15 Movie Deaths We Never Saw Coming

There are a lot of deaths in Francis Ford Coppola’s gangster classic The Godfather, and most of them are foreshadowed in one way or another. But Sonny’s death comes out of the blue.

Sure, on your tenth or eleventh rewatch of The Godfather, it may seem obvious to you that Carlo had a motive for selling out Sonny, and that Barzini would have stood to gain something by eliminating the hot-headed, short-lived Don as well. But we’d be hard-pressed to find someone who wasn’t surprised by Sonny’s ambush on the causeway the first time they watched this legendary film.

Rest in peace, Santino — even though you were a bad Don (Vito’s words, not ours), you sure had a lot of spirit. We wish you hadn’t been among those movie deaths we never saw coming.

This shocking death is another one of those movie deaths we never saw coming, and it might just make you jump out of your seat.

Traipsing through the jungle, movie director Damien Cockburn is so comically excited about making what he hopes will be the greatest war movie of all time — until he steps on a landmine and gets blown to smithereens.

It reminds us a lot of that episode in Season 1 of Lost when science teacher Leslie Arzst thinks he knows how to handle a stick of dynamite from the Black Rock but spontaneously explodes after making one false move.

Watch where you’re walking, fellas!

In this pandemic disaster movie, Kate Winslet plays Dr. Erin Mears, an Epidemic Intelligence Service officer who is tasked with tracking everyone down who came in contact with an infected woman who died of this horrible illness.

The way she’s set up, you’d think Mears was going to be a main character in this movie — until she gets sick and suddenly dies somewhat early on.

One minute, she’s suffering in a hospital bed, and the next, she’s in a body bag. Sometimes, that’s just how life goes in the movies.

Steve Buscemi plays Theodore Donald “Donny” Kerabatsos in The Big Lebowski, an avid bowler and friend of Jeff Bridges’ The Dude.

But one of the most memorable things that happens to Donny in the movie — besides being repeatedly told to “shut the f— up, Donny” — is his death.

He suddenly croaks from a heart attack during a fight with the nihilists outside of the bowling alley. In an effort to honor his love of surfing, Walter (John Goodman) and The Dude try to scatter Donny’s ashes at the beach, but it famously ends up getting blown back in their faces.

In this iconically jarring scene in Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, John Travolta’s character Vincent asks Phil LaMarr’s character Marvin if he has an opinion about what he and Samuel L. Jackson’s Jules are discussing in the front seat of the car.

But Vincent accidentally points his gun directly at Marvin’s face, and in the heat of the discussion, he pulls the trigger. It’s truly one of the most shocking movie deaths we never saw coming.

Cue the famous line, “Oh man, I shot Marvin in the face.” With Marvin’s blood spattered all over him and the rest of the car, Travolta says it about as nonchalantly as one might say, “Oh no, I spilled my beer.”

This one is one of the most iconic death scenes of the horror movie genre.

When Casey is introduced as Ghost Face’s victim in the first 1996 Scream movie, naturally, you want to root for her and assume that she’ll get away. But she dies in the first 12 minutes of the movie.

Her death is quite gruesome actually — after being stabbed to death with Ghost Face’s knife, she’s hung from a tree. But even though her character is so short-lived, Drew Barrymore really wanted the role.

“In the horror film genre, my biggest pet peeve was that I always knew the main character was going to be slugging through at the end, but was going to creak by and make it,” the actress said on Sean Evans’ YouTube show Hot Ones. “What I wanted to do is to take that comfort zone away… I asked if I could be Casey Becker so we would establish this rule does not apply in this film.”

Brad Pitt’s death as the bumbling personal trainer Chad Feldheimer in Burn After Reading should be a lesson in gun safety.

Sneaking around in George Clooney’s character Harry Pfarrer’s house, Chad is caught off guard when Harry comes home early — so, naturally, Chad hides in the closet. As Harry gets dressed after taking a shower, he grabs his gun on the way to open up the closet, coming face to face with Chad.

Shockingly, Harry shoots Chad in the face out of sheer surprise, and it’s goodnight for that lovable gym rat, resulting in one of the most jarring movie deaths we never saw coming.

Joe Pesci’s Tommy getting whacked in Goodfellas is a surprise not just to the audience, but to Robert De Niro’s character James and Ray Liotta’s Henry.

