10 TV Characters You Never Expected To Be Killed Off
1. Everybody - Blackadder Goes Forth
As one of the quintessential British comedies of the 1980s, Blackadder rarely ever crossed the line from funny to serious. It was silly, it played to Rowan Atkinson's strengths of being able to make simple words funny, and everything was done for a laugh.
Even during the fourth season's setting of a trench in World War II, there was rarely ever anything other than pure comedy, and while characters had died at the end of previous seasons, again, it was all done in a slapstick, goofy kind of way.
Blackadder Goes Forth was the exception, and offered the sole emotional moment in the show's entire four-season run. After fearing the call would come for six episodes, Blackadder finally had the order to go over the top of the trench to be immediately slaughtered in No Man's Land. There was a slight tease that they would get out of it when the bombs stopped dropping, but you don't need a degree in history to know that wasn't the case when Captain Darling declared that the year was only 1917.
You could have guessed that Blackadder may have bitten the dust in the Goes Forth finale, but in such a dramatic and poignant way? Along with every other main character bar Stephen Fry's General Melchett? No one could have seen that coming, and to this day, it remains the perfect ending to a fantastic show.