dannyjjk on "Throwing exceptions, (e.g. in shortcode or template) doesn't return 500 error"

I'm writing an application which uses shortcodes to display sections of information on the page. This information is retrieved from an API, and could possibly return an exception, there could be a connection error for example. Usually when I throw an exception in PHP, the page will be returned with a 500 (server error) HTTP status code to the browser, however when I do this in my WordPress shortcode function, it returns a 200 (success). This means I can't redirect the browser to a generic 500 error page.

Upon close inspection, if I throw an exception in the template file before wp_head(); is called, I do get a 500 back, but if I do it afterwards, it returns a 200 as if nothing is wrong.

Could it be a plugin doing this or is this natural WordPress behavior?