James is so surprised when he’s informed that Tommy’s been whacked that he actually starts crying — a rare thing to see from men of his stature in mafia movies. But, more in line with that particular brand of masculinity, his sadness then turns to rage as he kicks in the telephone booth while Henry looks on with concern.

“It was revenge for Billy Batts,” Hill says in the voiceover, referencing the loud-mouth guy (Soprano‘s alum Frank Vincent) that Tommy, James and Henry savagely beat to death in a bar after Batts insults Tommy over his former occupation as a shoe shiner.

That’s what you get for telling Tommy to “go home and get your shinebox.”

Billy Costigan’s death in The Departed is such a shocker.

In this iconic scene, Costigan — an undercover cop assigned with infiltrating the mob in order to ensare Jack Nicholson’s Irish mob boss character Frank Costello — is pretending to capture and hold up Matt Damon’s Staff Sergeant Colin Sullivan in an elevator.

But Sullivan’s backup officers don’t know that Costigan is an undercover cop, and he gets shot as soon as the elevator doors open, stunning everyone including Matt Damon.

This is such a sad scene, and it comes out of nowhere.

Haley Joel Osment plays a sweet little boy named Trevor who gets stabbed to death by his school bullies in the school parking lot. It all goes down as his poor mother, played by Helen Hunt, and his teacher/mom’s boyfriend, Eugene (Kevin Spacey) look on in horror, unable to save him in time.

It’s an absolutely devastating moment when little Trevor dramatically falls to his knees and collapses.

The death of Josh Brolin’s Llewelyn Moss in No Country for Old Men happens so quickly and with so little fanfare that you’d be forgiven for questioning whether he actually died or if your eyes are just playing tricks on you.

Poor Llewelyn is a Vietnam War vet who stumbles on $2 million in the desert, and his efforts to keep it despite being pursued by Javier Bardem’s deranged serial killer hitman character Anton Chiguhr ultimately gets him killed in another example of these movie deaths we never saw coming.

He dies unceremoniously in a motel room, breaking the heart of his sweet wife, Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald), who ends up paying the same price.

A tough two films for Josh Brolin! The actor also voices Thanos, the evil supervillain in Avengers: End Game, who is yet another one of the movie deaths we never saw coming.

But to most everyone’s surprise when this movie first came out, Thanos dies in the first 15 minutes of the movie.

Satisfyingly, he is beheaded by Thor (Chris Hemsworth). Honestly, good riddance, Thanos! No more infinity stones for you.

Honestly, Howard had it coming to him, what with all his gambling debts and poor decisions, but man — we didn’t expect him to die like that.

Adam Sandler plays the jeweler in pursuit of a highly valuable opal in Uncut Gems. His death is such a hard pill to swallow. After risking everything on yet another gamble, Howard is ecstatic when he realizes he’s won $1.2 million in a sports bet — only to be spontaneously shot in the face.

It’s an iconic shot by the Safdie Brothers, seeing Howard fall to the floor through the reflection of the mirror above. Another one of those movie deaths we never saw coming.

Ari Aster’s feature directorial debut Hereditary is full of gruesome moments that will haunt your dreams for years. But Charlie’s (Milly Shapiro) death isn’t so much gory as it is shocking and unexpected — another example of those movie deaths we never saw coming that will make you clap your hand over your mouth in silent horror.

Charlie’s brother Peter (Alex Wolff) frantically drives her to the hospital as she struggles to breathe after going into anaphylactic shock from triggering her walnut allergy. But when he comes across a deer in the road, he swerves — causing Charlie to be beheaded when she’s struck by a telephone pole while leaning her head out the window.

Not to be too graphic, but her decapitation is so dramatic that her head ends up in the street while her body stays in the car. That’s one of those movie deaths we never saw coming.

Sure, some bloody movie deaths we never saw coming are inevitable in a movie about a killer shark.

But no one expected Samuel L. Jackson to be spontaneously chomped right in the middle of his speech rallying his fellow scientists together in 1999’s Deep Blue Sea. They’re all there to harvest shark brain tissue that they hope could cure Alzheimer’s, but they end up getting hunted instead.

Jackson’s character’s death such a shocker that it’s almost funny. The CGI looks pretty dated today, but it still deserves a spot on our list of 15 movie deaths we never saw coming.

You might also like this list of 12 TV Characters Who Deserved to Die.