10 Best TV Show Twists You Never Saw Coming
6. Dr. Cox Is At Ben's Funeral - Scrubs
Though Scrubs did a generally fantastic job of melding the silly with the heartfelt, nobody was prepared for the sucker punch that was Ben Sullivan's (Brendan Fraser) death in the season three episode "My Screw Up."
Ben was Dr. Cox's (John C. McGinley) brother-in-law who made his third and final appearance on the show in this episode. Ben was previously diagnosed with leukemia, which by this point had apparently gone into remission.
Cox spends much of the episode agonising over a patient's death he thinks he could've prevented, and when he heads to his son's birthday party at the end, J.D. (Zack Braff) asks him, "Where do you think we are?"
At this point, we see that they're actually in a cemetery attending Ben's funeral. Ben was the patient who died earlier on, and Dr. Cox has merely been imagining Ben's presence in his head ever since.
Twists like this are tough to pull off without feeling hokey or manipulative in a post Sixth Sense-world, but thanks to the clever storytelling and John C. McGinley's phenomenal performance, it's a total bawler.