So I was wondering how many movies there are where a character is killed early on that was a surprise (at least maybe at the time). The first one that comes to mind is of course Drew Barrymore in Scream. Other examples were Emilio Esteves in Mission Impossible and Steven Seagal in Executive Decision. Obviously not talking about an actor before they became famous.

The most famous, of course, is from Psycho.

Though it's halfway through, I think The Hateful Eight has an unexpected death for a particular character.

One that really surprised me came early in G.I. Joe - Retaliation.

There's a cameo-level appearance by an actor from the first one in the opening of Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.

And there's a very early death in Avengers: Infinity War that just boom, happens.

Speed :

Deadpool 2 comes to mind.

Steven Seagal in Executive Decision

We know she wasn't really killed, but...

When my niece was very young (four or five), I happened to have STAR WARS on. She had some of the action figures (the new ones they put out in the 90s) so she knew characters names but hadn't seen the movies yet. She was excited to see Princess Leia, until the stormtroopers zapped her with stun gun in the first scene. I don't think my niece understood Leia was only stunned, because she got angry and stormed out of the room. I could see her thinking, "Princess Leia is in the movie for two minutes and then she's dead? This is bullshit. STAR WARS is the stupidest thing ever."

To my knowledge, she's still never seen the movie.

This one traumatized a lot of kids in the '80s.

The doctor in Alien 3. That movie sucks but he was one of the only redeeming characters in it.

Deep Blue Sea

Hereditary

For someone coming in straight from Aliens with no spoilers, I would think killing Hicks and Newt off screen would be the bigger surprise in Alien3.

I'm not sure why people are posting so many spoilers when there are so many ways to not post spoilers in this thread!

For example, I was vague in my post about films and specific characters.

And there is this handy-dandy spoiler tag code available...

Seems like there should be a 30 year statute of limitations when it comes to spoilers in movies.

Yeah it was... and I have never liked Alien 3 because of it.

That’s why I spoiler tagged my post.

Not sure if 30 years is too little or too much.

Similar to The Suicide Squad though not necessarily unexpected given the premise of that movie. The original Suicide Squad as well.


in the 2014 Godzilla. I still have no idea what they were thinking with that.

The Other Guys

Probably one of the biggest one of all, all the G1 guys in Transformers the Movie (1986)

Not a movie so defying the rules but the animated series Transformers: Prime features the Rock for all of one episode.

Animal House - Fawn Liebowitz

This Hong Kong film from 2002 is the first one I thought of. Totally unexpected and an absolute heartbreaker. I won't say which character, but it devastates me every time I see it.

Kingsman: The Golden Circle

Oh, that reminds me of an early death in The Bourne Supremacy of a prominent character in The Bourne Identity. Did not see that coming, still seems unnecessary. But maybe that's how the books are, I don't know.

Drew Barrymore in Scream. As a teenager, I did not expect a star to get offed like that.

Shit, Ash, you beat me to this one.

That said, director Corey Yuen is totally fine with killing his lead characters. He does this at the end of Righting Wrongs, although that doesn't count as "killed early" like the film you cite. Therefore, I'll go with one of my other favorites from his body of work, She Shoots Straight. Like So Close, I won't list which character, just that it's a real shocker, and the following scene is other characters dealing with the death, really hard to watch.

U-571

Not to get off on an off-topic rant but that’s probably my biggest film related pet peeve - spoiling fairly recent movies.

I’ve always expected the rule to be 5 years (at least!) but I will use spoiler tags for movies that are 50, 60, 70 years old. Because why not?

It feels like somewhere around the time the MCU started taking off (so probably around 2010 or so) it became cool to spoil movies for people. Like, on a big blockbuster’s opening weekend, I’d have to avoid the internet altogether because, inevitably, there’d be some big spoiler about a character appearance or a cameo or a post-credit scene plastered all over the internet. And not even contained to movie specific websites or forums. There’d be spoilers listed in the TITLE of an article on the front page of Yahoo! or MSN so even if you were careful about what links you clicked, you were still at the mercy of random article titles flashing before you with no way to avoid it.

Somewhere around the 2010s (maybe even earlier) it felt like people earned “cred” on the internet by being the first to spoil a big movie. And rather than readers pushing back on that shitty practice, they seemed to encourage it, which just made it more prevalent and acceptable.


And to keep the thread rolling:
One particular fan favorite actor goes fairly early in Godzilla (2014) and the movie can’t recover from his/her absence.