10 Great Horror Movie Characters Ruined By Terrible Sequels

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre's Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns) is significant for being one of the very first Final Girl characters in movies - she actually predates Halloween's Laurie Strode by a few years. She's also one of the best examples of the archetype. Much like the other heroic characters in Tobe Hooper's largely magisterial horror film, Sally isn't particularly developed yet Burns' strong performance made her a memorable figure all the same. 

As such, when 2022's Texas Chainsaw Massacre treated poor Sally like dirt, it left the nastiest taste behind. She deserved so much better than this. 

In this mostly underwhelming legacy sequel, Hardesty (now played by Olwen Fouere, who took over the role after Burns' passing in 2014) is a grizzled Texas ranger who's been waiting for a rematch with Leatherface for fifty years. Unfortunately, the filmmakers made the inexplicable decision to have Sally killed by Leatherface in the most flippant of ways. 

Firstly, this was a disrespectful way to treat an important character (who'd, bar a silent cameo in one of the early sequels, never actually returned on-screen before) and secondly, it felt un-earned because the way Sally died was so avoidable. She had decades to prepare for this showdown, after all, and she had a gun - why didn't she just shoot Leatherface in the head instead of running at him like that?