10 Innocent Movie Characters Who Got Totally Unnecessary Deaths

10. Gordon Silberman - 2012

Roland Emmerich's disaster flick 2012 pulls the typical blockbuster movie gambit of giving our hero, Jackson Curtis (John Cusack), a romantic rival who must, of course, be brutally killed off in order to clear the way for his reconciliation with his ex-wife, Kate (Amanda Peet).

The character in question is Gordon Silberman (Thomas McCarthy), a plastic surgeon and amateur pilot who is presented as a thoroughly decent, likeable guy throughout the movie.

He's far from the typical a**hole boyfriend character we can't wait to see die, and yet, he suffers a bafflingly horrific death all the same.

In the movie's third act, Gordon slips while trying to enter one of the arks intended to save the human race, and despite Jackson's efforts to save him, he gets dragged into the gears that control the ark's loading gate.

Worse still, Gordon is dragged in feet-first, meaning he has agonising seconds to comprehend that he's being turned to pulp before his vital organs are actually destroyed.

Though not gory in the slightest - it being a PG-13 movie and all - it's a strangely nauseating demise for such an appealing character. And it's made all the worse given that Kate spends all of about 10 minutes mourning him before locking lips with her ex again. Yikes.