Basic Trope: A villain or criminal is protected from the law because they're a diplomat.
- Straight: Ambassador Bob is the Troperian ambassador to Wikitopia. He murders Carla, but he can't be arrested for the crime because he has diplomatic immunity.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob walks through a crowded shopping mall firing a machine gun at random people as the Wiki City police stand helplessly by.
- Just being a regular citizen of Wikitopia provides Bob with all the diplomatic protections of a full-blown traveling dignitary.
- Downplayed: Bob speeds through town, parks illegally, and is generally a Jerkass, but no one can make him pay the fines he owes because he's a diplomat.
- Justified:
- The country in question really does take diplomatic immunity seriously, believing that the potential problems emerging from it are less important than maintaining peaceful relations with its neighbours.
- Bob's home country appoints its diplomats based on nepotism rather than competence, so it's easier for someone who can't be trusted with the heavy responsibilities of diplomacy to find themselves in this position.
- Troperia is much more powerful than Wikitopia, so the Wikitopians are afraid that if they prosecute Bob, the Troperians will respond with force.
- Inverted:
- The hero is the one being protected by diplomatic immunity.
- The villain has no shields from the law whatsoever.
- Being a diplomat means being subject to an additional body of laws and activities perfectly legal become illegal for diplomats.
- Subverted:
- When the Troperian government hears about Bob's murder of Carla, they revoke his diplomatic immunity because they value good relations with Wikitopia more than Bob.
- Wikitopia can't arrest Bob due to his diplomatic immunity. So they assassinate him and make sure it is blamed on Darthwikia's personal "Ass" in Ambassador, Charlie.
- Double Subverted:
- But it turns out under the relevant local laws, everything he did before his immunity was revoked is still covered, so he's in the clear. Or they do need him to be an ambassador and just don't realize it until it's almost too late.
- Bob is in contact with the "Ass" in Ambassador to be framed and they cotton on to the plan in time to prevent the situation. For bonus points, Bob sets it up so that the host country will be revealed if they try again, and that perhaps there'll be consequences if they attempt to revoke his diplomatic immunity.
- Parodied:
- Diplomats are responsible for most of the crime in town, and have all the mannerisms of stereotypical Mafia bosses.
- Bob has diplomatic immunity exempting him from the laws of physics.
- Zig-Zagged: Bob is protected by his diplomatic immunity ... but then it turns out that his accreditation is fake ... because he's really a diplomat for a different country ... so the hero gets themselves a diplomatic appointment too ... and then someone points out that the country they're in doesn't even recognize the concept of diplomatic immunity at all.
- Averted:
- Bob may be a diplomat, but diplomatic immunity doesn't matter much in a Disaster Movie.
- Diplomats operate by using avatars instead of legal immunity. You can arrest their body, but the worst thing that could happen is that they get bored or annoyed and log off.
- Enforced: The writers are determined to have an action-packed showdown, and so they need to come up with an excuse like this one to explain why Bob can't just be arrested quietly.
- Lampshaded: "I knew you'd turn out to be a diplomat. I mean, it'd be too easy if I could just arrest you, wouldn't it?"
- Invoked:
- The hero guesses that Bob is the culprit mainly because Bob, as a diplomat, is the most likely to think he can get away with it.
- Bob gets himself a diplomatic appointment solely because he wants to commit crimes without consequence.
- Exploited: Darthwikia wants to turn Wikitopia against Troperia, so they make sure that the news catches wind of Bob's actions, and how Wikitopia hasn't stopped him because he's the Troperian diplomat.
- Defied:
- President Alice knows that Bob is going to abuse his diplomatic immunity, so she gets Bob fired as an ambassador before he can even set foot on Wikitopian soil, or at least exposes his previous crimes so there's no way Troperia would dare send him anywhere they don't hate already.
- Charlie the Anti-Hero circumvents international law by simply killing Bob.
- It is easier to get one declared Persona Non Grata and thrown out of the country or withdrawn as a diplomat than it is to arrest one for one's suspected, proven, or planned misdeeds. Unfortunately, Bob doesn't think of this.
- Wikitopia says "Screw it" and has Bob arrested and prosecuted. When Troperia protests, Wikitopia tells them to shove it. If their ambassadors were acting this poorly and running unchecked, war was probably inevitable anyway.
- Discussed: "Oh, you think your diplomatic immunity will get you out of this, just like the bad guys on TV? Well, I have humble pie for you to munch on..."
- Conversed: "Of course the ambassador will turn out be the murderer. There's no reason they'd make that character a diplomat unless they're planning to have him use diplomatic immunity."
- Deconstructed:
- The work shows the reasons why diplomatic immunity was created in the first place, pointing out that diplomats in hostile countries could be harassed or even killed if diplomatic immunity is not treated as sacrosanct.
- Eventually Wikitopia's government grows tired of Bob's cruelty, seeing it as an insult against their whole country. Bob's severed head is sent back to Troperia in a basket with a list of Bob's crimes and maybe even having a formal declaration of war attached. In the resulting war Troperia is left bankrupt, ravaged, and defeated. This suffering would have been avoided had Wikitopia been allowed to arrest Bob at first.
- The oddities of this legal concept and the Realpolitik behind it drive the investigators (to not mention everybody in Wikitopia) crazy: "This is not a parking ticket! This man raped five hundred human beings indiscriminately! If you had a single, a femto-sized bit of humanity in you, you would let this man be destroyed on a court of law and not turn it into a political chess move!"
- Reconstructed:
- Diplomatic Immunity, as irritating as it can be sometimes, is really necessary. If she hadn't had it, the Wikitopian Ambassador Alice might have been harassed or killed when Wikitopia did something that offended Troperia. Of course, that's no consolation to Bob's victims, which is why the status of Persona Non Grata exists, and why Alice can go talk to Troperia's leadership and request Bob be stripped of his status before he gets both countries in massive trouble.
- However, it's also no excuse for diplomats to get away with crimes or believe that they are all-powerful. Because of this, Bob is able to be threatened that even though he can't actually be arrested, the people of Wikitopia can still make sure that he won't have a pleasant trip there if he continues to cause trouble in their country.
- The war has also caused Troperia to realize how flawed and corrupt their own government really is, prompting them to surrender peacefully, later using Bob and the war as an example of warning what happens if their other diplomats don't do their jobs properly.
- Implied:
- The Sugarwikian ambassador Dana is said to be unusually pleasant for her profession, especially compared to Bob or Charlie, but we can't determine the veracity of that claim because we don't see them.
- The story follows Eddie, the new ambassador of Troperia who is tasked with repairing strained relations with Wikitopia and preventing a war. He bemoans the selfishness and recklessness of his predecessor Bob, whose abuse of diplomatic immunity made a bad diplomatic situation all the more worse.
- Played for Laughs: Bob exploits his diplomatic immunity to commit minor acts of villainy at most.
- Played for Drama: Bob's abuse of his diplomatic immunity brings Troperia and Wikitopia to the brink of nuclear war, which would surely result in millions of deaths.
- Played for Horror: Bob abuses his diplomatic immunity to be a Serial Killer on the side, knowing that at the absolute worst if he's caught he will be sent back to his country ... which doesn't has a death sentence and where, because of his diplomatic status, he will be put in a Luxury Prison Suite.
You can't make me stay on the main page. I have Diplomatic Impunity.
