10 More Important Movie Characters Who Were Killed Off Screen
Revisiting movie scenes where a huge character was killed off-camera.
There are limitless ways that deaths in movies could be approached, but one of the most surprisingly effective is the off-screen death.
There's a certain shock to discovering the body of a movie character after the fact or having the act itself take place just off-frame, as it leaves room for our imagination to fill in the details.
It's one thing for a minor character to bite the dust away from the camera, but it's something else entirely when it's someone with some importance - someone whose death held key significance.
Whether it was done for shock value, to perhaps spare the audience from seeing something truly horrific, or even to write a major character out of the story without the actor being present, an off-screen death can be just as memorable as one you can never unsee.
10. Ray Arnold - Jurassic Park
Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park boasts a handful of iconic death scenes, from the lawyer being eaten by a T-Rex while on the toilet to the Velociraptor being a "clever girl" and ambushing Bob Peck's Muldoon. Arguably the most memorable deaths, however, are the ones that Spielberg decided not to show.
Though the camera cuts away from Dennis Nedry (Wayne Knight) before the audience gets to see exactly what the Dilophaurus did to him, this was not the best off-screen death to happen in Jurassic Park. No, that honour belongs to the park's chief engineer, Samuel L. Jackson's Ray Arnold.
After the security systems failed, Arnold took it upon himself to go and switch everything back on manually, even though there were Velociraptors stalking around their building. After being gone for a while, Laura Dern's Ellie Sattler went to find him, and find him she did. Well, part of him at least.
After she managed to turn the systems back on, Arnold's arm landed on her shoulder to her relief, only for that relief to dissipate as she turned to reveal the arm was severed and his body was nowhere to be seen. As if you needed any more reason to fear the Raptors at this point.