- The Last Man on Earth: The first episode, "Alive In Tuscon", takes place two years after a virus apparently destroyed all life on Earth, with Phil Miller as the only survivor. Gradually, other survivors appear and join Phil, forming a little community.
- Red Dwarf: Thanks to being in stasis, Dave isn't killed by the radiation leak that wiped out Red Dwarf's crew. The entire human race goes extinct too. The first episode is appropriately called "The End".
- Star Trek: Voyager: Half the crew dies right at the beginning of "Caretaker", courtesy of a Maquis ship's tetryon beam. They never lost more than a handful of people after that unless there was a Reset Button handy.
- Stargate SG-1: Kawalsky seems set up to be a main character, as the first episode's narrative follows him, O'Neill and Daniel trying to unravel the mystery of the Abydos Stargate. Then he's killed off in the second episode.
- Survivors: The first episode involves introducing several characters and then watching most of them die off into the tiny handful that would make up the cast for the rest of the series, as a plague which wipes out 90 percent of the world hits.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeon Crawl Classics: Enforced with the "Funnel" system of character creation. Each player begins with two to four zero-level commoners, and it's expected that most of them will die in their introductory adventure. Those that survive get to pick an actual class and become real adventurers... not that it'll get any easier for them from there on.
Video Games
- Dragon Age:
- Dragon Age: Origins: While the Player Character can't get killed other than by a standard Game Over during the first two major missions (Origin and Ostagar), his/her Player Party members can and will, so don't grow too attached to them. A case in point: PC's mother in the Human Noble Origin, Daveth, Ser Jory, and whichever companions you get in the Tower of Ishal depending on your class in Ostagar, and Mhairi after the first mission of Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening. While your companions may die later in the game, it is always a properly foreshadowed event.
- Dragon Age II: You will lose one sibling partway through the prologue, and possibly the other]] at the first time skip. Your mother dies around halfway through the game. Also, you have the option of killing a permanent party member at the start of the final mission.
- Fate/Grand Order: In "The Flame-Contaminated City Fuyuki", Olga Marie Animusphere is built up as a major character as the director of Chaldea. However, she gets unceremoniously killed off by the explosion and later permanently disposed of by Professor Lev. The fact that The Protagonist is the only available Master that survives it's quite the Plot Point. Only the player character can unravel the mystery behind the explosion, bond with Servants, and accomplish the task Chaldea was built for in the first place.
- Need for Speed: Carbon – Own the City.: Sara states that the player is lucky that they survived the accident, while Mick was unfortunate and succumbed to his death.
- World of Warcraft: The invasion through the Dark Portal at the start of "Warlords of Draenor" leaves only a handful of survivors who managed to escape the Iron Horde. All of them make it to the end of the expansion except for Maraad who gets a Heroic Sacrifice, and Cortana Felsong, who gets brainwashed by Gul'dan and joins the Legion.
Webcomics
- Goblins: A whole goblin raiding party is wiped out killing many, many characters. Since then the survivors have gone on to slaughter anything that looks at them the wrong way.
- The Order of the Stick: Half the Linear Guild was lost the first time they met the OotS gang, in "Dungeon Crawlin' Fools". Since then, the three survivors have consistently made it away while their newer members tend to get Put on a Bus or killed. (Though other characters have not been so lucky, notably poor Miko. And even [Nale and Zzdri, one of the three aforementioned survivors plus another original member who came back, have bought it lately.)
