4. Lt. Col. Henry Blake - M*A*S*H
Back when M*A*S*H was on the air, it was pretty much common knowledge among viewers that in 1975, McLean Stevenson was going to be leaving the popular show. They assumed that Lt. Colonel Henry Blake was going to be transferred to another base, or something else seemingly innocuous. What they didn't expect was for Radar to come bursting into the room and read from a telegram in a shaking voice that Blake's plane had been shot down over the Sea of Japan, and there were no survivors. The reaction from the cast is visceral and gut-wrenching -- to keep their performances as realistic as possible, they were only given these pages of the script minutes before it was to be shot. His death provoked such a response from the audience that the show decided against giving any further characters tragic endings when their cast members left the show. To date, the term McLeaning means to kill off dramatically a character upon their actor's departure from a show.