4. Dan Conner on Roseanne
This one is a little tricky. At the end of season eight, after Darlene's wedding, Roseanne and Dan are out in the woods and Dan feel sick and tells Roseanne to call an ambulance-
he's having a heart attack. In the next episode, he's shown recovering in the hospital. During season nine the family goes on to win the lottery and be very happy together. That is until the finale, where it's revealed that the character of Roseanne in the show had written season nine in her own imagination to cope with Dan's very real death after Darlene's wedding. And to make matters worse, if you go back and watch the heart attack scene, Dan falls to the ground clutching his chest and then we fade to black and the credits roll, over which we hear an ambulance arrive and EMTs prepare a stretcher for Dan. If he did in fact die then of a heart attack the audience doesn't get to see the final moments of this eight-seasons-old character,
they just get to hear it being implied. Talk about a rip off.