Spared by the Adaptation/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Straight: General Draco gets killed by Bob in the novel after a Disney Villain Death. In The Movie, Draco survives and escapes.
  • Exaggerated: Draco falls for several hundred feet and hits the ground onscreen, yet this merely makes him sway as he slowly gets up and wanders off.
  • Justified: Some elements of the plot are adjusted for a Pragmatic Adaptation in such a way that the character's death ends up needing to be modified. For instance, the events that lead up to him being killed never happened, or the method used to kill him is rewritten as ineffective.
  • Inverted: Death by Adaptation.
  • Subverted: Draco survives his original Disney Villain Death, but merely dies later on in the story when Lord Tyranus says to him "You Have Failed Me..." and shoots him.
  • Double Subverted: Draco survives despite the gunshot wound.
  • Parodied: The writer literally walks onto the scene and pulls a bouncy castle out of nowhere to break Draco's fall.
  • Deconstructed: Now that Draco is still alive, he is free to influence the plot in new ways, including going after Charlie and killing him or some other character that didn't die in the source material. Thus, his being Spared by the Adaptation results in Death by Adaptation for a different character.
  • Reconstructed: Bob decides to Take a Third Option and defeats Draco a second time, but this time captures him and leaves him imprisoned for the rest of The Movie.
  • Zig Zagged: Draco undergoes several No One Could Have Survived That moments as the story progresses, which definitely weren't there in the original.
  • Averted: Draco dies as he does in the original.
  • Enforced: Executive Meddling and/or the author: "The book's fans liked Draco. Perhaps they'll prefer The Movie if we keep him alive?"
  • Lampshaded: Tyranus turns to Draco and asks in obvious puzzlement: "Shouldn't you be dead by now?"
    • Alternatively, a scene after the credits reveals Draco at the bottom of the cliff, patting himself in disbelief and shrieking: "Ha ha! I survived!"
  • Invoked: Draco did something to save himself from death. For instance, if the original gave him a Disney Villain Death, then in The Movie perhaps he seizes something to break his fall.
  • Exploited: Draco's survival is used by another character. For instance, Bob uses it as a chance to interrogate him.
  • Defied: Bob tries to kill Draco once he realises that Draco survived.
    • Alternatively, Bob places mines at the bottom of the cliff to make doubly sure that the Disney Villain Death works.
  • Discussed: Bob and Charlie notice in surprise that Draco survived, and Charlie tells Bob that they should go and kill him.
  • Conversed: A Genre Savvy character says: "Oh, they always save the popular characters in the films. If they die in the book, they come back in the movie."

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