10 Shocking Movie Character Deaths That Came Out Of Nowhere

An iconic piece of sixties counterculture, the hippie road movie Easy Rider is a far harsher trip than many fans care to remember, with Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda’s titular outlaws leaning hard into the “anti-“ half of anti-hero.

The pair of bikers go from light bit of coke smuggling to dropping acid in a free-loving hippy commune throughout the course of the film, but there’s also a short sojourn in jail for the duo as well as an attack by some local yokels which leaves a cameo-ing Jack Nicholson beaten to death. From there the flick takes a turn into the seedier side of the sixties, and the closing act is as full of brothels and bad trips as anything revolutionary or idealistic.

It’s not Nicholson’s demise which we’re listing here, though, since it’s clearly foreshadowed by a tense stand-off in a small-town bar. No, it’s the last scene of Easy Rider which earned a place here.

You know, the one where our two heroes are senselessly murdered by a thoughtless hick for no reason whatsoever. Shot to death on the side of the road, the pair bleed out as the films closes, leaving a shell-shocked audience to sit in silence and hope we all somehow manage to collectively misremember the movie as a goofy Cheech and Chong style trip decades in the future.