Most shows have a core cast of five to ten characters. For the most part, it's fairly easy to juggle them about, making sure that they all have roughly the same presence on screen, and everyone's happy. But shows that have large ensemble casts, or that have been running for several years, often find themselves needing to shed a few surplus characters. Sometimes the show is just getting too crowded, and there are too many characters and plots to sustain properly. Other times, the problem is backstage, with an actor looking to leave the show for something new. Or it could be that budgetary constraints require the studio to lighten the load. Maybe there's even a spin-off in the works, and you want to move a character from one show to another... A character's departure can be a tricky thing to handle. On the one hand, it means tying up as many loose plot threads as possible before they go. If it's a long-term character, it needs to be a suitable send-off that's dramatic and satisfying or the audience will call show-makers out on it. Sometimes a character's departure even needs to be both dramatic and still leave the possibility of their return at a later point. And simply killing a character often won't do, as death isn't nearly as shocking in television anymore as it once was. You can watch almost any episode of Game Of Throne and find a number of creative and inventive ways of killing off a character. Here are just eight ways that writers have gotten rid of unwanted characters.