6. Dr. Kutner on House
At this point in House's five season career, audiences had seen a few different doctors working under the insatiable House. But the loss of Lawrence Kutner (who many recognized as Kal Penn and others recognized as "that guy from the White Castle movie!") was definitely unexpected. A generally upbeat character, the episode that portrayed his death was very dark, including a scene where his coworkers, Foreman (Omar Epps) and Thirteen (Olivia Wilde)
find his body in his apartment. From that point on the show only showed the aftermath of his suicide, because the actor had to leave the show when he got a job working for Obama at the White House. Of all the excuses to leave a solid acting job, this is definitely one of the better ones, so I guess he can't really complain about not having a death scene.