10 Movie Deaths That Totally Trolled Audiences

8. Hoban "Wash" Washburne - Serenity

If you ever get emotionally attached to one of Joss Whedon's characters, you need to ready yourself for the possibility that they're going to die a horrible death in the near-future.

After a passionate fan campaign led to cult sci-fi TV show Firefly receiving a movie adaptation, clearly the smart thing to do was brutally murder the most likeable character in the series in the film's third act, right?

That's the fate that depressingly befalls pilot Wash (Alan Tudyk) in Serenity's climax, where after successfully navigating the ship Serenity through a battle between the Reavers and the Alliance, he's randomly impaled by a massive Reaver harpoon totally out of nowhere.

Because the rest of the crew are also in mortal danger, there's no time for sentimental farewells nor any affecting last words: Wash just dies and the rest of the crew then have to battle their way to safety before they can even process what happened.

Given that it seemed as though Wash had "earned" his survival after piloting his way through that space battle, giving him a summary execution mere seconds later was the storytelling equivalent of Whedon flipping two defiant middle fingers at the audience.