9 Incredibly Important Movie Characters Who Were Killed Off Screen

2. Adrian - Rocky Balboa

In the story of Rocky Balboa, his wife Adrian might just be the most essential part of his journey. Sure, it's Rocky's rotating cast of unique opponents that most people remember, and those characters certainly helped Rocky grow as a competitor, but it's Adrian who did the most to help the guy become an actual human being once the gloves were off.

Adrian was his motivation to fight Apollo Creed in a rematch, Adrian stood by him when he was on the brink of poverty once again, and Adrian forced him to snap out of it and stop neglecting his son in favor of some random gym rat he wanted to train.

After all of that, though, Sylvester Stallone decided that the best way to make Adrian a pivotal character in the long-awaited Rocky 6 was to kill her off a few years before the events of the movie take place.

Yes, Adrian succumbed to "women cancer" as the always eloquent Stallone put it, using her death as a way to turn Rocky into a grieving, sentimental moraliser. Stallone figured her death would "cut Rocky's heart out and drop him down to ground zero." He just didn't want to waste any actual screen time showing it.