10 Movie Characters Who Died In The Final Shot
These characters all died at the very last second.
It's extremely common for movies of all kinds to climax with the death of a major character - especially the protagonist.
Perhaps they go down swinging during an epic final battle with the villain, sacrifice themselves for the greater good, or just get randomly killed off totally out of nowhere.
Beyond that, some movies pull the ultimate troll card by literally killing characters off in the very final shot of the movie, saving their demise for the last image of footage before the credits roll.
Filmmakers often do this to give the audience a jarring final jolt before the movie is over, and for better or worse it's one hell of a way to ensure that the ending sticks in viewers' minds.
These 10 movies all killed off major characters in their final frames, whether serving up a shocking last-second death scene, or paying off something that felt like it was coming for the entire film.
Whether dying peacefully of old age, falling gracefully on their own sword, or getting brutally mutilated in spectacularly over-the-top fashion, these character deaths all came at the last possible moment...
10. Paul Conroy - Buried
Rodrigo Cortés' Buried is a nerve-shredding exercise in suspense, as American truck driver Paul Conroy (Ryan Reynolds) wakes up buried alive in a coffin in Iraq, and attempts to use his phone to affect his escape.
Throughout the film Paul is in contact with Dan Brenner (Robert Paterson), head of the Hostage Working Group, who is attempting to find his location and rescue him.
Mid-way through the movie Brenner informs Paul that they saved a man called Mark White from a similar situation several weeks prior, but at film's end when the rescue operation unfolds, the team finds the burial site of White himself - who Brenner evidently lied about saving - not Paul.
And so, in the film's final scene, Paul realises he isn't going to be saved as sand begins unstoppably pouring into the coffin.
He's helpless to do anything but wait to asphyxiate on the sand filling every space of the wooden box, and just as Paul starts suffocating, we cut to black, with the final sound being Conroy telling Paul, "I'm sorry, Paul. I'm so sorry."
Considering it seemed highly likely that Paul would be rescued by film's end, this was quite the hefty gut-punch indeed.