In fiction, a false protagonist is a technique for making a scene more jarring or a character more memorable by fooling the audience's preconceptions regarding who the story is really about. It involves presenting a character at the start of the fictional work as the main character, but then generally disposing of this character, usually by killing him or her - but sometimes just by changing their role (i.e. making them a lesser character, a character who (for reasons other than death) leaves the story, or revealing them to actually be the antagonist). A work of fiction that has multiple equal protagonists that then subsequently sees the death of one or more (especially late in the work) is not a use of the false protagonist technique.

The method refers only to those works where the audience is fooled into thinking that one character is the primary focus of the work, only to have them replaced completely by another (usually previously unseen) character. In film, a character can be made to seem like the main protagonist based on a number of techniques (beyond just simply focusing the plot on their role). Star power is a very effective method; audience members generally assume that the biggest "name" in a movie will have a significant part to play.

An abundance of close-ups can also be used as a subliminal method. Generally, the star of a film will get longer-lasting and more frequent close-ups than any other character, but this is rarely immediately apparent to viewers during the film. Alternately, the false protagonist can serve as a narrator to the movie, encouraging the audience to assume that the character survives to tell their tale later.

By closely following one character—either by using a first-person narrative or a limited third person narrative -- an author can easily create the impression that a character is the sole protagonist of the work.

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