10 Movie Characters Who Were Seconds Away From Surviving

10. Rachel Dawes - The Dark Knight (2008)

The big turning point in Christopher Nolan's revelatory The Dark Knight comes around the halfway mark, where the Joker is thrown into police custody and reveals that Batman can only save one of his latest victims: peaceable district attorney Harvey Dent, or Dent's partner Rachel Dawes.

Joker gives Batman and the Gotham P.D the locations of the doomed pair, and the Caped Crusader races off to save Rachel. Only, when he gets to the address, he finds Dent, and Rachel is killed in an explosion just as the slower police arrive outside her location.

The reveal that Joker's switched the locations is a harrowing one on first viewing, hammering home the villain's uncaged insanity and twisted genius, but it's also the most important plot point in the entire trilogy, guiding Bruce Wayne's decision to give up the Batman mantle in the next film, and inadvertently turning Dent into Two-Face along the way.

For anyone who thought someone as innocent Rachel was going to make it out the film unscathed, her sudden and avoidable death hits like a ton of bricks.