10 Horror Movie Characters Given Last Minute Deaths

You can bank on one thing above all others in just about every single horror movie - people are going to die, and often a lot of them will.

The horror genre's popularity is built around the thrill of watching human bodies be brutally dismantled by a malevolent force, and while these scenes typically require a lot of planning during pre-production, sometimes the call is made shockingly last minute.

Perhaps the studio makes eleventh-hour changes to the script, or a test screening reveals that audiences hate a certain character far more than the filmmakers ever realised. Or maybe these characters were shoehorned into the movie late in production in order to give the killer another meat shield or two to hack through.

Whatever the reason, these deaths weren't part of the original plan when the movie was being conceived, but were plugged into the film late in the process.

And yet, for the most part you'd never actually know it - such is the magic of cinema, of its ability to make even the most rushed last-minute calls seem like they were always part of the plan...

The originally shot ending for Final Destination saw protagonist Alex (Devon Sawa) sacrifice himself to save his love interest Clear (Ali Larter), being set on fire while protecting Clear from a live electrical wire.

The final scene would imply that Clear had both evaded Death's plan and was pregnant with Alex's child, all while Carter (Kerr Smith) also survived to the end.

This ending ultimately went down like a lead balloon with test audiences, though, who wanted a little more bang for their buck.

And so, a new ending was written in which Alex saves Clear without sacrificing himself, and the pair meet up with Carter in Paris six months later, having seemingly beaten Death.

However, just as Alex notes that Death never skipped him, he's almost killed by a falling sign, only to be saved by Carter at the last second.

This in turn causes Death to skip to Carter, who hasn't got time to realise this as the sign swings back down. But before the sign hits him, we cut to black.

It's certainly a far more amusing and less-serious ending that leaves the door wide open for a glut of sequels, even if it's a bummer for Carter, who the audience was likely just starting to warm to at the end of the movie.