10 Innocent Movie Characters Who Got Totally Unnecessary Deaths

Quentin Tarantino takes a pretty no-holds-barred approach to killing off characters in his movies, and it probably helps that there are very few obviously innocent people in his stories, which tend to revolve around criminals and morally ambiguous people.

One undeniable piece of human collateral damage, though, occurs in Inglourious Basterds, when Lt. Hickox (Michael Fassbender) and several other Basterds head to a tavern in German-occupied France to rendezvous with German film star Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger).

There's a young woman working the bar, Mathilda (Anne-Sophie Franck), who does nothing more than humour the boorish Nazis at the bar and serve drinks. She's simply trying to get through her shift.

But in an all-timer case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, Mathilda is also at ground zero when a gunfight breaks out between the Basterds and the assembled Nazis, led by Gestapo Major Dieter Hellstrom (August Diehl).

As the bullets fly, poor Mathilda is helpless to do anything but scream and wait to be riddled with machine-gun fire, killing her instantly.